American soprano Noelle McMurtry (DMA, PKL) has established herself as a versatile vocalist, researcher, concert curator, and musicologist, who employs her interdisciplinary background in service of inclusive storytelling. Noelle is currently based in Berlin, Germany with her partner Kevin and pup Cashew.

With a voice described as “especially fine” (The New York Times), “silvery-toned” (The Washington Classical Review), and “extraordinary, crystal-clear” (DC Metro Theatre Arts), Noelle has interpreted vocal repertoire spanning the medieval era until today in art song, opera, new music, and early music. She also engages with genre bending music-theater projects that explore feminist perspectives to question and recontextualize the classical music canon. 

Noelle’s approach to her academic and musical endeavors centers around the question: what contributions can we uncover from historic and living women creators in classical music? Through archival research, scholarship, and performance, Noelle brings historically overlooked vocal repertoire by women composers to new audiences. 

In 2023, Noelle received a Doctor in Musical Arts (DMA) in Voice with a joint Master’s in Musicology from Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on the song repertoire of 19th-century European and North American women composers, as well as philosophies of embodied vocal performance in classical music. In 2022, Noelle launched She Is Song, a Substack blog to share her research and writing on the song contributions of women composers in classical music.

To further her Doctoral research on the Lieder of German composer Luise Adolpha Le Beau (1850-1927), Noelle will be a 2024-2025 Max Kade Postdoctoral Fellow at the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin.

Since 2018, Noelle has also employed her interdisciplinary skills as an arts administrator, researcher, dramaturg, collaborative producer, and writer with The Pleiades Project (NYC), MUSE Festival (NYC), IN Series (DC), and Boulanger Initiative (DC).

News

Blog Post for Lili’s Corner with the Boulanger Initiative

Illustration of composers Nadi and Lili Boulanger | Boulanger Initiative

Since 2022, I have worked periodically with the Boulanger Initiative (BI), a Washington DC-based organization that advocates for the music of women and gender-marginalized composers, as a Research Volunteer, Senior Research Intern, and freelance writer.

I’m excited to be the first post on their newly launched blog – Lili’s Corner – with “By a Linden Tree”: Discovering the Lieder of Composer Ethel Smyth. This post will be featured in two installments. If you are interested in reading the longer version of this post, you can check out my Substack.

Also, don’t forget to check out the Boulanger Initiative Database, which contains more than 15,000 works by over 1,600 women and gender-marginalized composers. It’s an excellent resource for musicians, scholars, teachers, and all those interested in learning more about these incredible composers and their music!

Le Beau Liederabend at the Berlin Program

With support from the Berlin Program and German Studies Association, I will present IN SEARCH OF COMPOSER LUISE ADOLPHA LE BEAU: A LIEDERABEND on Friday June 6th from 7-9pm. This concert will explore the songs of German composer Luise Adolpha Le Beau in performance, including commentary on the socio-cultural, historical, and musical elements of Le Beau’s Lieder oeuvre.

This event is free and open to the public; it will be followed by a garden reception. During the event, commentary will be given in German.

Please register by sending an email to bprogram@zedat.fu-berlin.de. Check out this flyer for more information.

Max Kade Postdoctoral Fellowship

I’m excited to announce that I will be a 2024/2025 Max Kade Postdoctoral Fellow at the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin. To read more on the 2024/2025 Berlin Program fellows and their research, click here.

During the fellowship, I will revise and expand my DMA thesis on the Lieder of composer Luise Adolpha Le Beau (1850-1927). My project is titled, Cornflowers and Heather: The ‘In-Between’ Songs of Luise Adolpha Le Beau.

For more information on my Le Beau research, including media clips and the Le Beau publishing project, click here.

REQUIEM Streaming on INVision

In the fall of 2022, I performed with DC-based opera company, IN Series, in REQUIEM.

Conceived and directed by Timothy Nelson, REQUIEM is an innovative staged production of Mozart’s Requiem, paired with the music of two brilliant and often ignored 20th-century composers: French composer Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) and Canadian composer Claude Vivier (1948-1983).

Watch our performance of REQUIEM in Baltimore’s 2640 Space here on INVision, IN Series’ digital streaming platform.

North Woods Recording Project

In 2020, at the terrible height of the COVID-19 pandemic, eight current and former Peabody Institute voice students collaborated via Soundtrap to record Scott Ordway’s “North Woods.”

Ordway composed “North Woods” as an octet for treble voice in 2014, commissioned by the Lorelei Ensemble. Through texts by Roman historian Tacitus, “North Woods” explores the physical and psychological concept of the “North,” a frontier that mysteriously beckons us, remaining vast and ever elusive.

Check out our final recording of this atmospheric chamber work on Soundcloud and my projects.

Aria Project

In January 2024, I had a fantastic time creating a new set of aria recordings. Our session took place at St Malachy in Manhattan, and I was lucky to work with pianist Eric Sedgwick and recording engineer Nathan Siler.

I also shared the recording session with wonderful soprano (and longtime friend) Elizabeth Van Os.

We recorded selections from Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Kurt Weill’s One Touch of Venus, Jacques Offenbach’s Le fifre enchanté, and Leoš Janáček’s Příhody lišky Bystroušky (The Cunning Little Vixen). Check out the videos on YouTube and my media.

Association Mel Bonis Feature

I’m excited to announce that my latest blog post, “A place of rest where we will not enter: Trois Mélodies, op. 91 by Mel Bonis” has been featured by Christine Géliot, Director and Founder of the Association Mel Bonis, on their website.

Check out the feature here!

Watch & Listen

A chantar m'er de so q'ieu no volria

by Comtessa de Dia (c.1140-1220) | Noelle McMurtry (soprano) | Alix Evans (medieval harp)

Tradimento!

by Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677) | Noelle McMurtry (soprano) | Tung-Han Hu (harpsichord)

Forbidden Subjects

by David Lang (b.1957) from "love fail" | Noelle McMurtry, Julie Bosworth, Bonnie Lander & Claire Galloway Weber (sopranos)

La sol, fa, mi, re, do

by Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677) | Noelle McMurtry (soprano) | Tung-Han Hu (harpsichord)

Dolce Cantavi

by Caroline Shaw (b. 1982) | Noelle McMurtry, Julie Bosworth & Claire Galloway Weber (sopranos)

“By a Linden Tree”: The Leipzig Lieder of Composer Ethel Smyth

by | Aug 6, 2025 | Composer | 0 Comments

Ethel Mary Smyth (1858-1944) was a trailblazing queer English composer, conductor, author, and suffrage activist. I explore her song, “Bei einer Linde” (By a Linden Tree), which she composed in the 1880s as a student in Leipzig, Germany. Smyth and her songs were welcomed into the salons of Leipzig’s elite “musical society,” where she would meet Austrian composer and pianist Elisabeth von Herzogenberg (1847-1892), one of the great loves of Smyth’s life.

Comtessa de Dia, The Early Music Police & Me: Part I

by | May 2, 2024 | Composer | 0 Comments

In January 2023, the fact that women created and performed songs since time immemorial came sharply into focus as I prepared “A chantar m’er de so q’ieu no volria” (I must sing of what I’d rather not) a medieval song by Comtessa de Dia (c. 1140-1212), a noblewoman and trobairitz from southern France.

“A place of rest where we know we will not enter”: Trois Mélodies, op. 91 of Mel Bonis

by | Oct 1, 2023 | Composer | 0 Comments

In "Trois Mélodies, op. 91," I wondered how composer Mel Bonis truly felt as she set Maurice Bouchor's poetry, texts which outline the poet's desire for an unattainable beloved.

To Be Loved Less Than a Flower: “Hyacinth” by Margaret Bonds & Edna St. Vincent Millay

by | Aug 11, 2023 | Composer | 0 Comments

In composer Margaret Bonds’ setting of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Hyacinth,” we encounter an unflinching intersectional feminist portrait of the ever-shifting dynamics between gender, power, and love.

Singing with Myself: Pandemic Virtual Performance & Melissa Dunphy’s June

by | Dec 1, 2022 | Composer | 0 Comments

Through virtually recording Melissa Dunphy's "June" in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I confronted long-held insecurities around technology by learning how to sing with myself.

The Woman Within the Portrait: Ria & Mizzi

by | Mar 1, 2022 | Composer | 0 Comments

In Lacy Rose's cycles "Ria" and "Hope I," the composer humanizes through song the models of painter Gustav Klimt: the women within the portraits.

Suffragist Series: Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954)

by | Mar 1, 2022 | Research, Season Highlights | 0 Comments

Suffragist Series highlights the fascinating suffrage activists that I researched as dramaturg for A Women's Suffrage Splendiferous Extravaganza! (AWSSE!), including writer, educator, and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954).

“one heart and one soul”: The Songs of Clara and Robert Schumann

by | Feb 25, 2022 | Composer | 0 Comments

In the Pleiades Project film "German Romantics: Clara," we explore the musical and romantic partnership between composers Clara and Robert Schumann that produced Clara's Lieder Op. 12.

«… und, wo ist Fanny?»

by | Feb 18, 2022 | Composer | 0 Comments

Despite intense self-doubt and familial pressure to forego publication, the 1846 publication of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's "Sechs Lieder, op. 1" represents the composer's assertion of a public and professional identity.

The Myth of Semele: A Woman on Fire

by | Feb 18, 2022 | Composer, Research | 0 Comments

I explore the myth of Semele, a woman on fire, in its many visual and musical permutations, including historical portraits and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre's 1715 biblical cantata "Semelé."

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