Katherine Soroka, Guest Mezzo-Soprano

Katherine Soroka met composer David Stock while coordinating the Horizons Contemporary Music Festival with the New York Philharmonic in 1983. The association with David and his family deepened when she moved to Pittsburgh and performed under his baton with the Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble, Ahkmatova Songs by University of Virginia composer Judith Shatin and the world premiere of David’s Rumi Sings of Love.  Happy to be a part of his musical family, she has taught voice lessons to his daughters Sara and Rachel, and his granddaughter Elena.

Influenced by work with Jan DeGaetani, Katherine has performed Betty Oliviero’s Juego de Siempre with Joel Sachs and Continuum contemporary ensemble in New York City and music by Chinery Ung, Judith Shatin, Glen Cortese and Noah Zahler, among others, at the JCC, Kitchen, Greenwich House, The Juilliard School, City University of New York, Columbia University and Aspen Music Festival. 

A winner of Pittsburgh’s Concert Society Major Auditions, Katherine’s singing has been acclaimed as  “masterful” and “heroic” with “heartfelt vocalism” in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.  She has performed with the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival and sung in recital in Kresge Auditorium and Levy Hall in Pittsburgh, on The Silberman Recital Series at Allegheny College, in Lincoln Hall in Foxburg and in NYC at Cami and Merkin Concert Halls.

Katherine curated and sang a “Music for Exhibitions” concert with Chatham Baroque at the Frick Museum in conjunction with the exhibit “From Michelangelo to Annibale Carraci:  A Century of Italian Drawings From the Prado”.  A benefit concert with members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for Concerts for Causes raised funds for the Children’s Homeless Education Fund.

Katherine has sung with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and appeared with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra narrating “Tiny Tots” and “Schooltime” concerts.  She has been a frequent soloist in oratorio and zwischen fach operatic roles ranging from Cherubino and Dido to the Countess and Suor Angelica.  Soroka also has performed in cabaret and musical theatre and recently appeared as the Witch in Into the Woods with the Barrow Civic Theatre.  Katherine teaches voice privately in Pittsburgh and Foxburg, where she is on the Board of Allegheny RiverStone Center for the Arts.