Liz Kiger

Director of Collegium Musicum

Liz Kiger is a Turkish-American non-binary soprano vocalist, violinist, and opera director specializing in Baroque performance practice. They are the founder and director of the Brooklyn Telemann Chamber Society, one of the first primarily digital opera companies, focused on providing LGBTQIA emerging artists with opportunities reinterpreting Baroque operas as feature films, thereby bringing opera to new audiences through inclusion and accessibility. Their work with BTCS has been featured on numerous podcasts and most notably via @360ofopera and OperaWire.com. 

Liz is proud to announce that this Fall 2023 they will be presenting “Casting the Castrati Voice: Creating Safe Spaces for the Trans and Non-binary Community within Early Opera” lecture at the Early Music America Summit in Boston. 

In Spring 2023 their vocals were featured with the NY Philharmonic’s Kravis Nightcap series concert of Chromic Duo. In Fall 2022 their music video of Rameau’s Tristes apprêts was featured amongst Katra Film Festival’s: New Faces New Voices premiere screenings and their feature film production of Gluck’s Orfeo won best picture and best director at the Anatolian Film Awards. 

They have most recently performed as Phèdre in Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie, Olinto in Handel’s Olinto Pastore,  Persephone in a 1774 Vienna transcription of Gluck’s Orfeo, the title role in Monteverdi’s Poppea, Ottavia (Monteverdi: L’incoronazione di Poppea) at Scorca Hall (National Opera Center), & Susanna (Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro) at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. Oratorio works include: soprano soloist (Couperin’s Trois Leçons de Ténèbres), soprano soloist (Handel’s Messiah), soprano soloist (Haydn’s The Creation), soprano soloist (Bach’s Magnificat). They hold their MM in Classical Vocal Performance and a post graduate degree in Vocal Pedagogy from NYU. They received a BA in Music History and Vocal Performance from Goucher College. 

They have a specialty interest and focus on the history of Castrati in early opera, as they are often called upon to perform these roles due to the unique timbre of their voice brought about by their vocal pathology. Liz is a proud advocate for singers who also have incurable vocal pathologies and has extensive training in working with singers with various pathologies through NYU Langone’s postgraduate vocology program. When not working with singers, Liz also conducts and directs string ensembles and orchestras and loves working with adult clients who are new to learning an instrument.