Nicole Percifield

Mezzo Soprano

About

Canadian Mezzo-Soprano Nicole Percifield has featured in concert performances with New Haven Symphony (Messiah), Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (D. Scarlatti’s Salve Regina and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater), and the Minnesota Orchestra. Recently, Percifield performed Beethoven’s Mass in C with the UTSO under conductors Uri Mayer and Jamie Hillman, and won the 2024 Jim and Charlotte Norcop Prize in Song.

A graduate of Yale Opera, Percifield has worked with Minnesota Opera (Salome, Faust), Santa Fe Opera (Le Nozze di Figaro, Rigoletto), Central City Opera (Werther, Cendrillon), the Banff Centre (Die Zauberflöte), and Opera Theatre of St. Louis (Ghosts of Versailles). She was a finalist at the Metropolitan Opera New England Regionals and performed Debussy’s Chansons Baudelaire at Carnegie Hall with Yale in New York. Percifield recently featured on CBC’s Tapestry program, performing and speaking about composer Gavin Fraser’s work, Shared Isolation.

Percifield is currently pursuing her doctorate at the University of Toronto with Wendy Nielsen, where she is a recipient of the Joseph-Armand CGS Doctoral Scholarship. She can be heard singing the roles of Cathleen (Riders to the Sea), and Hostess (At the Boar’s Head), recorded live at the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw, Poland. The International Classical Music Awards nominated the recording for Best Opera Album, 2017.

Projects

Shared Isolation: the music of nature in the midst of covid-19

With urban ambient sound quieted across the nation by COVID-19, the music of nature has emerged. Together in our social distancing, we can hear the music of birds again. Our project aims to institute a global dialogue between humankind and nature through music, re-examining our relationship with nature through the creation and performance of a new musical composition. Composed by Gavin Fraser, and performed by mezzo soprano, Nicole Percifield and pianist, Geoffrey Conquer, Shared Isolation finds inspiration in collected birdsong.

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Here, though, it’s the supporting roles that impress. Nicole Percifield and Evanna Chiew are beautifully matched as Maurya’s daughters, their voices entwined in elegiac resignation.

-Gramophone