Bethany
Battafarano

Bethany Battafarano, whose voice Germany's Rheinische Post has heralded as simply "wonderful," is a soprano soloist and consort singer. Bethany is a specialist in historical performance practices of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque vocal music, and a dedicated performer of new and experimental music. She has recorded and toured across the United States, Spain, France, and Germany with such acclaimed groups as The Rose Ensemble, Schola Antiqua of Chicago, South Dakota Chorale, Quince Ensemble, and Apollo Master Chorale, among many others. She recently completed a three-year tenure as Artist in Residence at Rockefeller Chapel in Chicago.

 

As a composer, Bethany is co-founder of experimental vocal consort Artemis, whose improvisatory compositions were commissioned by the Walker Art Center and Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) of New York, among others. Bethany's compositions have been featured by Artemis, SPNN Studios, Studio Z, and the Cedar Cultural Center, for which Bethany and collaborators were awarded a Cedar Commission.

 

Bethany also enjoys work in artistic directing, nonprofit leadership, and education. She is a co-founder emeritus with award-winning professional choir Border CrosSing, which centers Latinx classical music. In addition, Bethany has served as Director of Music and section leader in churches across the U.S., and she was the co-founding Artistic Director of Sursum Corazón, a Spanish-language program of children's choirs and adult voice classes in the Twin Cities, MN. Bethany has served as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the University of Oregon and the University of Chicago, where she has taught undergraduate courses in ethnomusicology, Western music history, and vocal performance, and she regularly serves as a clinician for Latin American choral music.

 

Currently, Bethany is fully funded in the Ph.D. Ethnomusicology program at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation has been awarded a Fulbright grant for Kichwa-language music preservation in the Ecuadorian Amazon, in collaboration with local Indigenous leaders, including Mishki Chullumbu and Roxana Tanguila. (Contact Roxana or Bethany to support the musicians' work!) Bethany's additional work centers on voice studies, particularly related to Indigenous Nahuatl-language vocal music, post-Vatican II U.S. Catholic music, and contemporary U.S. professional choral settings, and the (perhaps surprising) relationships between the three. Ongoing research from her nonprofit work relates to the development of equitable systems in the choral arts to promote best practices (including preventing and addressing discrimination) in both artistic and administrative capacities. Prior education includes M.A. Musicology and M.Mus. Voice Performance degrees from the University of Oregon, and undergraduate degrees in Music, Anthropology, and Psychology from Macalester College.

 

When she isn’t musicking, Bethany enjoys work as a Spanish-English medical interpreter, translator, and transcript editor. You might find her (unimpressively) bouldering, dancing cumbia, camping, or (gasp!) catching the latest Avengers movie.