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Biography
After graduating summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from the Eastman School of Music, and an additional certificate in digital media, market research, and visual arts, Stephania Romaniuk completed the Summer Business Scholars Program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. There, she was elected Class Speaker and delivered the closing address to a cohort of international students and faculty.
She was hired at the Mount Royal Conservatory shortly after and worked in arts administration for two and a half years. There, she developed and led a three-day arts festival for Alberta Culture Days, wrote successful grant applications, including for the Canada Council for the Arts, and wrote extensive internal and external communications. She also collaborated with multiple departments in Mount Royal University on event planning, marketing, and fund development, including on the new Conservatory building and Bella Concert Hall.
In 2014, Stephania rededicated herself to vocal study as the foundation of her artistic pursuits. That summer, she received a Jacqueline Desmarais Scholarship for Young Canadian Opera Singers to complete the Poetry and Performance of Lieder course at the Franz-Schubert-Institut in Baden-bei-Wien, Austria, where she worked with artists including Christa Ludwig, Elly Ameling, Robert Holl, Helmut Deutsch, Julius Drake, and Roger Vignoles. Afterward, she undertook a rigorous Bel Canto-style apprenticeship under master teachers Heather Meyers and Cory Miller. In her first year, she took three to four lessons a week while completing the Advanced Performance Program at Mount Royal Conservatory.
While studying, she sang as a soloist with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Calgary Civic Symphony, Calgary Youth Orchestra, Cowtown Opera Company, Calgary Bach Society, Bow Valley Chorus, Ukrainian Male Chorus of Edmonton, Vesnivka Choir at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, and in recital for Calgary Opera's summer music festival "Opera in the Village," Temple Beth Tzedec with scholar Neal Brostoff (UCLA), and Calgary's Mountain View Connection, a recital series dedicated to song and chamber music. She also performed for the "Unforgettable Kvitka Cisyk" commemorative concert in New York City, for the Ukrainian World Congress 50th Anniversary Gala in Toronto, and in the inaugural Ukrainian festivals of Calgary, Edmonton ("U-Fest"), and Ottawa. She also co-formed the Mount Royal Ambassadors, a student group that gave performances for humanitarian causes in the local community.
In 2015, Stephania won the highest honour, the "Rose Bowl", in the Calgary Performing Arts Festival, was the Grand Prix winner of the First International Competition of Ukrainian Retro Music, held in L'viv, Ukraine. She also performed in concert at opera houses of Kyiv, L’viv, and Odessa, Ukraine, sang with Kyiv National Operetta Company in their annual celebration of musicals "O-Fest," and represented the Intermountain Region in the 2016 NATSAA National Semi-Finals in Chicago. Summer 2016 closed on a high note with Stephania performing Ukrainian folk songs and popular standards in the 2,500-seat Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium as the opening act for the best-selling Ukrainian recording artist of all time and national heroine, Ruslana.
Stephania's intensive studies brought her face-to-face with an underdeveloped aspect of her musicianship: listening. She realized what she heard as she listened to music was limited and yearned to hear and understand more. Her self-directed research led her to a month of studies in Paris at the 2017 European American Music Alliance - Nadia Boulanger Institute. There, she studied counterpoint, keyboard harmony, analysis, and score-reading with students of the acclaimed 20th century teacher Nadia Boulanger and her methodology.
A passionate communicator, Stephania had always been writing but at that time was drawn into copywriting for the Calgary Philharmonic by her former employer. A life-long educator, Stephania also began tutoring English Language Arts, teaching voice lessons, and working as a resident artist for the Calgary Board of Education and Pokrova Ukrainian Arts Network in Ottawa.
In 2019, Stephania merged her interests: she began a Master of Arts in Music Education program at the Eastman School of Music with a research focus on music listening in audience engagement and community settings. She graduated in May 2020, having developed an audiation-based listening workshop series for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra that became a case study for her thesis.
She also earned the Arts Leadership Certificate, interning in development for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and education for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Her case study on the construction of the new Mount Royal Conservatory building and Bella Concert Hall was published by the Eastman Case Studies, and she was awarded the Teaching Assistant Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
Stephania is currently working with several Eastman School of Music faculty on research projects while teaching, writing, and singing. Ultimately, she hopes to work in an administrative position with a performing arts company to develop innovative and evidence-based audience engagement programming.
For more information, or to discuss performance, education, writing, research, or administration opportunities, please be in touch here.