Elisa Sutherland
Mezzo-soprano Elisa Sutherland gives detailed, stylistic performances of early and new music with “soul-infused expressiveness and unselfconscious joie de vivre” (New York Music Daily).
Ellie is a core member of Ekmeles, a sextet dedicated to exploring microtonal tuning and extended vocal techniques, and Alkemie, an ensemble made up of medieval specialists that celebrates the vibrant and timeless sounds of the past and present. This season, Ellie joins as a full-time member of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street. She has appeared in art song recitals with the Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) and Philadelphia’s Lyricfest, as well as Roomful of Teeth, Blue Heron, and Bach Akademie Charlotte. Ellie is an invaluable member of many of the top vocal ensembles in the country, including The Crossing, TENET Vocal Artists, Lorelei, Ampersand, Variant 6, and Seraphic Fire.
Through her work as a soloist and choral musician, Ellie has workshopped and premiered new compositions by composers Ted Hearne, Julia Wolfe, Erin Gee, Michael Gordon, Christopher Trapani, David Lang, Zosha Di Castri, Shawn Jaeger, John Luther Adams, Hannah Kendall, Caroline Shaw, Yaz Lancaster, Michael Gilbertson, Gavin Bryars, Joanne Metcalf, Kile Smith, Pablo Chin, L J White, and many more. In the world of early music, Ellie has explored repertoire ranging from the medieval to the baroque periods with ensembles TENET Vocal Artists, Quicksilver Baroque, Filament, Elm City Consort, and Alkemie.
Ellie has been featured as a soloist with Apollo’s Fire, TENET, Contemporaneous, Arcana New Music Ensemble, American Bach Soloists, and Apollo Chorus of Chicago. She has sung for over 30 commercial recordings (including three GRAMMY-winning and twelve nominated albums) and was a soloist on The Crossing’s GRAMMY-nominated album, “Boenhoffer.”
In addition to winning the Philadelphia District of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in 2015, Ellie is the 2014 Lynne Harvey Cooper Award winner and the first-place winner of the inaugural Handel Aria Competition at the Madison Early Music Festival in 2013. Ellie also was a Finalist in the 2024 Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition. Recent opera roles include Conversation in Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Les plaisirs de Versailles, Hera in Chris Cerrone’s All Wounds Bleed, Ensemble in Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta with the Prototype Festival, Dido in Dido and Aeneas, Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, Meg in Little Women, Ottavia in L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Nancy in Albert Herring. Ellie is also remembered for her Blazing Saddles/Madeline Kahn impression in a production of Die Fledermaus.
Outside of performing, Ellie is a freelance grant writer for early and contemporary music ensembles. She has produced three full-length albums with Tiny Panther Recording for Alkemie and Freelance Nun. Ellie graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing, a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance, and a Master of Music in Vocal Performance. Born in Milwaukee, WI, she lives in Brooklyn with her partner and cat, Anton.
