Virginia warnken kelsey

Hailed as a “rich-toned alto” with “riveting presence,” (The New York Times), mezzo-soprano Virginia Warnken Kelsey is known for her dynamic interpretations of Baroque opera, oratorio, and contemporary chamber music. 

Outside of her work with Roomful of Teeth, Virginia specializes in the historical performance practice of music predating the year 1750. She is a company member of the Grammy Award-winning Boston Early Music Festival Opera, with whom she has performed many roles. In 2019, she was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Opera Performance category for her role as La Conversation in Charpentier’s Les Plaisirs de Versailles. She has appeared as a recital soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, offering works by Bach, Handel, Monteverdi, and Ligeti. She is a frequent guest of the Carmel Bach Festival as a recital and mainstage soloist. She has appeared as Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Pegasus Early Music, and as Ozias in Vivaldi’s Juditha Triumphans with Philharmonia Baroque. Virginia also frequents many of New York City’s prominent ensembles,  including soloist engagements in Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s B Minor Mass, St. John and St. Matthew Passions, and complete Bach Cantatas with the Trinity Wall Street Choir, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Mozart’s Requiem with the Clarion Music Society, and countless programs with TENET Vocal Artists. She has a BM in Opera from Manhattan School of Music and an MM in Early Music Vocal Performance from the Yale University’s School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music.

All that formality aside, she’s spent most of her life pushing boundaries, questioning outdated traditions, and championing the weird stuff in music and in life. With a passion for progressive, holistic, 21st-century vocal education, Virginia is immensely proud to be on faculty at Bennington College.

When she’s not making music, Virginia is a full-on nature-witch who grows and forages herbs for medicinal preparations and natural skincare products. She lives in a 200-year-old seaside cottage in the coastal village of Short Beach, CT, where she talks to trees, makes friends with seashells, yells at the yardman for cutting down the wild weeds, and really wants to adopt the groundhog who lives in the rock cliffs next to her house. His name is Mr. Chonky.