Gayle Shay

Gayle Shay, mezzo soprano, has performed throughout the United States and Canada in musical theater, opera and oratorio including productions with the Washington (DC) Opera, the Maryland Handel Festival, the Des Moines Metro Opera Guild, OpenStage Theater (Fort Collins, CO), Colorado Lyric Theater and Nautilus New Music Theatre Company (Minneapolis) in such shows as Into the Woods, Big River, The Mikado, The Consul, Trouble in Tahiti, Lucia di Lammermoor, Amahl and the Night Visitors, and The Devil to Pay. Her professional stage direction and production credits include those with Wolf Trapp Opera, Maryland Opera Studio, Opera/Omaha, Des Moines Drama Workshop, Dorian Opera Theatre, Colorado Children’s Opera Theatre, New England Light Opera, Icicle Creek Young Artist Program, and Nashville Opera. Gayle has appeared regularly on the Songfest Art Song Concert Series in Malibu, CA working with composers John Harbison and Jake Heggie, and pianists Martin Katz and Graham Johnson and she has been a member of the International Voice Workshop at the Banff Centre for the Arts under the direction of Richard Armstrong. Gayle is an Associate Professor of Voice at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she also serves as the Director of the Vanderbilt Opera Theatre. This is Gayle’s second summer at VISI, having appeared as a featured soloist at the Institute in 2007. She resides in Tennessee with her husband, Daryl Phillips.