Music: Linda Marra

LINDA MARRA, mezzo-soprano, is Professor of Voice and Coordinator of the Voice Area at Central Washington University where she has taught since 1984. She received the 2007 Outstanding Teacher award from the College of Arts and Humanities for her excellence in applied and course teaching over the years. Dr. Marra has served as vocal director and coordinator of many opera productions at CWU, including Mozart's, "The Magic Flute," "Cosi Fan Tutte," "Don Giovanni," "The Impresario," and Puccini's, "Gianni Schicchi." She also produced a number of opera scenes programs. She is an active performer of concert, recital and oratorio repertoire with a list of more than 150 performances. She has held the office of District President of the Inland Empire District of the National Association of Teachers of Singing more than once, and has also served as District Governor. Her students consistently do well at competitions and have gone on to performing and teaching careers and to further graduate studies.

Dr. Marra received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Voice Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Colorado where she studied with celebrated teacher, Barbara Doscher. She also holds the Master of Music degree in Voice Performance from the University of Michigan. There she studied voice with Eva Likova and sang opera roles under conductor, Josef Blatt and director, Ralph Herbert. Her BA in Music Education is from Queens College in New York City. Her early voice teachers were Cesare Longo and Maria Winkler. She also sang at Carnegie Hall in the All-City High School Chorus of New York City for two years under Peter J. Wilhousky. She held a coveted position as an usherette for the New York Philharmonic during her undergraduate student days.

Linda Marra started her teaching career as a New York City public school vocal music teacher, and she also taught in the Willow Run school district in Michigan. She began her college teaching career at Western State College of Colorado. There she directed operas and musicals and taught voice and voice-related courses. While in Colorado she performed for four summers with the Colorado Opera Festival and appeared in nine different operas. She also performed at the Aspen Music Festival for three summers. She sang with the Aspen Chamber Choir under John Nelson and Fiora Contino. In Michigan she was President of the Ann Arbor Cantata Singers, and she was a professional choir singer for the Kirk in the Hills cathedral in Bloomfield Hills for a year.

Linda Marra has sung on master classes of Elly Ameling, Max Von Egmont, Adele Addison, Thomas Paul and Paul Sperry, and she attended a summer workshop on vocal pedagogy with Richard Miller. She also studied in Aspen one summer with Leslie Guinn. She recently represented Central Washington at the International Conference of Teachers of Singing in Vancouver, B.C., and has attended numerous other national and international conferences over the years.

She has been soloist at the Chelan Bach Feste and the University of Washington International Conference on Women in Music, and a guest recitalist at the University of Idaho, Whitman College, Yakima Valley Community College, Shoreline Community College, Walla Walla College and Western State College. Recently she was alto soloist for the Yakima Symphony Chorus and Orchestra performance of Handel's, "Messiah" at the Seasons Performing Center in Yakima.

Dr. Marra has performed a solo faculty recital every year for the past 22 years at CWU and has been soloist with all the major CWU ensembles. She also has performed recitals for the Ladies Musical Club of Yakima and for the St. Michael's Church concert series in Yakima. She regularly performs on CWU Faculty concerts and was alto soloist for the CWU Chorus and Orchestra performance of Szymanowski's, "Stabat Mater," on April 30, 2006.

Dr. Marra is often in demand as a presenter, an adjudicator and a clinician. She has been the vocal judge for the District Metropolitan Opera Auditions more than once, the Performing Arts Festival of the Eastside in Bellevue, WA, Artist Trust of Seattle, Washington State Solo Competition (numerous years), the King County and the Wenatchee State Solo Qualifying Competitions. She was a Co-coordinator of a NATS Summer Intern Program and was a presenter in that program. She has also been active in the National Federation of Music Clubs. Her music honorary society affiliations include, Pi Kappa Lambda and Delta Omicron. She also served as President of the CWU Chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, the academic honor society.

Dr. Marra has had notable experience in administration at CWU. From 1986-1988 she served as Director of the prestigious CWU William O. Douglas Honors College, and she served as Assistant Chair of the Department of Music from 1991-1994. In 1990 she was on the CWU Team for the Lilly Foundation Workshop on the Liberal Arts. Dr. Marra attended the Bryn Mawr Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration in 1993 on a CWU institutional grant. She also served on a team of professors and administrators who participated in a two-week workshop on Cultural Pluralism at Evergreen State College. In 1994 she was one of the top three candidates for the position of Acting Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at CWU. She also served as the CWU Institutional Representative to an American Council on Education program to help further women in higher education administration. She has served on the Faculty Senate, the Faculty Senate Code Committee, the General Education Committee and numerous other university and departmental committees. In the area of public service, she served as a member of the City of Ellensburg Arts Commission and the Northwest Public Radio Community Advisory Board.

Her teaching assignments have included, Studio Voice, Opera Production, Pedagogy, Vocal Literature, Diction in Foreign Languages for Singers, Opera History, and Seminar in American Musical Theatre. She also taught Music Methods for Classroom Teachers, Introduction to Music and Fundamentals of Music while in Colorado.

Dr. Marra has been uniquely versatile in her career, and she has shown a great interest in continued learning. In her first year at CWU she took three quarters of Japanese to be able to sing in that language. Her background also includes language work in Spanish, French, German and Italian with some additional pronunciation study in Russian, Latin, Greek, Swedish and Portuguese and Polish. She has long been a champion of contemporarty music, and has performed a number of premiers of new works. She has also performed numerous important twentieth century works, including Schoenberg's, "Pierrot Lunaire" and George Crumb's, "Night of the Four Moons," among others.

Last updated July 31, 2008