Maria Jette

Soprano Maria Jette’s wide-ranging career has encompassed everything from early Baroque opera to world premieres, in the United States and abroad.  Her orchestral resumé includes The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Houston, Kansas City, San Luis Obispo, Santa Rosa, Charlotte, Buffalo, Grand Rapids, Austin, Marin and San Antonio Symphonies, New York Chamber Symphony, Portland Baroque Orchestra and Musica Angelica; plus Berkshires Opera, Roanoke Opera, Sacramento Opera, and the sadly defunct Ex Machina Antique Music Theatre in her home base of Minneapolis-St. Paul. There, she’s often heard withVocalEssence (led by conductor Philip Brunelle), Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, Minnesota Sinfonia The Schubert Club and Lyra Baroque Orchestra. 

A regular guest over many seasons at the San Luis Obispo Mozart and Oregon Bach Festivals and the Oregon Festival of American Music, she was often heard nationally over the last 20+ years of  Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. 

An ecumenical recitalist, her programs range from songs of Grieg or Fauré through Edwardian parlor music and Latin American chamber music, liberally interspersed with Tin Pan Alley and the Great American Songbook. She’s performed her own productions of Seuss/Kapilow’s Green Eggs & Ham and Gertrude McFuzz for over 50,000 kids throughout the country, with pit bands, symphony orchestras, and even just piano and train whistle!

Last season’s activities included Graun’s Der Tod Jesu with Lyra Baroque (Simon Carrington, conductor) in St. Paul, a program of mostly melancholy British folk song settings with Raymond Johnston at the Cathedral of St. Mark in Minneapolis; music of Martin Luther’s contemporaries with the Grand Rapids Symphony; and her Valentine’s Day (singing) debut with beloved Twin Cities burlesque troupe, Le Cirque Rouge. With collaborator Dan Chouinard, she performed everything from Norwegian art songs and Beethoven’s Scottish folksong arrangements to X-rated barroom ballads on the latest Prairie Home Companion cruise of Scotland and Norway (June); and later this month, she’ll sing Argento’s Elizabethan Songs at both the Festival of the Lakes (Alexandria MN) and the Maverick Concerts (Woodstock, NY).