Soprano, composer, and interdisciplinary-improviser Nelle J. Anderson (pronounced “nellee”) seeks the nexus of opera, pop, and performance art.
She recently made her company debut with the Grammy-award winning PARTCH Ensemble as Marilyn Monroe/S in LSD—Huxley’s Last Trip (LeBaron) and co-developed a new experimental musical (BEDROCK with Ivan Cunningham) as an Oracle Egg BROILER Series Resident Artist. Other recent roles include Phaino in Kate Soper’s HERE BE SIRENS and Anna 1 in Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins. She has toured internationally as a baroque opera soloist with Ensemble Caprice (Juno-award winner), Bach Society of Minnesota, and Early Music Seattle and sung in masterclasses with Leon Botstein, Ari Pelto, and Dawn Upshaw.
A Fulbright Fellowship 2024 Semifinalist, Ms. Anderson composes solo and large-ensemble performance art pieces as Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), externalizing the singer’s inner monologue, practice-room processes, and spiritual motivations. Praised for its “production trickery” and “graceful experimentation,” her debut singer-songwriter album as Soubrette, ANY DEAD COQUETTE (2021), was named “an outstanding experience” by the Recording Artists Guild.
Ms. Anderson’s investigations of voice and language go beyond performance, with experience in copyediting (Bard Free Press, Lux Literary Magazine, Center for the Study of the Drone), publishing (Editorial Internship—Opera News, Metropolitan Opera Guild), and 'the family business’ of graphic design (Two Spruce Design), feeding a lifelong passion for writing and re-formatting everything, from Dadaist poetry to scholarly analysis.
She holds a Bachelors in Classical Voice Performance with a focus in Written Arts from Bard College, where she was the 2014--2015 Betsy Richards Scholar (Music Major Outstanding in the Liberal Arts), and a Masters of Fine Arts (2022--2024 Dean’s Grant, Performer-Composer) from California Institute of the Arts. She is an alumna of the OperaWorks and Oberlin in Italy training programs and a certified Reiki Master, a practice which supplements her voice teaching.
