Nicole Panizza

Nicole Panizza portrait with plain backgroundAssistant Professor in Music Performance

Biography:

Nicole Panizza is one of Ireland’s and the UK’s leading vocal accompanists, recitalists and coaches. Nicole studied at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, South Australia before continuing her postgraduate studies in London with Malcolm Martineau and Roger Vignoles. She is currently completing her Doctorate of Music at the Royal College of Music London; a study that focuses on American art song settings of the poet Emily Dickinson.

Nicole has freelanced in Sydney for the Australian season of Phantom of the Opera, Opera Australia and the Cologne and Covent Garden Opera Awards. In London she worked as Education Manager for The Royal Opera, Covent Garden. In Ireland she has been a staff member of the Dublin Institute of Technology (Conservatory of Music and Drama), University College Cork and The CIT Cork School of Music. She has worked extensively as an examiner for the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

Nicole has been the recipient of many awards and bursaries including the Royal College of Music's Doctoral scholarship (2005) and the Marc and Eva Stern Fellowship at the internationally renowned festival "Songfest" in Malibu, USA (2009). In the same year she was awarded an Irish Fulbright Award (Performing Arts) which enabled her to pursue her Doctoral research as a Visiting Fellow at both Harvard University and Manhattan School of Music (USA).

She has given key lectures and performances at such venues as the National Concert Hall (Ireland), Oxford University, Cambridge University, University of Edinburgh (UK), University of Bonn (Germany), University of Adelaide (Australia), Amherst College (USA) and the National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and St James’ Piccadilly in London. Recent engagements have included both European and American concert tours with the renowned sopranos Kim Sheehan and Jane Sheldon, co-direction of an Irish-UK based art song project focusing on Richard Strauss and his contemporaries featuring sopranos Cara O’Sullivan, Majellah Cullagh, Mary Hegarty and pianist Michael Joyce, and co-devision of a performance project based on French and German cabaret with the Irish-based performer Deirdre Bashford.

Nicole is a staff member of the newly-formed Zerere Arts Foundation in Portugal and a founding member of “OzMosis”, a chamber ensemble that specialises in contemporary Australian music. She currently holds the position of Course Director and Senior Lecturer in Music Performance at Coventry University.

Qualifications:

  • D.Mus. (in progress), (Vocal Accompaniment), Royal College of Music, London
  • M.A., (Vocal Accompaniment), Cork School of Music, Ireland
  • B.A (Hons), Music Performance (Solo Performance and Vocal Accompaniment), Elder Conservatorium; University of Adelaide, Australia
  • Diploma, Flinders Street School of Music, Australia
  • Advanced Certificate, Music Accompaniment, Flinders Street School of Music, Australia

Selected outputs:

  • Panizza, N. (2011) Ecstatic Instant: The Music of Emily Dickinson’s poetry [Artistic Director and Pianist]. Great Exhibitionists Series. Held 23 May 2011 at The Royal College of Music, UK
  • Panizza, N. (2009) 'Reading in the Dark: Emily Dickinson and the art of musical interpretation'. The Emily Dickinson Journal
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University of the year shortlisted
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