Long Bio

Czech-American classical singer Ema Katrovas’ most recent projects involve the Prague City Gallery, for which she sang in the Light Underground Festival (2020) – where she was praised for her “provocative voice” – and an installation piece for the Monument of National Literature for which she also created compositions. She is working on a short musical film Echo, built around the monodrama Sentiment by composer Juliana Hall and librettist Caitlin Vincent. She regularly performs with Duo KaM, which she founded in 2017 and which seeks to bring unusual art song programs to the general public.

Ema started out singing in Czech theaters and concerts halls while she was still a student, performing Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro with the Kammer Oper Prague (since 2014) andtouring Germany and Austria as the First Lady in Die Zauberflöte with the F.X. Šalda Theater in Liberec (2015), with which she subsequently sang La Charmeuse in Massenet’s Thaïs (2016). In 2017, she debuted at the Silesian Theater in Opava as the First Nymph in Rusalka (A. Dvořák.) She regularly collaborates with various non-classical ensembles like the theatrical group Indigo Company (since 2016) or the Okamžitý Filmový Orchestr (OFO) conducted by Varhan Orchestrovič Bauer (2018 and 2019). She has also performed in the new music chamber cycle of the PKF-Prague Philharmonia and is engaged to perform at the Schubert Club in St. Paul, Minnesota in spring of 2023.

In 2020, she was selected as one of six participants by Thomas Quasthoff for his masterclass at the Bach Archiv in Leipzig. In 2020 and 2021, she studied contemporary vocal repertoire with Sarah Maria Sun and improvisation with Christoph Ogiermann at the John Cage Institute in Halberstadt, where she placed second in the John Cage New Music Competition 2020. She has collaborated with composers and premiered their work since the beginning of her academic training.

She received her Master’s from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in 2017 and is currently pursuing an artist diploma at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon, where she is working on a project called “A Voice in an Empty Space.”

Ema is also interested in documenting the creative process and the lives of artists, including through her interview podcast series Artists on the Verge. To that end, in the summer of 2021, she had the opportunity to attend the academy of the Aix-en-Provence Festival as a cultural journalist.

Photo by Ilona Sochorová