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Dr. Tracelyn Gesteland, mezzo-soprano, is Professor of Voice/Opera and holds the Walter A. and Lucy Yoshioka Buhler Endowed Chair. Gesteland was the 2015 winner of the Belbas-Larson Award for Excellence in Teaching (tenured faculty), USD’s highest teaching honor. She has also won awards for her research and creative scholarship, including the 2020-2022 Knutson Distinguished Professor Award as well as the President's Award for Research Creativity in 2020-21. Dr. Gesteland’s research and creative scholarship consists primarily of vocal performance, scholarly presentations, and opera direction.
She is an active performer on the opera, concert and recital stage. Referred to by reviewers as "powerful" and "striking" (Great Britain's Organists Review), “remarkable” and a “highlight of the evening” (Sioux City Journal), and “an engaging and versatile singing actress” (Madison Isthmus), she enjoys interpreting standard repertoire in addition to championing contemporary music. On the operatic stage, Gesteland has created several roles in world premiere productions including the title role in Strega Nona with Houston Grand Opera; the Nurse in Diagnosis: Danger and the Haunted Woman in Walking on Air with the Contemporary Opera Lab of Winnipeg, Canada; and Hortence in Die Operette mit Schlag with the Lone Star Lyric Theater Festival. She has also performed many major standard roles including Meg in Little Women, La Ciesca in Gianni Schicchi (Stoughton Opera); Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana, La Mère d'Antonia in Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Atlantic Coast Opera); Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, the title role in Carmen (Vocal Arts Group of Chicago); Zweite Dame in Die Zauberfloete, Mother in Hansel and Gretel, Joanne in I Can't Stand Wagner (Opera South Dakota); Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors (Houston Opera Project); Aréthuze in La Descente d'Orphée aux Enfers (Ars Lyrica Houston); Ramiro in La Finta Giardiniera, Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Princess Linetta in The Love for Three Oranges (Moores Opera Center). Most recently, she performed the roles of the Announcer in Gallantry with the Lone Star Lyric Theater Festival, Zita in Gianni Schicchi with Music On Site, and the Waiting Woman in The Goose Girl with Opera South Dakota.
On the concert stage, Gesteland has appeared with the South Dakota Symphony performing Rosina's arias and duets from Il Barbiere di Siviglia and as the alto soloist in Handel’s Messiah. Other concert performances include featured appearances with the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, Nachitoches-Northwestern Symphony, Elgin Opera, Harrower Opera, Sioux Falls Chamber Music Collective, Rawlins Piano Trio, and the National Opera Association (U.S.A.). She has also performed as a professional chorister in the Chicago Symphony Chorus under the batons of Barenboim, Mehta, Boulez, Penderecki, and Wolff. An avid recitalist, Gesteland performs frequently by invitation, most notably at the historic Lamb's Club in New York City, as part of the Music at St. Paul's concert series in Englewood, New Jersey, and as a featured performer numerous occasions at the Song Collaborators Consortia Festival. She was a soloist at SongFest, an international art song festival held in Los Angeles, and has also given solo recitals in 25 states as well as Winnipeg, Canada. As half of the Gesteland-Smith Duo, she released a CD of sacred classical music for voice and organ on Raven Recordings in December 2016. Since then, they have performed on a variety of concert series in Los Angeles, Seattle, Colorado Springs, Milwaukee, Madison (WI), as well as Warwick, Portsmouth, and London, UK.
Dr. Gesteland has given scholarly presentations for several organizations, including the International Congress of Voice Teachers in Vienna, Austria; Stockholm, Sweden; and Brisbane, Australia; the Hawaii International Conference on Education; NATS; and the National Opera Association’s national conferences, among others. She is also a professional opera director, most recently working as a stage director for the Lone Star Lyric Theater Festival’s production of Talk Opera, called "the gem of the festival" in the Houston Chronicle, for Music on Site, Inc. (MOSI) in Kansas, and for the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival's Opera and Musical Theatre intensive young artist program in Alaska. She was chosen as an opera directing apprentice for the Harrower Opera Workshop in Atlanta and has won national awards for her opera direction at USD, including First Place and Third Place awards in the Collegiate Opera Production Competition sponsored by the National Opera Association, along with
two Second Place awards, a Third Place, and four honorable mentions from The American Prize Competition in opera performance and stage directing.
Dr. Gesteland’s service highlights include serving her current term on the Board of Directors for the National Opera Association as well as her service as the District Governor and Past-President for the South Dakota district of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). In 2016, she was named a NATS Emerging Leader, one of seven voice professors selected nationally for the honor. She also served as the 2021-22 Regional Development Liaison representing the North Central region of NATS. In addition, she was the co-founder/director of the South Dakota Vocal Arts Festival and was also the Artistic Director/Conductor of the Vermillion Children’s Choir from 2015-18.
She holds music degrees from the University of Houston's Moores School of Music (D.M.A.- Vocal Performance with a cognate in Vocal Pedagogy and Voice Science), Roosevelt University (M.M.- Vocal Performance and Pedagogy), and the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (B.M.- Music Education with a Drama minor). Dr. Gesteland's students have won multiple national, regional, and state awards in several classical and musical theatre competitions, including the Laffont (MET) Competition, NATS, NATSAA, MTNA, SDMTA, and the Glenn Miller National Vocal Competition, in addition to being selected for young artist and graduate programs around the country and internationally. Students of Dr. Gesteland also perform professionally and are working as voice professors and public school music teachers nationwide.
Applied Voice, Opera, Vocal Pedagogy, Lyric Diction
Vocal Performance, Opera, Vocal Pedagogy and Voice Science, Vocal Solo and Chamber Literature
