Co-Artistic Director/Vocal Faculty, (Longy School of Music of Bard College, The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam)

Peruvian-American tenor Christopher Sierra is recognized for his artistic sensitivity and versatility in repertoire ranging from recital, opera, and oratorio. He has performed with opera companies and orchestras throughout the United States, some of which include Opera Philadelphia, Santa Fe Opera, Opera New Jersey, Spoleto Festival USA, New York Lyric Opera Theatre, Princeton Festival Opera, Long Island Opera, and the United Nations Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Sierra has also made solo debuts in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, and India.

On the concert stage, Dr. Sierra has performed works such as Bernstein’s Songfest, Schumann’s Spanisches Liederspiel, Britten’s Les Illuminations, Bach’s Weihnachts-Oratorium, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Brahms’s Liebeslieder Walzer, Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, and Schubert’s Mass in G. Most recently, he was invited to sing the tenor solo in Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 with the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and was a featured soloist in Peter Bjerring’s Song of the Salish Chief at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center.

An avid recitalist, Dr. Sierra is a founding member of the Vocalis Consort, an ensemble dedicated to exposing audiences to song recitals that extend beyond the traditional Western European canon. In 2019, he was invited to perform a residency recital that celebrates the contributions of Latinx and Hispanic composers at Lewis-Clark State College and he presented mélodies by Henri Duparc at the 2018 College Music Society Pacific Northwest Regional Conference.

As a recording artist, Dr. Sierra can be heard on The Flower of Beauty (2009) with the Westminster Choir, Landscape: Choral Music of Gerald Custer (2008) with Anam Cara, and Teaching Music Through Performance in Choir, Volume 2 (2007) with the Grammy-nominated Westminster Williamson Voices. He has sung under the baton of Pierre Boulez, Leon Botstein, Christoph Eschenbach, Ton Koopman, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, David Robertson, John Rutter, Emmanuel Villaume, John Adams, and Franz Welser­-Möst during his tenure with the Westminster Symphonic Choir, MidAmerica Productions, and the New York City MasterVoices.

Dr. Sierra is on faculty at Longy School of Music, where his responsibilities include teaching courses in the Vocal Studies Department and Masters of Music Education Program. He is also currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Voice at The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, where he teaches courses in lyric diction, vocal pedagogy, and applied voice lessons.  Dr. Sierra holds a doctorate of musical arts degree in voice performance from Rutgers University, a master of education degree in music education from Columbia University, a master of music degree in classical voice performance from Manhattan School of Music, and bachelor of music degrees in music education and voice performance from Westminster Choir College.

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