Miranda Loud - Mezzo Soprano, Organist, Filmmaker, Producer, Environmental Activist

Interdisciplinary Artist Miranda Loud has been passionate about reconnecting audiences with nature since 2005 when she founded the not-for-profit organization Rialto Arts - Where Nature Takes Center Stage, now known as NatureStage. Since 1998, her thematic concerts produced in New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts using visuals, dance and narration have been at the forefront of more experimental and contextual concert programming. Her multi-media works involving film with live performance on environmental themes have been hailed by the Boston Globe as a new genre; her latest work about the relationship between honeybees and beekeepers won a Gold Star Award in 2009 from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Loud has followed her heart throughout her career, taking her from classically-trained organist with a Master's Degree from the Eastman School of Music to a professional mezzo-soprano to producer and non-profit leader, and now to filmmaker and environmentalist. All of these seeds can be seen in her work since 1994 as she explored various themes integrating new media and more potent forms of expression.

Her current focus on incorporating empathy training within all levels of education, not only for one another, but for other species, is tied to her passionate belief that artistic expression fosters self-compassion, empathy, cooperation and the dignity essential for valuing life and creating global stewards. The Elephant Project, her current multi-media film and live performance/education initiative for NatureStage, uses the Asian elephant as a gateway for examining, on an artistic platform, our obligation towards other species.

This current project has two parts: A film series with accompanying interdisciplinary curriculum, Elephantom: Twenty Short Films/Twenty Questions; and a live performance, Elephantasia, for touring in cathedral spaces, for pipe organ, voice, dance and video projection. Both works are highly collaborative and in process, and still need funding in order to be completed.

In order to spread the information about human-caused species loss and the need for a global mind-shift within education, Miranda is touring to universities and high schools to share her ideas with students who will be tomorrow's leaders, and to share interviews and samples of her work from Buccaneers of Buzz and The Elephant Project. She has created a powerful multi-media presentation which is the central focus of her public talks at universities and other venues called Saving the Elephants, Saving Ourselves: The Role of the Arts in Social Change.

In addition to her extensive performing and producing as a musician, Miranda has been interviewed in a number of blogs and newspapers, as well as on CBS Radio, about her passion for animals and ways which the arts can help create a sense of kinship with other species. Miranda's greatest wish is to see this empathy expressed in human infrastructure, development and relationship with the land, taking other species needs into account, as well as the needs of people.

Check out Miranda's interview about arts and sustainability with Sanjay Khanna on the Realistic Sanctuary blog and her interview March 20, 2011 on CBS Radio San Francisco.

Please click here for resume as of April 2011.

Mezzo-Soprano Biography

"Mezzo-soprano Miranda Loud's earthy, passionate interpretation more than lived up to her surname in the final ecstatic verse with a well-rounded tone that reverberated pleasingly in the live acoustic. The overall effect was one of drama and mystery, with perhaps a whiff of the Middle Eastern, presumably owing to the modal tonality."

Hildegard's Songs by Jakov Jakoulov, May 10, 2010
Boston Chamber Music Foundation Concert

"... pristine transparency that speaks simply and directly. Outstanding."

Choral Arts Review, on alto solos in Musica Omnia's recording
of the Four Lutheran Masses by Bach, June 2007

Recognized and sought after for her versatile, imaginative, and elegant musicianship, Miranda Loud, mezzo-soprano, performs regularly as a soloist with several orchestras and choruses in New England, including Emmanuel Music on the Bach Cantata Series founded by Craig Smith in Boston, MA, now directed by Ryan Turner.

Although an avid specialist in music of the Baroque period, she enjoys premiering and singing new works, and is increasingly sought after for her level of commitment to collaboration and performance. Composer Forrest Pierce wrote a song cycle, The Wild Iris, for Miranda and said..."(her) voice is a dream voice for a composer of mezzo songs—clear, crystalline, agile, with riveting American diction. The heart with which she approaches the music is stunningly beautiful..."

In September of '07 she was invited to perform on the Septemberfest concert series at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA, in The Heart Poems, a song cycle by John Morrison who praised her performance as "remarkably committed and powerfully moving."

She was awarded an "artist-in-residence" grant in 2006 at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada for her development of a multi-media concert Matins: Reconnecting to Nature and has been a participant in the prestigious Songfest program in Malibu, CA for two seasons, where she worked with composers Jake Heggie and Ricky Ian Gordon.

She received her M. Music from Eastman School of Music in Organ Performance and Literature and has studied voice with Herbert Burtis, Pamela Dellal, and Carol Mastrodomenico, and acting with with Alexandra Borrie.