Nancy Wait-Kromm

Nancy is the Director of Music Ministry at the Stone Church of Willow Glen, Presbyterian, USA. She recently returned from leading the choir on a tour of Ireland and Scotland, during July of 2008.

Music is provided during worship on most Sundays through the school year by our chancel choir, augmented by pipe organ, piano, and on occasion by others — a volunteer brass group, a volunteer bell choir and hired chamber players. The choir consists of over forty volunteer singers. She started in early September 2006.

Music Program: SCU

Nancy Wait-Kromm

Voice Faculty, Lyric Soprano

Nancy Wait Kromm, soprano, began her music studies as a violinist at age 8, joining the California Youth Symphony at age 10 and touring with them internationally at 12. This early performing experience, along with the rigors and discipline of learning an instrument, set the stage for her long -term association with music and musicians. A graduate of University of Illinois, she holds a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from that institution. She also was granted a teaching fellowship to Stanford University to pursue further graduate studies leading to the doctoral degree. She has toured extensively in the US and in Germany, Italy, and Austria.

Her present activities center around maintaining an active solo performing career and teaching studio, along with opera directing, translating, arranging, and nurturing a growing voice program at Santa Clara University. In addition to teaching many academic classes, Professor Kromm has worked with her voice colleagues to produce eight years of the critically acclaimed Art of the Song Festival. Ms. Kromm is also an active opera director and last month produced a highly successful evening of scenes from famous operas.

Other directing to her credit includes Mozart’s Bastien and Bastienne; Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Offenbach’s Lantern Marriage, Moore’s Gallantry and Emperor’s New Clothes, Amahl and the Night Visitors, and a host of scene programs. Kromm’s new singing translation and adaptation of Hansel and Gretel is in submission for publication.

Ms. Kromm’s singing schedule this season has included the Mozart and Faure Requiems, performances with the Monterey Symphony and Peninsula Symphony, a solo vocal recital at the University of Miami, and several solo art song recitals throughout the SF Bay area.

Ms. Kromm was heard as a featured soloist with the Mission Chamber Orchestra in Milan, Rome, Florence and Venice this past summer, and as featured soloist with the Monterey and Peninsula Symphonies for the past two seasons in works of Haydn, Mozart, and Bach.

The recipient of grants and fellowships, Kromm has attended the Aspen Festival of Music, the Goethe Institute in Germany, and was twice a finalist in the Fullbright international competition in New York. She also has won numerous awards, including awards from the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the California Music Educator’s Award, the Young Artist’s Award, and was twice a winner in the National Federation of Music Clubs National Competition. Ms. Kromm has recorded a Grammy award-winning disk of Nielsen’s Third Symphony for London-Decca with the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Herbert Blomstedt, and has been featured on numerous national broadcasts, including NPR, Good Morning America, and international radio and television programs.