Lara Bolton

Lara Bolton is a pianist, vocal coach, conductor, and arranger. A multi-faceted artist, the majority of her work centers on vocal collaborations across many genres. Operatic affiliations include San Francisco Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Diego Opera, Seattle Opera, Minnesota Opera, Washington Concert Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Florentine Opera, Quad Cities Symphony, Opera Santa Barbara, Out of the Box Opera, West Bay Opera, Opera Colorado, and Amarillo Opera. In 2022, Ms. Bolton conducted Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia for An Opera Theatre, and has led musical preparation for projects at the Guthrie and Jungle Theaters, and Theater Latté Da. She is the Artistic Director for the Opera Reading Project, and former Head of Music for Mill City Summer Opera, as well as an official pianist for the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition. Ms. Bolton is the interim Professor of Collaborative Piano and Coaching at the University of Minnesota, and maintains an active concert and recording career. In addition to classical music, she also regularly collaborates as a rock keyboardist, and arranges and co-creates various conceptual and genre-bending fusion projects. Her most recent fusion project was music directing Macbeth and the Weïrd Sisters, a conceptual piece centering the opera Macbeth, by Giuseppi Verdi.

Ms. Bolton is a former San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow and Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist at Washington National Opera. She helped develop a Young Artist Program for Opera Santa Barbara. Summer festival engagements include the Merola Opera Program, Music Academy of the West, Brevard Music Festival, and Interlochen Arts Camp. As an alumna of Interlochen Arts Academy, she received a Bachelor of Music Theory degree from the University of Michigan and a Master of Music in Collaborative Piano from the University of Maryland-College Park.