Arianne Abela is a Doctoral student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor Michigan. She was most recently Chorus Master of the University of Michigan productions of Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. She was recently named the Director of Music at Bethlehem United Church of Christ in Ann Arbor.

Abela was recently featured conducting on NBC’s America’s Got Talent along with collaborator and friend, Colin Britt, and 3 Penny Chorus and Orchestra. Making it to the quarter-final live rounds at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, New York, 3 Penny performs classical arrangements of the latest pop music. 3 Penny has been featured on NBC’s Today Show with Al Roker, Matt Lauer, and Savannah Gurthie.

Abela is a graduate of the Yale School of Music and Yale Institute of Sacred Music where she studied with Marguerite Brooks, Jeffrey Douma and Simon Carrington. She is the 2010 recipient of the Hugh Porter Prize Award and served as assistant conductor of the Yale Glee Club and conductor of the Yale Chamber Singers in 2009-2010. Abela was co-conductor of the Yale Saybrook Orchestra where she conducted the Dvorak New World Symphony, selections from Handel Belshazzar, Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 1, and Beethoven Leonore Overture No. 3. Abela was a member of the Yale’s renowned Schola Cantorum in 2008-2009 under the direction of Simon Carrington and toured China and Korea in May 2009 to perform Bach’s B Minor Mass.

Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Arianne sang with the San Francisco Girls Chorus for many years and collaborated with Michael Tilson Thomas and Vance George of the San Francisco Symphony, Joseph Jennings of Chanticleer, and Helmuth Rilling in the Oregon Bach Festival and World Choral Symposium. Arianne was the 1999 recipient of the SFGC Alumnae Association Merit Scholarship and returns to the SFGC each summer as music director of the summer Alumnae Chorus.

Arianne graduated from Smith College and received the 2008 Judith Raskin Memorial Prize for voice, the 2008 Earnst Wallfisch Prize for music, and the winner of the 2008 Concerto Competition with Mozart Exsultate Jubilate. In this same year, Smith College Department of Theater production of Cinders featured Abela’s original compositions.

Arianne has been committed to Benefit Concerts for many years. She is one of the founders of House of Clouds, an organization dedicated to raising money for charities through performance and artistic collaboration. Please visit our website to read more about the mission of the organization.

Former faculty positions include Director of the Wesleyan Singers, premiere mixed choral ensemble at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Notre Dame High School in West Haven, CT and The Grater Hartford Academy of the Arts, Hartford, CT, singer and director at Christ Church in New Haven, St. John’s in Waterbury, and faculty at The Westover School in Middlebury, CT.