Chelsea Helm
With spirit and sensitivity, soprano Chelsea Helm brings a versatile voice to the concert stage. An active choral artist, Ms. Helm performs and records regularly with Seraphic Fire, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, True Concord Voices & Orchestra, The Thirteen, Upper Valley Baroque, the Washington National Cathedral, the Washington Bach Consort, and Conspirare, with whom she has been nominated for three GRAMMY® awards for Best Choral Album. She has also appeared with Artefact Ensemble, Vocal Arts Ensemble Cincinnati, Kinnara, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the American Soloists Ensemble, the Voices of Ascension, Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity, the Charlotte Bach Festival, Spire Chamber Ensemble, the Benedict XVII Ensemble, and the Concordia Chamber Players.
As an oratorio soloist, major concert appearances around the United States this season included the Mozart Great Mass in C Minor, Haydn’s Creation and Lord Nelson Mass, the Pergolesi Stabat Mater, the Bach B Minor Mass, and she was featured in performances of Carissimi’s Jephte, Mondonville’s Dominus Regnavit, and Poulenc’s Figure Humaine. She enjoys returning often to Orff’s Carmina Burana, Handel’s Messiah, and the Brahms Requiem, and with deep affection, the masses and concert works of Haydn. She recently made her international concert debut performing Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony at the Seoul Arts Center in South Korea. Ms. Helm has been featured in concert with the Symphony Orchestras of Tucson, Johnstown, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Muskegon, the Brevard Festival Orchestra, the Rice University Orchestra, and at the University of Wisconsin La-Crosse, Missouri State University, and Dartmouth College.
Her latest recital performances have showcased Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, the Richard Strauss Vier Letzte Lieder, and new works by emerging composer Julia Evans. In recent seasons she has presented art song recitals in New Mexico, Virginia, and Utah, featuring works by Samuel Barber, Andre Previn, Maurice Ravel, Leonard Bernstein, Craig Johnson, Gabriel Kahane, and Andrew Maxfield.
Ms. Helm holds a Master of Music in Voice Performance from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, and a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance and Music Education from Western Michigan University. Also a WMU Gold Company alumna, Ms. Helm recorded a Downbeat award-winning album in 2013 with vocal jazz quartet the Four Corners.
In addition to a small private studio, Ms. Helm is an Adjunct Instructor of Voice at Southern Virginia University, a guest vocal coach with The Dynamic Voice studio, and Senior Voice Faculty at the Classical Music Institute in San Antonio, Texas. A Michigan native, she is now based in Washington, D.C.