Judith Nicosia
Voice, Vocal Literature and Vocal Pedagogy

Judith Nicosia is Associate Professor in the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, where she teaches voice, vocal literature and vocal pedagogy classes. A specialist in contemporary music, she has performed works by Olivier Messiaen, Ned Rorem, and Haskell Small with the composers at the piano, and recorded for the Orion, DR, C.R.I., Albany, and Centaur labels. She has been a guest artist with the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Performer's Committee for 20th-Century Music, the Composers Guild of New Jersey, the New York New Music Ensemble, Princeton Pro Musica, Princeton University Orchestra, and the Alliance for American Song. Ms. Nicosia has also been a soloist with the Opera Orchestra of New York, Opera Company of Philadelphia, and Mississippi Opera, as well as the Montreal, Quebec, Hartford, Nashville, Albany, and Colonial symphonies, among others. Having premiered and recorded Charles Schwartz' crossover jazz symphonies "Riding High" and "Rhymes and Fables," she has also sung the first performance of numerous works by New Jersey composer Laurie Altman, a recent Grammy nominee. Her most recent CD involves recording the text, biographical and performance notes, as well as singing one of the song sets, for Frank Lewin's "Three Song Cycles," on Albany Records.

Winner of the 1981 Montreal International Voice Competition, Ms. Nicosia has received numerous awards including: First Prize for Woman's Voice and Second Prize for the performance of Darius Milhaud songs at the 1978 Paris International Voice Competition; the 1981 NYSTA Debut Recital Award; a career award from the National Institute for Music Theatre; two Sullivan Foundation grants; and three consecutive fellowships to Tanglewood. She made her debut at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, with the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble in 1995.

Prof. Nicosia has been an invited clinician at local, regional, and national levels for the National Association of Teachers of Singing and the American Choral Directors Association, and has served as a choral and solo adjudicator for numerous festivals in Canada and the U.S. She enjoys giving master classes and clinics for both solo singers and choirs at high schools and colleges throughout the U.S., and is particularly active in this regard in New Jersey. Prof. Nicosia was honored to have been invited to be a master teacher at the 2003 NATS Intern Teaching program at SUNY Fredonia. Formerly a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Singing and a regular columnist for VocalEase, she has been both state and regional governor for NATS. A member of the New York Singing Teachers Association as well, she is delighted to present the soprano and mezzo-soprano portions of Singer's Repertoire from a Developmental Perspective in 2006. Having also served ACDA in various capacities, she is now Vice-President of the New Jersey ACDA as well as Editor for the ACDA Eastern Division newsletter Troubadour and Program Editor for their 2006 convention in New York City.