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Long Bio

Danielle Cozart Steele enjoys a multifaceted career as a soprano, conductor, researcher, and clinician. She serves on the voice faculty at Butler University, is the Artistic Director of Vox Veritatis Choir Cincinnati, and is the interim director of the Cincinnati MLK Chorale alongside Bishop Todd O’Neal.

Danielle formerly served on the music faculty at IU East in Richmond, IN, where she directed the IU East Richmond Chorale, taught conducting and private voice. In 2020, she served the World House Choir as their assistant director alongside Dr. Catherine Roma. Recently the Interim Director of Choral Activities at Earlham College, she directed the Women’s Chorus, Concert Choir, Chamber Singers, and Gentlemen’s Ensemble in addition to teaching academic courses. In 2017, Danielle was an interim conductor with MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Chorus. 

Danielle’s ensembles regularly perform in venues such as Cincinnati Music Hall and Memorial Hall, as well as tour the East Coast and Midwest, including performances in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston and Washington D.C.

Danielle’s groups participate in community outreach and education, including hosting high school choral festivals, working with local charities, women at risk, and engaging in activism through music.  Danielle worked with Hope Through Harmony, a collaborative choral effort in the Dayton Correctional Institution for Women designed to foster community and prevent recidivism.

Danielle is the founder and organizer of the national Transgender Singing Voice Conference, an academic conference exploring the unique needs of transgender voices and intersecting issues that affect transgender musicians’ lives. 

Danielle’s research involves the integration of transgender singers into their preferred-gender ensemble, vocal pedagogy for transgender singers, and the hybrid care of the transgender voice with cooperative treatment plans between medical practitioners and voice professionals. Danielle most recently worked with Liz Jackson Hearns and The Voice Lab in Chicago, and has collaborated in her research with Butterfly Music Transgender Chorus (now the Boston Trans Chorus), serving as a vocal clinician and teacher. 

Danielle holds degrees in vocal performance from Butler University (bachelor’s), the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (master’s) and a master’s of music education from Columbia University Teachers College.  She is currently a doctoral candidate at Teachers College in New York City. 

As a music education student at Butler, Danielle received her training with Henry Leck and Cheryl West of the Indianapolis Children’s Choir and Indianapolis Youth Chorale. An active supporter of arts in education, Danielle’s career reflects an intense dedication to keeping classical music alive and relevant to today’s audiences.  Before her work at Earlham College, Danielle held the position of Director of Education for Indianapolis Opera. A believer that collaboration is the truest way to preserve classical music, Danielle spent two years working with the Indianapolis Spirit and Place Festival, producing avant-garde operatic works focused on diverse themes and collaborating with mixed-media artists, professional dancers, writers, instrumentalists, theater directors, and partners such as the Indianapolis Men’s Chorus. Danielle’s favorite performance art project examined the gender roles we “play” in everyday life and how we express those in music. Danielle’s programming, past and current, is with an eye toward social issues, activism, and the fostering of community as a way of promoting social change. 

Danielle continues to be an active performer. Her colorful, lyric soprano voice has earned her roles on the stages of Des Moines Metro Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Peach State Opera, Sugar Creek Symphony and Song, and Intimate Opera of Indianapolis, and on tour with Cincinnati Opera’s Share the Love Truck Tour 2020. Her roles include Manon in Manon, Adina in The Elixir of Love, Micaëla in La Tragédie de Carmen, Clorinda in La Cenerentola, Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos, Lucy in The Telephone, Yum Yum in The Mikado, and Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance. A champion of new works, she recently premiered Boston-based composer Ketty Nez’s Rumelian Songs of Love and the Rain with chamber ensemble at Ball State University. In 2014 she premiered  a new opera in collaboration with Earlham College Orchestra, Midsummer, about Japanese internment during World War II. Her favorite collaboration is with Japanese composer Keiko Fujiie, assisting with the creation and re-imagination of the next installment of NAGASAKI: Wilderness Mute, a work dedicated to educating audiences about the realities of nuclear war.

Danielle is an active performer of oratorio and chamber works. Recent solo engagements include guest appearances with Cincinnati Opera, Heri et Hodie, Earlham Goes to the Opera!, Ball State University’s New Music Festival,  a radio feature with Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer, 1915 and Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate with Kokomo Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time and Handel’s Messiah with Earlham College. She has sung the soprano solos in Carmina Burana, Haydn’s Creation, and Vivaldi’s Gloria with both Lebanon (OH) Symphony Orchestra and members of the Bloomington Early Music Ensemble. She was also featured on numerous performances with the Cincinnati Conservatory New Music Festival and Grandin Festival. Recent performances include premiers of new works for the Society of Composers, Inc. at their Midwest regional conferences as well as a collaboration with CCM’s Kenneth Griffiths on Debussy’s Ariettes oubliées. Upcoming performances include recitals with flute featuring the soprano/flute collaborations of famed Australian coloratura, Nellie Melba, with flutist Jessica Raposo. 

Short Bio

Danielle Cozart Steele enjoys a multifaceted career as a soprano, conductor, researcher, and clinician. She serves on the voice faculty at Butler University, is the Artistic Director of Vox Veritatis Choir Cincinnati, and is the interim director of the Cincinnati MLK Chorale alongside Bishop Todd O’Neal.

Danielle formerly served on the music faculty at IU East in Richmond, IN, where she directed the IU East Richmond Chorale, taught conducting and private voice. In 2020, she served the World House Choir as their assistant director alongside Dr. Catherine Roma. Recently the Interim Director of Choral Activities at Earlham College, she directed the Women’s Chorus, Concert Choir, Chamber Singers, and Gentlemen’s Ensemble in addition to teaching academic courses. In 2017, Danielle was an interim conductor with MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Chorus.  Ms. Cozart Steele worked with the Dayton Correctional Institute for Women prison chorus, Hope for Harmony. She places priority on featuring women’s and minoritized voices in her classroom and music programming.

Ms. Cozart Steele maintains an active solo vocal career, appearing in recital and with symphony orchestras throughout the Midwest. Her colorful, lyric soprano voice has earned her roles on the stages of Des Moines Metro Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Peach State Opera, Sugar Creek Symphony and Song, and Intimate Opera of Indianapolis. She is a champion of new music and enjoys working with living composers.

Contact Danielle

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