About
As lyric coloratura soprano Grace Touhill begins her musical career, her story is one of a vocalist’s journey to nurture the world.
Miss Touhill seeks to perform repertoire which allows listeners to reflect, reevaluate, and rekindle their relationship with nature and the environment. Miss Touhill has earned her Master’s Degree from the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore, MD and has received vocal instruction under the tutelage of Maeve Höglund, Elizabeth Futral (Peabody), Emily Golden, and Dauri Shippey (Westminster Choir College).
In addition to her musical studies, Miss Touhill holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science and Wildlife Conservation from Gettysburg College. Her experiences in the frozen wilderness of Norway, the expansive deserts of the American Southwest, and the towering mountains of Chile and Argentina influence her mindset as a performer. To fully experience the world, bringing passion behind your music and moving people, one must truly live and feel both the beautiful and painful moments in their entirety.
Grace Touhill was most recently awarded First Prize as the winner of the American Council for Polish Culture’s Marcella Kochńska Sembrich 2024 Voice Competition, and she can frequently be heard singing on feast days at the National Shrine of Czestochowa. With her family’s Polish heritage, Miss Touhill’s engagement with the Polish-American community holds a special place in her heart.
Active as a recitalist, Miss Touhill is currently integrating her diverse passions to create a series of collaborative concerts with a focus on environmental advocacy in the Baltimore area. The pilot concert, “Life in Full Bloom: A Concert Reconnecting with the Natural World,” took place in October, 2023 in collaboration with the environmental organization Blue Water Baltimore. The performance was hosted for the Baltimore community by Cylburn Aboretum, the city’s “200-acre urban oasis.”
Come the weekend, Miss Touhill serves as a cantor and wedding soloist for churches in the Bucks County and Baltimore areas. In addition to vocal pursuits, Miss Touhill continues to perform as a flutist in community orchestras. Her singing demonstrates the precision of an instrumentalist, which is especially noticeable in her approach to ornamentation and coloratura. Miss Touhill hopes to continue to touch peoples’ hearts, minds, and souls through music to create moments filled with meaning and beauty.
Good music touches your soul, gives you goosebumps, makes you cry, or smile, or laugh. After a beautiful performance, we can feel more human and see the world with different eyes.