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The American soprano and music pedagogue, Eileen Strempel, began in 1984 her undergraduate education at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester and received her Bachelor of Music degree in Voice and Opera in 1988. In 1991, she studied on full scholarship at Indiana University in Bloomington for her Master of Music degree. Then, in 1998, she was awarded Doctor of Music inj Voice and Opera from Indiana University for her dissertation, "The Gendered Salon in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris: The Works of Marie Grandval".
Eileen Strempel has won numerous competitions: first prize of the Loren Zachary Vocal Competition, both prestigious Sullivan Awards, the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation, the Liederkranz as well as the Enrico Caruso Vocal Competition. This last victory led to an acclaimed recital at Casa Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, Italy as well as a concert in the historical opera house of Imola, Italy. Strempel is an alumna of the Jerome Hine's Opera Music Theater International. She has taken part in the American Music Festival of the New York Philharmonic Chamber Music Series, and her Avery Fisher Hall debut was as the soprano soloist for the J.S. Bach's Mass in B minor (BWV 232) with the National Chorale. She has performed with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Indianapolis Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Syracuse Opera, Amato Opera, Bolshoi Opera, Westchester Hudson Opera, Berkeley Early Music Festival, Chautauqua and Skaneateles Music Festivals, Masterworks Chorale, Syrcause Children's Chorus, San Francisco's First Church Concert Series, Adirondack Music Festival, Syracuse's Society for New Music, Bolshoi Orchestra Sextet, West Point Concert Series and with the Liederkranz Symphony Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall. Eileen Strempel "is very striking, overpowering, exacting, and musical... a magnificent coloratura, a lyrical soprano," raved the Associated Press about the young soprano, for her Bolshoi Opera debut as Violetta in La Traviata.
During her years at Indiana University, Eileen Strempel was an Associate Instructor of Voice. Her career then took her to the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, as Director of the Opera Workshop, Instructor of Voice, and German and French Diction. In 1997, she became the Voice Department Head and Director of the Opera Workshop of Queens College: Aaron Copland Preparatory School for Music. Strempel became a vocal presence at Syracuse University as an Affiliate Artist, before moving to the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam for her position as an Assistant Professor of Voice. Finally in the year 2000, she moved to her current home at Syracuse University as the Director of the Opera Workshop and Assistant Professor of Voice. In 2001, she began a joint position between the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the College of Arts and Sciences. Strempel is currently the Associate Dean of the Graduate School, and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts. She was recently awarded an Enitiative eProfessorship by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. She also teaches voice privately.
Eileen Strempel is a noted scholar of song literature, especially those by women composers, and she has received numerous grants from national groups and institutions. Her articles and reviews can regularly be found in Classical Singer magazine, Journal of Singing, Reader's Guide to Music: History, Criticism, Theory, Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music, Chronicle of Higher Education, Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, American Music Teacher, and Teaching Music. Most recently, Strempel premiered a cycle of songs by Margaret Atwood and Tania Leon.
As a recording artist, Eileen Strempel has been featured on 5 recordings, three of which were recorded in the presence such notable composers as Libby Larsen, Gregg Smith, and Anthony Ascioti. Her first disc, "With All My Soul", is on the Orchard label, with Canadian pianist Sylvie Beaudette. This disc features previously unrecorded works by Marie de Grandval, along with mélodies by Lili Boulanger and Pauline Viardot-Garcia. Other recordings include "Songs of Innocence" (Centaur); "Creation's Voice" (Albany Records); as well as the companion CD's to Indiana University Press' The New Historical Anthology of Music by Women. Her latest Centaur release with Sylvie Beaudette is entitled: "(In)habitation: Settings of Margaret Atwood Poetry by American Women Composers", composed expressly for Strempel by some of the top female composers of our time, including Libby Larsen, Lori Laitman, Amanda Harberg, Elisenda Fábregas, Tania León, and Judith Cloud. The Journal of Singing raved about this recording saying, "Stempel's singing... is exemplary; there is so much to admire about how this project was conceived and executed down to the smallest detail, and Ms. Strempel is to be commended for her wholehearted embrace of these nineteen songs and for the stirring success she achieves even in the face of such daunting technical challenges. A remarkable achievement." The duo's current project is focused on commissioned musical settings of poetry by e.e. cummings, and includes settings by Regina Harris Baiocchi, Libby Larsen, Jocelyn Hagen, Judith Cloud, Christine Donkin, and Lita Greir. Strempel may also be heard on the upcoming release by Summit Records, "Letting Escape A Song: Art Songs by Judith Cloud". The duo can also be heard in their compact disc recording of songs by Libby Larsen, "love lies bleeding". This project, prepared with the composer, was inspired by working with Larsen at the Crane NewMusic Festival, and features the premiere recording of Try Me Good King: The Lives of the Wives of Henry the VIII. Larsenalso composed a new song cycle specifically for Strempel and string quartet entitled This Unbearable Stillness, which had its New York premiere at Merkin Hall as part of a gala benefit for Chamber Music America.
Eileen Strempel has affiliations with the following organizations: American Musicological Society, College Music Society, International Alliance for Women in Music, Lyrica Society, Margaret Atwood Society, Music Teachers National Association, National Association of Teachers of Singing, Central New York Music Teachers Association, Sigma Alpha Iota, Rebecca Clarke Society, Society for New Music (Board of Directors). She was placed for her ACE Fellowship at Colgate University (July 2011-June 2012).
Eileen Strempel has 2 children with her husband, musicologist Stephen Meyer. She is managed by Sciolino Artist Management. |
