Susan Swaney, Artistic Director
Susan Swaney has been Music Director of Voces Novae since 1999 and Artistic Director since 2004. She is also Music Director for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Bloomington, where she has built a fine 70-voice choir and made music part of an active social justice outreach program. She is the former director of the Indiana University Children's Choir program, where she oversaw five choirs and co-directed the Chamber Choir (whose performance on Paul Hillier's Carols of the Old and New Worlds CD was called "amazing and diction-perfect" by a USA Today reviewer). Swaney was also music director for the Indiana University Ballet's production of Twyla Tharp's Sweet Fields and the Theater Department's production of Pirates of Penzance.
Ms. Swaney recently completed her doctorate and is an adjunct faculty member in Choral Conducting at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Music History and Violin from the University of Michigan and a Master of Music degree in Voice Performance from Indiana University, where she sang lead soprano roles in Nixon in China, Ghosts of Versailles, Candide, and Les Noces. She has also been soprano soloist in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with orchestras in Indiana, premiered the operas Easter Eve by Constance Cooper at Princeton University and Fire in My Bones by Deborah Phelps in Indianapolis and Nashville, TN. She has performed with Aguava New Music Studio at the Tempus Fugit Festival in Tel Aviv, Israel; the Microtonal Festival in New York City; the Library of Congress in Washington; and Festival Cervantino in Mexico. She has also performed jazz and dance music with Craig Brenner and the Crawdads.