Blythe Quelin has been a musician for her entire life.  One of her earliest memories is of her very first violin lesson at the age of three.  She joined a children’s choir a year later and started piano lessons at age nine.  In high school, Blythe began private voice lessons and eventually attended Westminster Choir College for her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in vocal performance and pedagogy with a minor in piano during her undergraduate studies.  She studied the violin with Detroit Symphony violinist James Waring.  Blythe’s piano teacher was internationally-known composer and pedagogue Catherine Rollin.  Her voice teacher in college and graduate school was Margaret Cusack, with whom she continues to take lessons from time to time.

 

In her last year of high school, Blythe began teaching private lessons.  She has taught violin, viola, and music theory, but focuses mainly on piano and voice students.  She has worked at music schools in central New Jersey and in Seattle as well as maintaining private students, and has offered lessons in her studio, online, and in student homes.  Blythe organizes regular recitals and masterclasses for her students, develops individualized curricula to adapt to her students’ needs and goals, and considers sharing her passion for music to be the most important thing she will ever do.

 

As a performer, Blythe’s primary instrument is voice.  Focusing mainly on her passion for choral singing, she has worked with such conductors as Nicholas McGegan, Marin Alsop, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Lorin Maazel, Michael Tilson-Thomas, and Sir Neville Marriner.  She sang in the choir rehearsing the finale of Candide in the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro directed by and starring Bradley Cooper.  Some of Blythe’s favorite choral performances have been Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Mozart’s Requiem, and Barber’s Agnus Dei.  As a soloist, Blythe specializes in French art song, particularly songs and cycles by Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, and Maurice Ravel.

 

Blythe lives in Eugene, OR, with her husband, Jérôme, and their dog, Pixel.  When she is not teaching or performing, she enjoys knitting and crochet.