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The American soprano and choral conductor, Margaret Carpenter Haigh, obtained the degrees of Bachelor of Music in voice and Bachelor of Arts in organ from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2007-2011); the Master of Music in Choral Studies from the University of Cambridge (2011-2012), where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar and studied under Stephen Layton; and the D.M.A. in Historical Performance Practice from Case Western Reserve University (2017). Recent scholarship includes work on the physical gesture in the madrigal repertory of the concerto delle donne in late 16th-century Ferrara. Her teachers include Ellen Hargis, Aaron Sheehan, Dean Southern, Joan Ellison, and Nancy Walker.
Hailed for her “clear, bright tone” (Cleveland Classical) and described as “fiery, wild, and dangerous” (Classical Voice North Carolina) with "a talent for character portrayal" (Chicago Classical Review), Margaret Carpenter Haigh is a soloist and chamber musician based in Charlotte, North Carolina. She has performed with such ensembles as Newberry Consort, Handel and Haydn Society, Oxford Bach Soloists, Bach Akademie Charlotte, Oregon Bach Festival, South Dakota Chorale (since January 2014), Apollo's Fire (Director: Jeannette Sorrell; since September 2014), Wyoming Baroque, Heartland Baroque, Raleigh Bach Soloists, Simon Carrington Chamber Singers (since June 2011), and Quire Cleveland, (Director: Ross W. Duffin; since September 2014) among others. In 2018, she was a Young Artist at the American Bach Soloists Academy and in 2016 a Britten-Pears Young Artist at the Aldeburgh Festival, where she studied J.S. Bach cantatas under Mark Padmore. Touring engagements have taken her to Israel, Germany, and France under the baton of Timothy Brown, and she has been featured as a soloist in the Easter at King’s Concert Series in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge.
Recent and upcoming solo engagements include George Frideric Handel's Messiah with the Memphis and Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestras; J.S. Bach's Cantata BWV 51 Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Benedicite with Arizona Musicfest Orchestra; John Rutter's Requiem with the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra; J.S. Bach's Cantata BWV 105 Herr, hehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht with the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra; J.S. Bach's B minor Mass (BWV 232) with Bach Akademie Charlotte and American Bach Soloists Academy, and David Del Tredici's An Alice Symphony with the Portland Symphony (November 2015). Alongside organist and harpsichordist Nicolas Haigh, Margaret Carpenter Haigh is co-founder of L’Académie du Roi Soleil (2013), an ensemble specializing in French music from the time of Louis XIV and with which she has performed in venues including York Minster; New College Chapel, Oxford; and Clare College Chapel, Cambridge.
As a choral conductor, Margaret serves as director of Nova Voce, Charlotte's premier women's voice ensemble. She has served as a faculty member at the Oklahoma Arts Institute in Quartz Mountain and as a clinician at Bach Akademie Charlotte’s Charlotte Bach Festival. She was Director of Youth Education Projects for Apollo’s Fire - Cleveland Baroque Orchestra from 2016-2017. She has held positions of assistant chorus-master to the Winston-Salem Symphony Chorus and acting director of the Keele Bach Choir, Keele Philharmonic Choir, and Keele Philharmonic Orchestra in Staffordshire (UK); and she was selected as a conducting fellow at the Yale Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in Norfolk, Connecticut.
Margaret Carpenter Haigh currently teaches voice at UNC-Charlotte. |
