Ryan Townsend Strand & Karina Kontorovitch
Biography Ryan Townsend Strand & Karina Kontorovitch
Ryan Townsend Strand
is a Minnesota native whose "beautiful vocalism" (San Francisco Chronicle) and "...attractive nimble tenor” (Chicago Classical Review) have afforded him a budding career as a concert and oratorio soloist. Highlights of the 2020-2021 season include returning to Haymarket Opera Company to perform Handel’s Acis and Galatea in October, debuting with the Illinois Philharmonic as the tenor soloist for Handel’s Messiah in December, and continuing his performances of Bach’s Cantatas this spring with the Bach Vespers at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest, IL. Strand made his professional Chicago opera debut in Haymarket Opera Theater’s production of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Gli equivoci nel sembiante (Armindo). With his passion for the next generation of singers, Strand was cast as Frederick in Pirates of Penzance with Opera for the Young, touring throughout the Midwest for elementary school audiences. Opera credits include productions of Così fan tutte (Ferrando) with Transgressive Theater-Opera & Elmhurst Symphony; Mark Adamo’s Little Women (Laurie), Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (Nero), and Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath (Al Joad) with Northwestern Opera Theater. He would have made his onstage debut at Lyric Opera of Chicago this spring in Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung prior to COVID-19.
Strand is a founding member and executive director of Constellation Men’s Ensemble in Chicago.
Karina Kontorovitch
was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. At the age of five, she started attending the Music School for Gifted Children, where she continued to study piano with Olga Manukyan until the family immigrated to the United States in 1991. Ms. Kontorovitch earned both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in Piano Performance from Northwestern University, where her teachers include Sylvia Wang, Alan Chow, Laurence Davis and Elizabeth Buccheri.
Ms. Kontorovitch has taught at the Music Arts School in Highland Park and has been on the faculty of the Merit School of Music in Chicago since 2001, teaching all ages and levels. She also serves as an accompanist and vocal coach at Northwestern University, working primarily in the studio of Kurt R. Hansen.
