Miriam Charney

Piano, Opera Workshop, Collaborative Piano

Miriam Charney enjoys a varied career as opera coach, music director, recital collaborator, and teacher. Ms. Charney’s many opera credits include Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Glimmerglass Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Greater Miami Opera, and the Banff Festival in Canada. A recipient of a National Opera Institute grant, Ms Charney remains a life-long champion of contemporary opera. She has prepared premieres by such diverse composers as Lee Hoiby, Ricky Ian Gordon, Susan Botti, Thea Musgrave, and Tobias Picker, as well as workshopping many new works for American Opera Projects. Recently she prepared 3 new video operas for the NYU/Tisch Opera Lab, to be released in September 2021.

Ms. Charney toured India with the Wooster Group, developing music-theater pieces with Elizabeth LeCompte and Spalding Gray. She music-directed for the late Elizabeth Swados, and NYU’s Experimental Theatre Wing. She has performed in venues ranging from Alice Tully Hall to Le Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels to the Amphitheatre at the Chautauqua Institution to the Palazzo Giustinian in Venice, Italy. Ms. Charney has played in concert with Lauren Flanigan, Paul Groves, and Raehann Bryce-Davis, among others, and accompanied many master classes including those for Marilyn Horne, Marlena Malas, and Stephen Wadsworth.

Formerly on the faculties of Juilliard, University of Connecticut, and Head Coach at the Hartt School, University of Hartford, she has taught at the Manhattan School of Music since 1996 in their Vocal Arts and Piano Departments. She has served as Chorus Master for the MSM Opera Theater, and has directed the Contemporary Opera Ensemble for over 10 years.

Since 2007, she has been on the piano faculty at Vassar, where she also co-directs the Opera Workshop and has taught courses in Collaborative Piano and Art Song. In 2018, she prepared and conducted Sondheim’s A Little Night Music for a joint Drama/Music department production. She is a proud member of Sing for Hope, a service organization providing performing artists for concerts in support of humanitarian causes.