beth sullivan

Morgan Elisabeth Sullivan (she/her) is an educator, singer, harpsichordist, and composer focused particularly in the fields of historical performance practice and 20th century English song and church repertoire.

Beth has most notably sung with Bach Collegium Japan, Folger Consort, Yale Voxtet, Yale Schola Cantorum, Juilliard415, Mountainside Baroque, American Baroque Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, Netherlands Opera Studio, Baltimore Baroque Band, and Peabody Consort. A career church musician, she served for four seasons on the core choir staff of Emmanuel Episcopal in Baltimore, Maryland where she sang various concert works during her tenure, including the baritone solos in Fauré’s Requiem, Hasse’s Miserere, Vaughan Williams’ 5 Mystical Songs, Craig Hella Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepard, and various world and North American premiers with the choir. Beth’s compositions are similarly focused on liturgical music, and her works have been sung by the choirs of St. David’s in Roland Park, Emmanuel Church in Mt. Vernon, Grace & St. Peter’s in Mt. Vernon, and St. Thomas’s Church in New Haven, CT.

Following the wake of the pandemic and her subsequent gender transition, Beth shifted her professional focus to pedagogy, primarily serving her community providing gender affirming voice care. She began teaching in 2016 as a graduate student at Yale University and subsequently served as voice instructor to the trebles of the various choirs of Trinity Episcopal on the Green in New Haven, CT, acquiring a thorough understanding of training voices through pubescent transition. She pivoted from this role to teach at The Voice Lab in Chicago, IL with a sole focus on transgender voice care in a student-centered pedagogical environment. Beth currently teaches trans voice privately and serves on the voice faculty of Goucher College in Baltimore, MD.

As a recording artist, Beth has been recorded by Hyperion Records both as the baritone soloist in Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem and as Herod on the Yale Schola Cantorum's 2019 Christmas album featuring Schütz's Weinachts-historie. Her work on the Brahms recording has been described as "forthright and honest" by Seattle Post, "suitably vulnerable”, and “penetrating and assertive … noble and sensitive” by Richard Hanlon of MusicWeb International. In addition to these works, she has recorded Michael Rickelton’s Battle Songs for Albany Records, Felicien David’s Lalla Roukh with Opera Lafayette on Naxos, and theater music for Firaxes Games’s Civilization V: Gods and Kings. Of the Rickelton recording, she was described as "strong and confident."

Ms. Sullivan holds a B.Mus. from Peabody Conservatory, where she studied under baritones John Shirley-Quirk and William Sharp, and a Mus.M. from the Yale School of Music where she studied under tenor James Taylor.