Isobel and Friends
Give yourself and your friends a timeless album of the most popular Christmas songs and traditional carols.
Especially this year, hearing these classics will lift your spirits and bring back memories of Christmas past.
"The Gift Of Christmas"
In stores December 4th - pre-order today
Listen
"The Gift Of Christmas"
In stores December 4th - pre-order today
ISOBEL AND FRIENDS
Isobel Bartz is an award-winning singer boasting a lifetime of experience in the music industry. Inspired in her youth by artists like Joni Mitchell and Roberta Flack, her voice is softly soothing and angelic. She started singing at the age of just three. Due to her father’s career as a career officer with the U.S. State Department, much of her childhood was spent in the Far East. During her senior year, her father was posted in the Middle East and she started her senior year at Karachi American High School in Pakistan. It was there, she started singing with the school band and decided she wanted to pursue music as a career. Upon returning to the U.S., she went on to study at the University of Maryland where she would receive her Bachelor of Arts in Music. She had a lot of catching up to do as her only background in music was three years of piano and her limited exposure to classical music from her parents London Symphony Orchestra records and other Department of Defense concerts she had heard while living internationally so she studied music theory, music history, vocal diction, and opera workshop, very intensely.
While at the University of Maryland, she studied with Louise Urban McClelland who helped her develop a large resonant voice. Upon graduation she went to study one year at the Cincinnati-Conservatory of Music, though she ran out of money and had to transfer to the University of Kansas on a teaching assistantship. While there she was the district winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, soon going on to enter an apprenticeship at the Des Moines Metro Opera, the Aspen Music Festival and St. Louis Opera Theatre. Here she performed countless concerts and scene programs, in the well-known mezzo-soprano roles of Cherubino, Rosina, Dorabella, Hansel, Carmen, The Female Chorus and Queen Elizabeth.
On a Rotary club scholarship, she left St. Louis for Germany, studying at the Goethe Institute and making the rounds of opera auditions as a mezzo-soprano but Germany was not in need of her voice type at the time. She gave up trying for a contract and left Germany for New York City where she continued taking lessons, studying with top-tier teachers such as Ruth Golden, David Jones and Metropolitan Opera coach, Joan Dornemann. She soon began her music studies full-time again, studying voice with Levone Tobin Scott and obtaining her Doctor of Musical Arts in Voice at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2002. After graduating with her D.M.A. in 2002, she went on to begin her teaching career as an Assistant Professor of Voice at St. Augustine's University and Adjunct Voice Lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She’s since travelled the world, bringing her music studies to International Baccalaureate students in England and China for 8 years. Upon moving back to the U.S. in 2016, she’s been teaching voice and tutoring — most recently working as a global studies coordinator on the Spring 2020 Voyage of Semester of Sea.
Right now she’s taking her versatile vocal abilities to the global stage. In the wake of the pandemic she wanted to do something special to lift people's spirits so she decided to record an album featuring all of her favorite Christmas tunes. The album is dedicated to three new family members that have given her a big reason to smile again. She hopes to bring the joy and nostalgia of Christmas past to people facing a difficult holiday season this year. The sound on the record showcases her lush classically trained vocals and ability to meld to a range of styles in the classical genre. Her future projects include recordings of her favorite arias, though she wants to eventually branch out into traditional folk music and musical theatre classics.
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