Margo Garrett has enjoyed a long and respected career as an internationally performing collaborative pianist. Her relationships with many of the most noted singers and instrumentalists before the public today include long partnerships on the stage as well as in the recording studio with sopranos Kathleen Battle, Barbara Bonney, Elizabeth Futral, the late Judith Raskin, Lucy Shelton, Dawn Upshaw, and tenors Anthony Dean Griffey and Paul Sperry. With these and a number of leading instrumentalists and chamber music groups, including violinists Jaime Laredo, and Daniel Phillips, cellists Sharon Robinson, the late Stephen Kates, and clarinetist David Shifrin, Ms. Garrett has premiered over 35 works. Her recordings can be found on Albany, CRI, Delos, Deutsche Grammophon (1992 Grammy for Best Vocal Recital), Dorian, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, Orion and Sony Classical. Her 2018 Delos release of the works of Ernest Bloch with violist Paul Neubauer was nominated for an International Classical Music Award.
Long a devoted teacher, Ms. Garrett co-directed the newly created Collaborative Piano Department at New England Conservatory from 1986 to 1992 while simultaneously heading the Collaborative Piano department at The Juilliard School from 1985 to 1991, at which time she became the first holder of the Ethel Alice Hitchcock Chair in Accompanying and Vocal Coaching at the University of Minnesota’s School of Music, the first privately endowed collaborative chair in the US. She returned, in 2000, to The Juilliard School where she remained until May 2018. Ms. Garrett directed the Tanglewood Music Center vocal fellowship program for the last 6 of her 19 years there (1979-1997) and has now returned since 2016 to again teach in the TMC Vocal Program as well as share her summers with the Music Academy in Santa Barbara, CA and Classical Singing and New York in June. Ms. Garrett was awarded the 1989 American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) Most Creative Programming Award for her presentations at the Cape and Islands Chamber Music Festival, where she was Co-Director with her mentor, Samuel Sanders. From 1999 through 2006, Ms. Garrett served as Faculty Chair of The Steans Institute for Young Artist’s vocal programs at Chicago Symphony’s Ravinia Festival.
Ms. Garrett’s frequent residencies include those at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, Germany; at Vancouver International Song Institute; Taiwan Normal Teacher’s University; Soochou University in Suzhou, China; Internationale Meistersinger Akademie (IMA) in Neumarkt, Germany; and University of Toronto. She has presented master classes at Carnegie Hall/Marilyn Horne’s “The Song Continues…” and has adjudicated for the International Schumann Vocal Competition in Zwickau, Germany, the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, the Metropolitan Opera National Auditions, the Naumberg International Auditions, Joy in Singing, and at dozens of American schools of music. Ms. Garrett has just stepped down after 8 years as the creator, first manager and author of the Collab Corner, a regular column in the National Association of Teachers of Singing’s Journal of Singing. She remains internationally active as a collaborative piano teacher, vocal coach, mentor, and consultant to schools of music in their creation and development of collaborative piano programs.