Alumna Anna Hersey Receives Citation from The American Prize in Vocal Performance
Anna Hersey (MM, 2017, voice, student of Lawrence Weller; MA, 2009, musicology, student of Kelley Harness ) has received a Special Judges' Citation from The American Prize in Vocal Performance, 2017-18—The Friedrich & Virginia Schorr Memorial Awards, recognizing "Excellence in Scandinavian Art Song." Hersey was selected from applications reviewed this winter from all across the United States. The American Prize is a series of new, non-profit, competitions unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The American Prize was founded in 2009 and is awarded annually in many areas of the performing arts.
The American Prize in Vocal Performance—Friedrich and Virginia Schorr Memorial Award honors the memory of the greatest Wagnerian baritone of his age, Friedrich Schorr, who commanded the international operatic stage between the world wars, and his wife, Virginia Schorr, who taught studio voice at the Manhattan School of Music and the Hartt School of Music for nearly fifty years. The Prize recognizes and rewards the best performances by classically trained vocalists in America in the current year, based on submitted recordings.
Hailed by critics as a “force of nature,” soprano Anna Hersey is a noted expert on Scandinavian vocal literature and diction. Dr. Hersey was a Fulbright Scholar at the Kungliga Musikhögskolan in Stockholm, and conducted research at Det Kongelige Danske Musikkonservatorium, thanks to a post-doctoral fellowship from the American Scandinavian Foundation. She has presented her research on Scandinavian song at the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the University of Copenhagen Center for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use, the International Congress of Voice Teachers, and the Yale Conference on Baltic and Scandinavian Studies. Dr. Hersey’s articles have been published in the Journal of Singing, VOICEPrints, and The Opera Journal. Her first book, Scandinavian Art Song: A Guide to Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish Diction and Repertoire was released by Rowman & Littlefield in September 2016. She is the newly-appointed assistant professor of voice at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.
