Krista River

Other recent notable performances have included Copland’s Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Julius Röntgen’s Lyrische Gänge with the Boston Chamber Music Society, Brahms’ Zwei Gesänge at Jordan Hall in Boston with violist Roger Tapping and pianist Judith Gordon, and the role of Alfred in Herschel Garfein’s new opera, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In 2009 Ms. River performed a solo recital with pianist Alison d’Amato at the Asociación Nacional de Conciertos in Panama City, Panama and was a featured soloist at the International Water and Life Festival in Qinghai, China.

Recent opera roles include Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Mercury Baroque in Houston, Cherubino in a semi-staged production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro with the North Carolina Symphony, Annio in La clemenza di Tito with Opera Boston (about which the Boston Herald said “…River offered perhaps the most purely delightful singing of the evening”), Zerlina in Don Giovanni with Opera Aperta, the Mother in Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors with the Santa Fe Symphony, Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Crested Butte Music Festival, Nancy in Albert Herring with Red House Opera, Hansel in Hansel and Gretel with Opera Southwest and Anna I in Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with Intermezzo Opera. She has also performed concert versions of Handel’s Orlando (Medoro) with Boston's Emmanuel Music and Berg’s Wozzeck (Margret) with the New England Philharmonic.

Ms. River’s orchestral engagements include Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Handel & Haydn Society and the North Carolina Symphony, Remembrance by Jean Belmont with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Harrisburg Symphony, Duruflé’s Requiem with the York Symphony, Messiah with the Charlotte Symphony, Dvorak’s Requiem with the Florida Orchestra, de Falla's El Amor Brujo with the Boston Symphony, Handel’s Israel in Egypt, Schumann’s Genoveva, and Bach’s St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion with Emmanuel Music, and Telemann’s St. Matthew Passion with the Pittsburgh Bach and Baroque Ensemble.

Krista River has performed chamber music as a guest artist at John Harbison’s Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, Monadnock Music, Music from Salem, the Saco River Festival, Meeting House Music Festival on Cape Cod, and the Portland Chamber Music Festival in Maine. A contemporary music advocate, Ms. River has given the world premieres of several new works by numerous composers including Howard Frazin, Thomas Schnauber, Herschel Garfein and Paul Preusser. She created the role of Genevieve in Brian Hulse’s chamber opera The Game at the Kennedy Center, as part of their Millennium Stage series. She sang the world premiere of Scott Wheeler’s Turning Back at her 2008 solo recital at Weill Recital Hall, and is featured in Wheeler’s opera The Construction of Boston, recorded live with Boston Cecilia and released in March 2008 on Naxos Records.

Krista River began her musical career as a cellist, earning her music degree at St. Olaf College. She resides in Boston and is a regular soloist with Emmanuel Music’s renowned Bach Cantata Series.