Faculty Profile
CORRINE BYRNE
Vocal Studies Faculty
Current Hometown: Boston & New York City
Soprano Corrine Byrne is a founding member of several ensembles with great range and eclectic repertoire—from Ensemble Musica Humana (EMH), specializing in the Medieval and Baroque era, to Byrne:Kozar:Duo (B:K:D), debuting new work by daring contemporary composers.
Longy is a great place to study with world-class, actively working musicians who mentor you to not only be better at what you do technically, but also model what a modern music career looks like. We teach you skills to build your own artistic identity, and to forge the career that’s right for you.
Starting your own ensemble does many important things:
It keeps you honest about what YOU want to do musically, because you can constantly choose the music and the people.
It keeps you artistically involved and busy.
It keeps the love and spirit of the artform alive within you.
This last one is very important, because at the beginning of any career, when you’re putting all your efforts into competing for the most sought-after jobs and gigs, it’s easy to feel discouraged and lost. After finishing my Masters, I learned that starting my own fulfilling projects helped me cope with audition rejections. Then, one day you may realize you’re winning a few of those auditions for big jobs (for me, this started with a solo appearance with an orchestra here and there, and an opera role or two).
Having an interesting résumé—based on my personal passion projects—made me look interesting to the right people. It also may have made me look too weird to other people, which is fine. I wouldn’t trade my patchwork quilt of a career for the world!
There’s something special about being vocally different. There’s not one person whose career I tried to emulate, and I think it’s served me well to try not to be too much like any other artist.
For projects I am a part of curating, creating, or producing, I tend to gravitate towards early music or new music. These seemingly very different genres have something in common—not only some freedom in the techniques and performance itself—but also the programming possibilities feel limitless. I am drawn to these spaces, so that I can be more creative and individualistic.
I came to Longy because the school feels like home. I don’t mean location-wise (although Boston is my original hometown)! Longy’s vision aligns so well with my own view of what musicians can be. We inspire people to be MORE than just notes performed “really well” from the page. Here we look beyond the basics to see the big picture of how we truly make a difference in the world through our music.