Dauri Kennedy
Music Director

Dauri Kennedy comes from a background of singers.Her grandmother and mother were both gospel singers.She attended New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and received her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.She recently completed her Master's of Music at the University of California Santa Barbara and has immediately launched into a rapidly expanding performance career.

She has received numerous awards, including the Regional Metropolitan Opera Auditions, the Young Musicians Foundation, a Pillsbury Award, a Leni Fe Bland Scholarship, and the Performing Arts Scholarship Foundation First Prize, among others.

She recently performed the role of Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni with Seattle Opera, and Echo in Adriana auf Naxos with New Orleans Opera and attended the Des Moines Metro Opera Young Artists Program, where she added to her repertoire Liu in Turandot.She has also performed in productions at the Music Academy of the West and with Opera Santa Barbara.In December she performed Samuel Barber's Knoxville Summer 1915 with the Santa Barbara Symphony, conducted by Giselle Ben-Dor and has appeared as guest soloist with the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Heiichiro Ohyama and the Young Musicians Foundation Orchestra.She has studied Lorraine Alfaro, William Warfield, Elizabeth Mannion, Elizabeth Moser, Marilyn Horne and for the past six years with Val Underwood, for whom she is an assistant teacher.She has coached with Jeannine Altmeyer, Warren Jones and John Churchwell.She divides her time between her home in New Orleans, Santa Barbara and New York.