Melanie Mitrano

Melanie Mitrano is a singer-songwriter whose vocal and compositional styles span many genres from jazz to classical, avante-garde, and Broadway. "All Things Gold," her most recent album, features "straight-up acoustic vocal jazz in a champagne glass – swinging, clean, cool and refined." To date, six of the songs on the disc have won compositional awards. Brazilian music also factors heavily into Melanie's artistic profile. Fluent in Portuguese, she performs Brazilian standards and also pens her own Portuguese-language songs. Melanie is a member of and three-time grant recipient from the New York Women’s Composers and a winner of numerous composition awards from the Songwriters Association of Washington, ASCAP, Billboard, and the Summit City Art Song Festival. Her classical song cycle "Phobias & Infatuations" won the 2011 Summit City Art Song Festival Composition Award, and her theater piece, a dramatic song cycle entitled "Blind Spots," placed as a semi-finalist in the 2015 NJ Playwright's Contest. Melanie’s compositions have been showcased at the Women Composers Festival of Hartford, Women in Music Columbus, the Cape May Singer-Songwriter Festival, First Night Morris, with Composers Concordance, the Diane Moser Composers Big Band, the Astoria Big Band, on Arts Up Close Montclair TV 34, Union After Dark TV 34, Spotlight Morris County, Circuit Bridges Fifteen Minutes-of-Fame, Hawaii Public Radio, and SkyJazz Internet Radio, where she was a Favorite Artist Poll Winner. Her two worldwide podcasts for Classical Music Discoveries both placed in the top ten shows of all time with approximately 20 million listens. She currently serves as cofounder, resident composer and vocalist with the InterXchange Ensemble, based in São Paulo, Brazil. With Absolute Ensemble, she recorded three tracks for the movie Perfume, winner of the 2007 German Film Award, starring Dustin Hoffmann and Alan Rickman. Her voice appears in the film and on the EMI movie soundtrack. Melanie has performed as a soloist in the USA, Japan, Taiwan, England, Italy and Brazil. Her two worldwide podcasts for Classical Music Discoveries both placed in the top ten shows with approximately 20 million listens. Melanie is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and holds MM and DMA degrees from the New England Conservatory. She is currently on the music faculty of County College of Morris, and is working on her third album of original music, featuring Brazilian Jazz, sung in both English and Portuguese.

Awards

Songwriter's Association of Washington 30th Annual Mid-Atlantic Song Contest: "Wednesdays" - Vocal Jazz / Blues Category Award (2015)

Songwriter's Association of Washington 30th Annual Mid-Atlantic Song Contest: "You Can't Unring Bells" - Vocal Jazz / Blues Category Award (2014)

Songwriter's Association of Washington 29th Annual Mid-Atlantic Song Contest: "I Ain't Got You" - Vocal Jazz / Blues Category Award (2013)

Songwriter's Association of Washington 28th Annual Mid-Atlantic Song Contest: "Another Song About The Moon" - Vocal Jazz / Blues Category Award (2012)

Summit City Art Song Festival Composition Award (2011): "Phobias & Infatuations" - Classical Song Cycle

Songwriter's Association of Washington 27th Annual Mid-Atlantic Song Contest: "Smarten Up" - Vocal Jazz / Blues Category Award (2011)

Songwriter's Association of Washington 26th Annual Mid-Atlantic Song Contest: "King of Cryptology" - Vocal Jazz / Blues Category Award (2010)

Billboard World Song Contest Award (2009): "My Finest Hour" - Jazz Category

Songwriter Melanie Mitrano Releases Jazz Debut, "All Things Gold"

Source: Michael Ricci
May 6, 2010

All Things Gold, the debut jazz album from singer-songwriter Melanie Mitrano, represents a daring new direction for this classically-trained artist. "I’m not even sure how my lifetime as a classical musician led me here," the singer muses, "but thankfully I fell in with a group of smart, capable people who guided me well."

Those capable people include co-producer/pianist/bandleader Matt King, who heads a tight-ship rhythm section that includes veteran jazzmen Andy Eulau (bass) and Scott Neumann (drums). They are joined ...
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"Singer-songwriters are a very individual and powerful thing in pop, singers who create the words and music that they sing. Of course we don't have much of that in the classical world. But here's Melanie Mitrano, writing and singing songs to her own texts, and hitting an emotional bull’s-eye." - Greg Sandow, The Village Voice

“A singer with an evocative bearing, Mitrano conveys messages of wise observation, sassiness and vulnerability…these songs are examples of her expansive lyrical palette…" - Don Lerman, Cadence Magazine

Primary Instrument

Vocals

Location

Newark

Willing to teach

Beginner to advanced

Credentials/Background

Melanie Mitrano has the distinction of being the first woman to receive a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the New England Conservatory in Boston, and also holds an MM and BM in vocal performance from the Eastman School of Music. She has premiered student and faculty compositions at Yale, NYU, NEC, Colombia University, MIT, The New School of Music, and the Symposium for Arts and Technology at Connecticut College. Dr. Mitrano began her teaching career at Connecticut College in New London; and from 1996-2001, served on the faculty of New Jersey City University as Coordinator of Vocal Studies. A dedicated educator and frequent clinician, she has lectured at several NJMEA state conferences, high schools, and universities, including the Mannes College of Music, Western Connecticut State University, Kutztown University, Brooklyn College, and the University of New Hampshire. She has served as an adjudicator for the NJ NATS Festival of Singing and the National Federation of Music Clubs. Since 1999, Dr. Mitrano has been a member of the editorial board of The New Music Connoisseur, a Manhattan-based journal dedicated to the advancement of contemporary music. Her articles have been published in NMC, as well as Tempo Magazine, the MENC international edition of Spotlight on Teaching Chorus, and the NATS Journal of Singing. Currently, she teaches on the music faculty of County College of Morris and maintains a busy private voice studio in New Jersey.

Clinic/Workshop Information