SFYCA ALUMNI PROFILES
SFYCA celebrates its 25th Anniversary in 2023. While it is still a way off, planning is already underway to include an alumni reception and featured performances by alumni, alongside the 2023 SFYCA participants. If you are an alum, or know someone who is, please email Education & Operations Coordinator, at bharris7@uoregon.edu.
Today, Katherine Goforth is a transgender woman and opera singer, who excels in a wide range of roles across the gender spectrum. She is a proud representative of LGBTQ community and advocates for the inclusion of all voices in the performing arts.
But it wasn’t always bright and rosy for Katherine, especially when she was a young teenager living in Vancouver, Washington. Goforth described herself as a scared 15-year-old tenor who wasn’t very socially integrated when she first arrived as a high school freshman at the Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy (SFYCA) in 2006.
“I was nervous and didn’t know a lot of people, but that didn’t last very long as it became one of the most pivotal moments in my life. I was validated and valued and treated like a serious artist” says Katherine.
In its 24th year, SFYCA is an education program of the Oregon Bach Festival that brings top high school choral musicians from across the United States together for 10 days to perform exceptional choral literature and learn the choral arts through daily rehearsals, classes, workshops, and performances with leading musicians.
With this newfound confidence and pride, Katherine immersed herself into singing. She performed in her high school choir, the Portland Youth Choir, and returned to SFYCA every year thereafter until she graduated from high school. Those four years as an SFYCA musician she met several fellow musicians from all over the United States who are lifelong friends to this day.
“Being a part of OBF and performing with conductor Helmuth Rilling, the Festival Chorus, and Festival Orchestra were very special moments that shaped my desire to pursue a career in music and become a professional opera singer.”
SFYCA musicians, their families and their teachers consistently describe the SFYCA experience as “life-changing.” The Academy benefits from national awareness of both Anton Armstrong and the Grammy award-winning Oregon Bach Festival. These SFYCA musicians, many of whom go on to perform or teach music, get to experience an opportunity of a lifetime as they perform on stage with leading musicians and conductors including retired OBF Artistic Director Helmuth Rilling, renowned vocalists like Tyler Duncan and Marie Jette, and even celebrities like Bobby McFerrin. By reaching students nationwide, the Festival has built awareness of SFYCA as a “destination” program of high artistic level, establishing the Festival’s reputation among young singers who are expected to be the professional choral musicians and audiences of the future.
Like many SFYCA alumni, Katherine headed to college to pursue a degree in music. She attended St. Olaf College and graduated with a BM in Vocal Performance. Upon graduation, Katherine continued to immerse herself in as many opera performances and educational opportunities as she could find. She participated in numerous master courses including the Franz Schubert Institut, Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, Heidelberger Frühling Liedakademie, Georg Solti Accademia, and masterclasses sponsored by the Richard Tucker Foundation.
Next, she traveled to New York City to attend the Juilliard School where she graduated with a MM in Voice Performance. She went on to sing in the World Premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s celebrated new opera Crossing, as part of a small ensemble cast directed by Diane Paulus, with performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and American Repertory Theatre.
While performing and teaching voice lessons has been a major focus of Katherine’s life, finding the right teacher is equally if not more important than getting key operatic roles and landing projects. Three teachers rise to the top and who she credits for helping get her to where she is today—Eve Shapiro with the Juilliard School, Lee Kum-sing, a pianist and instructor at Vancouver Academy of Music; and most recently Linfield University Artist in Residence, Richard Zeller, who coincidentally performed for many years with the Oregon Bach Festival as a featured soloist.
“It’s impossible to condense my experience with each of my teachers into one or two sentences,” says Katherine. “Eve and I read Shakespeare and other early modern authors together. She gave me a totally different understanding of the English language. At the end of our time working together, I realized how different I was. I felt all my emotions differently, more vibrantly. Mr. Lee showed me how to approach music, investigate it, and understand it. I already had two degrees, but I really didn’t have any idea before I met him. And finally, when I went to Mr. Zeller for the first time, I had a fragmented knowledge of singing. I knew lots of different pieces of the process, but I couldn’t put them together. Now I can rely on my voice. It’s more powerful and singing feels better than ever.”
Knowing she wanted to work with the best opera houses in the world, Katherine auditioned at numerous programs and chose to attend the German-based Oper Köln’s highly respected international young artist program in 2019.
She was cast in several amazing roles including Il Conte di Bandiera in Salieri’s La Scuola dei Gelosi in the Kammeroper, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte für Kinder and 3rd Jew in Salome on the main stage. Of these performances, The German Stage noted that Katherine was “stunningly charming,” the General-Anzeiger wrote that her “tenor projects clearly… (and her) pianopassages reveal lyric qualities as well,” and Opern Magazin stated that she “rose to the highest form.”
However, during this timeframe, Katherine was struggling with the disconnect between the life she was living and the person she knew herself to be. It was no longer enough to express her inner self only to close friends and confidants, which she had been doing for several years. “I knew I needed to live my adult life with integrity rather than being a different person for each circumstance. I didn’t feel it would be possible for me to transition publicly while living in Germany as I didn’t have the support system, I needed to navigate a foreign healthcare system, particularly around gender-affirming healthcare.”
In June of 2020, Goforth left her post at Oper Köln after one season and moved back to the Pacific Northwest, where she was close to friends and family and could continue working with the endocrinologist she started seeing before she left for Köln.
All was humming along smoothly as she settled into her new life peacefully and quietly, then, BOOM the world came to a grinding halt in March 2020 with the onslaught of the pandemic. Like many during the Covid-19 shutdown, Goforth suddenly had lots of time on her hands to ponder her future and contemplate her next steps. Simplicity and trust in others and oneself became her guiding principles.
“When I came out, I knew that I was taking a risk with my place in the classical music world, friends, family, and the world in general, but so far, things have gone pretty well. I’ve lost a lot less than I expected to. My anxiety about new situations is almost always worse than the reality. I’m focused on living into my values and being more authentic with the world around me each day.” Simplicity and trust in others and oneself became her guiding principals.
As the performing arts world is slowly getting back to “business as usual” and audiences are starting to reenter the concert halls, Katherine has participated in several exciting performances in 2021 including the role of Spoletta in Puccini’s Tosca with the Portland Opera and Opera Theater of Oregon’s WWI: A Song-Opera of Remembrance at Portland’s Polaris Hall. This unique project featured the music of George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and was the creation of another SFYCA alum, Nicholas Meyer. As hormones alone do not alter the vice of a transgrender woman, Katherine continues to sing as a tenor. Upcoming 2022 projects include Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Bozeman Symphony, the Walla Walla Symphony’s Candide, and Chuck Dillard’s project with Queer Opera, Portland.
There are hopes, that Katherine will appear as a guest soloist with other alumni at SFYCA’s 25th anniversary celebration in 2023. Perhaps her performance will inspire other fifteen-year-old musicians to find their voices in the comfort of a warm, friendly community of like-minded young musicians.
