Devonna Rowe

Voice

Devonna B. Rowe, soprano, is sought after for her knowledge and skill as a singer, voice teacher and as an arts educator. She has studied and coached with some of the world's leading artists. Rowe’s teachers include Todd Duncan, Adele Addison, George Shirley, Martha Flowers, Mary Ruzicka and Rick Christman. Coaches include Nico Castel, Wolfgang Justen , Henriette Lund and Marguerite Meyerowitz. She studied and performed with the Aspen Music Festival Opera for several years, the AIMS Opera in Graz, Austria, and she was a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in Nashville Tennessee.

Rowe has a Bachelor of Arts degree in music education from St. Augustine’s College and a Master of Music degree in vocal performance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She will complete her course work toward the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in vocal performance from Catholic University of America in the fall of 2012. Performance venues include the National Theater, the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, the Cheek Wood Botanical Gardens, as well as opera houses in Austria and Italy. Rowe’s dramatic skills have been highlighted on television in “The District” starring Craig T. Nelson and Lynne Thigpen, and on the movie screen in “The Replacements” starring Gene Hackman and Keanu Reeves. She has performed as a soloist with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, the Columbia Orchestra, the Susquehanna Orchestra, the Blair String Quartet, among others. Rowe’s operatic roles include, the Countess in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Clara in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Mrs. Nolan in Menotti’s, The Medium, Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan, Clara in Signor Deluso by Pasatieri, Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, Marcellina in the Marriage of Figaro, and La Zia in Puccini’s Sour Angelica, as well as others. She gave the world premiere performance of George Walker’s “Five Songs” for piano and voice during a National Black American Music Conference.

Rowe has traveled and performed throughout Europe, Japan, Russia and Switzerland as an artist in education and has worked as a consultant with the John F. Kennedy Center, the MSAC AIE program, United Arts and the Southern Arts Foundation. She has taught voice at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Blair School of Music/Vanderbilt University, Morgan State University and the Aspen School of Music. Rowe’s article on music as a teaching tool in arts education is entitled “Reading is Music to My Ears” (copyright 2002). She has developed a catalogue of “Art Songs by Latin American Composers of the Andean Region”. As a certified personal trainer and Yoga instructor, Rowe’s articles, “Singing, A Spiritual Connection” and “Singing, a Breath of Life”, explore both the spiritual and physical aspects of the body for singers. She is currently on the voice faculty at Peabody Institute of the John Hopkins University and serves on the Maryland State Arts Council’s review panel. Rowe is a member of The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and The National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). Her students continue to place in major vocal competitions and to become a part of performing arts organizations and graduate school programs throughout the United States and Europe.