Kynesha Patterson Shaw is an emerging soprano based in the Boston area, equally at home in concert repertoire and opera. Posessing a naturally light, clear, agile tone, she finds a special affinity for early music and contemporary music alike.

An avid equestrienne and animal lover, she began teaching horseback riding professionally and entered the Harvard Extension Health Careers Program with the intention of pursing a career in veterinary medicine. However, singing proved too powerful a calling and she is thrilled to be making music again.

Her musical studies began at age 8 with piano, then taking voice lessons soon thereafter. She enjoyed many years performing in musical theater but settled comfortably in classical music where she felt most at home. Kynesha was thrilled to make her debut on the opera stage in 2008 as the Queen of the Night in the Bethesda Summer Music Festival's production of Die Zauberflöte. Kynesha has performed choral and solo work with many local ensembles including Longitude New Music Ensemble, Back Bay Chorale, Paul Madore Chorale, Cantata Singers, Ludovico Ensemble, Opera Providence and Boston Ballet. She is an ensemble member of Cantata Singers Ensemble and on the substitute roster for the Handel and Haydn Society.

She resides with her husband Tom and their two cats in Somerville. She currently studies with tenor, Frank Kelley.

Upcoming Performances:

Cantata Singers & Ensemble
May 8, 2009, 7:30
Jordan Hall, Boston
cantatasingers.com

We celebrate the fifteenth year of our innovative education program, Classroom Cantatas, by bringing its fruits to the Jordan Hall series. Students from the Neighborhood House Charter School and the Boston Children’s Chorus will perform one of their hot-off-the-press, original cantatas, coupled with a newly commissioned composition for Cantata Singers by Andy Vores. Both works will be based on the same texts - works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christina Rossetti and Charles Darwin - that celebrate the wonders of the natural world.

We cap our Britten season with his Psalm 150, delightful to performers and listeners young and old, and The Company of Heaven, a radio drama of poetry and music composed in 1937 of enduring vigor and freshness. And finally, after one season’s absence, J.S. Bach returns with the thrilling one-movement cantata for the Feast of St. Michael, “Now is come salvation and strength.”