A specialist in sacred music, Beth Allen-Gardner is praised for a voice that is fresh sounding and stylish, warm and generous, and which moves with ease.  Beth won the University of North Carolina Concerto Competition and has been a finalist in both the Bach Vocal Competition for American Singers and the Audrey Rooney Vocal Competition, semifinalist in the Rochester International Vocal Competition, and quarter finalist in the prestigious American Traditions Competition. An active concert soloist and recitalist, Beth has enjoyed engagements with Mallarmé Music, Bel Canto Company, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, NC State Choral Artists, the Choral Society of Durham, Greensboro Oratorio Singers, the Choral Society of Greensboro, and the Cary and Mebane Community Choirs, and is a recurring soloist at Duke Chapel.  Some of her favorite performances include Vivaldi’s Gloria, Bach’s Magnificat and Cantata 80 Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, Handel’s Judas Maccabbaeus and Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Missa Solemnis, and Mass in C, and Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music. 

 

Opera roles include Despina in Cosi fan tutte, the Unknown Maiden in Young Meister Bach, and the second sister in Beauty and the Beast.  On the musical theatre stage, Beth has played Baroness Elsa Schraeder in The Sound of Music, Emma Carew in Jekyll and Hyde, and Cinderella's Mother in Into the Woods. In recent years, Beth has presented recitals in various parts of the southeastern United States with Gaudete Ministries, a small group of professional musicians specializing in ministry through collaborative classical sacred music.

 
A National Merit Scholar, Hester Graduate Fellow, and Dean’s Award Recipient (UNC-Greensboro), Beth holds both her M.M. in Vocal Pedagogy and her Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Music Education from UNC-Greensboro as well as her B.M. with Distinction in Voice Performance from UNC-Chapel Hill, and studied and performed at the Sankt Goar International Music Festival and Academy in Sankt Goar, Germany.  For her masters thesis, Beth wrote about understanding and addressing the unique physiological and psychological ramifications of puberty on the adolescent singer. Although her greatest teaching interest is in training adolescent singers, Beth has taught both voice and piano lessons to students of all ages on and off for nearly two decades. Beth’s own vocal journey has brought her from singing coloratura soprano in her undergraduate years to lyric soprano during and after graduate school, and now most recently to mezzo-soprano.  Although she has acted on both the opera and musical theatre stage, Beth feels most connected to the oratorio repertoire and greatly relishes shedding light on the texts and growing in her ability to artfully interpret the musical choices made by each composer.

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