Margaret Carpenter Haigh, Soprano

Hailed for her “perfect vocalism” and described as “fiery, wild, and dangerous” (Classical Voice North Carolina) with “a talent for character portrayal” (Chicago Classical Review), soprano Margaret Carpenter Haigh is in demand as a soloist and chamber musician throughout North America. Recent solo engagements include Handel Messiah (Memphis and Winston-Salem Symphonies, Messiah Festival of the Arts); Bach St Matthew Passion (Bach Akademie Charlotte and Messiah Festival of the Arts); Bach B minor Mass (Bach Akademie Charlotte and American Bach Soloists Academy), Del Tredici's An Alice Symphony (Portland Symphony); Vaughan Williams Benedicite and Bach Jauchzet Gott (Arizona MusicFest); and Rutter Requiem (Evansville Philharmonic). Alongside her husband, organist and harpsichordist Nicolas Haigh, Margaret is co-founder of L’Académie du Roi Soleil, an ensemble specializing in French music from the time of Louis XIV and with which she has performed in venues including York Minster; New College Chapel, Oxford; and Clare College Chapel, Cambridge.

2019-2020 season highlights include appearances with Bach Akademie Charlotte, Handel and Haydn Society, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Newberry Consort, Alchymy Viols, GRAMMY©-winning Apollo’s Fire, Wyoming Baroque, and a solo Canadian début with Scaramella, presenting original work on Baroque gesture and the Ferrarese concerto delle donne. With her own ensemble L’Académie du Roi Soleil she looks forward to performing Couperin’s Leçons de Ténèbres, 16th-century Italian musica reservata in a program entitled “Secret Music 1580: Music for the Three Ladies of Ferrara,” and one-voice-per-part program of Parry’s Songs of Farewell and Howells’ Take him, earth, for cherishing.

Margaret has been privileged to perform as a Britten-Pears Young Artist under Mark Padmore at the Aldeburgh Festival (UK) and at the American Bach Soloists Academy under Jeffrey Thomas (San Francisco, CA). Touring engagements have taken her to Israel, Germany, and France under the baton of Timothy Brown, and she has been featured as a soloist in the Easter at King’s Concert Series in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge.

As a choral conductor, Margaret was Artistic Director of Nova Voce, Charlotte's premier women's choral ensemble, from 2018-2020. She has served as a faculty member at the Oklahoma Arts Institute in Quartz Mountain and as a clinician for Bach Akademie Charlotte (Charlotte Bach Festival and national tours). She was Director of Youth Education Projects for Apollo's Fire: The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra from 2016-2017. She has also held positions as assistant chorus-master to the Winston-Salem Symphony Chorus and acting director of the Keele Bach Choir, Keele Philharmonic Choir, and Keele Philharmonic Orchestra in Staffordshire (UK); and she was selected as a conducting fellow at the Yale Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in Norfolk, CT. 

Margaret holds the D.M.A. in Historical Performance Practice from Case Western Reserve University; the M.Mus in Choral Studies from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar; and the B.M. in voice and B.A. in organ from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Recent scholarship includes work on the physical gesture in the madrigal repertory of the concerto delle donne in late sixteenth-century Ferrara. Margaret is based in Manhattan, where she sings with The Choir of Trinity Wall Street.

www.margaretcarpenterhaigh.com