A prolific performer of opera, musical theater, art song and chamber works, with a specialty in 20th- and 21st-century vocal solo and chamber music, she holds three degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music: doctor of music in voice performance and literature (2006), master of music in voice performance, and bachelor of music in piano performance. Coloton was a 3rd Prize winner of Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Great Lakes Region, Toronto, and received a Fulbright Grant to study piano in Vienna, Austria, at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst. Cutting her opera teeth in leading roles at Indiana University’s famed opera theater, she apprenticed with Des Moines Metro Opera.

Coloton was soloist with the late Christopher Keene and the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Fidelio and Ninth Symphony, and at Artpark in Elektra. Oratorio solo appearances in the Northeast and Midwest include Verdi’s Requiem, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, Handel’s Messiah, Tippet’s A Child of Our Time and Rossini’s Stabat Mater; and Beethoven’s Ah! Perfido with Musicisti Americani in Sulmona, Italy. She made her New York recital debut with St. Bartholomew’s “Great Music in the Chapel” series.

Coloton’s staged performances include Puccini’s Mimì and Verdi’s Violetta (Oswego Opera Theater); Musetta (Opera St. Paul); Toscaand Donna Elvira (Opera at Noon, New York City); Offenbach’s Fleurette (Opera Ensemble of New York); Mozart’s Anna and Fiordiligi; Britten’s Miss Jessel; the Witch in Hänsel und Gretel; the Old Lady in Bernstein’s Candide; and Sondheim’s Desirée and Madame Armfeldt. Coloton performed Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire several times, including at the Pulitzer Foundation of St. Louis with members of the St. Louis Symphony. She was soloist in Jacob Druckman’s Counterpoise, William Kraft’s Settings from Pierrot Lunaire, Matthew Rosenblum’s Nu kwan tzu, and in American premieres of John Eaton’s Mass and his opera Danton andRobespierre, and Frank Stemper’s 1963. She collaborated with Yehudi Wyner for Sonnet: In the Arms of Sleep (2015) and with Lucy Shelton in Dusapin’s Two Walking.

Recently having retired from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, Coloton also taught at the Universities of Minnesota and Oklahoma, SUNY Oswego, Baylor University, and Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Her former students include successful performers in opera, concert, and musical theater, as well as music educators in American universities and high schools.

Education

• D.M., Indiana University
• M.M., Indiana University
• B.M., Indiana University

Expertise

Voice, musical theater, 20th/21st century vocal music