Academics

“I enjoy discovering how each individual student learns and connects to music through singing.”

One summer recently when Ellen Graham was performing with the Cincinnati Opera chorus, she visited Newport on the Levee, a waterfront playground and dining and shopping emporium in northern Kentucky. The Cincinnati Circus Company had a trapeze rig set up there for visitors to try, and, as Graham confessed, “It just seemed too fun to pass up. Of course, I got completely hooked.”

Graham now takes trapeze lessons whenever possible during the summer. Recently while in New York for a singing engagement, she had the opportunity to take a class at the Trapeze School New York, whose motto, appropriately, is “Forget fear. Worry about the addiction.“ Their rig is on top of the Pier 40 building overlooking the Hudson River. As Graham reported, that experience was “so cool!”

When not teaching voice at Transylvania, where she enjoys working with individual students in a “safe, encouraging learning environment,” Graham’s other job can also feel like a high-flying act. As an administrative assistant for the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre, Graham helps coordinate events such as graduate auditions and the Alltech Vocal Scholarship Competition. (Graham won the Barbara Rouse Kentucky Prize at the 2009 competition.) As part of her responsibilities at UK, she also teaches voice and diction.

A mezzo-soprano, Graham performs regularly in concerts, operas, and recitals throughout the region. In 2009 she debuted the role of Mama Sairy in the world premiere of the new American opera River of Time at the University of Kentucky. She can be heard singing the role of Orlofsky in the 2010 Albany Records recording of Die Fledermaus.

Operatic roles

• Meg Page in Falstaff
• Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus
• Cesare in Giulio Cesare
• Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte
• Cecilia March in Mark Adamo’s Little Women
• Hansel in Hansel and Gretel
• Katisha in The Mikado
• Mama Sairy in River of Time

Soloist opportunities

• Central Ohio Symphony Orchestra
• Clermont Philharmonic Orchestra
• Evansville Philharmonic
• Lebanon Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
• Miami University Symphony Orchestra and Choruses
• University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra
• Westwood First Concert Series in Cincinnati