Melissa Richardson

Melissa Richardson is an American mezzo-soprano and choral conductor. She obtained her master of music degree from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, USA where she studied choral conducting and voice. As alto section leader for the Westminster Symphonic Choir, Melissa performed with many of the world's leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic (Alan Gilbert), Philadelphia Orchestra (Yannick Nezet-Seguin), Dresden Staatskapelle (Daniel Harding), and the Berliner Philharmoniker (Sir Simon Rattle). Melissa was a member of the renowned Westminster Choir, performing as choir-in-residence and soloist at the Spoleto Festival USA. In 2011, Melissa served as the alto section leader for James Jordan and the grammy-nominated Westminster Williamson Voices on their Living Voices recording for Naxos.

Melissa has taught choral music at Madison College, The American School of the Hague (The Netherlands), Seoul Foreign School (South Korea), and public schools in Cambridge, Deforest, and Spring Green, Wisconsin. In 2018, Melissa guest-conducted the AMIS Honor Boys Choir (Bangkok, Thailand) and co-presented at the European League of Middle-Level Educators (ELMLE) Conference (Spain). She maintains a private voice studio in Madison.

In addition to conducting and teaching, Melissa has sung professionally with the Grant Park Chorus of Chicago and the Madison Choral Project. She has been a soloist with the Dutch choir Filomena and was selected to sing in ‘Meesters and Gezellen’ through Tenso, the network for European professional chamber choirs. Her singing teachers have included Margaret Cusack, Kathleen Otterson, and Christine Seitz. Melissa is an alumna of Luther College and a member of the Voice Care Network.