Michele Baron (B.A. Colgate, M.A. Norwich University) has sung on stages in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, with numerous performance credits in musical theater, operetta, opera, and in various concert genres. Traveling as a Fulbright Scholar throughout Southeast Asia, and, thereafter, with her U.S.-diplomat husband, Ms. Baron has continued her ongoing arts and outreach work in locations around the world, teaching vocal master classes and performing as a vocal soloist, instrumentalist, and indigenous-music stylist with a variety of orchestras, musical groups and performance artists, in addition to ongoing performance and outreach projects in various forms of writing, visual, and other arts.
Ms. Baron’s vocal performances include solo appearances with orchestras including the Royal Thai Navy Orchestra, the Orchestre National du Senegal, the Penang Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the San Francisco Concert Orchestra, The Manas (Kyrgyzstan) Presidential Orchestra, as well as with regional concert orchestras, jazz ensembles, bands, chamber orchestras, string ensembles, pianists, guitarists, and with world-music instrumental groups around the world, in settings ranging from local-to-national outdoor festivals, formal concerts on grand stages, to live-in-performance (national) television and radio broadcasts, and live-in-performance CD and film recordings.
Her leading-role performances include: Eliza in My Fair Lady, Lili in Carnival, Maria in West Side Story, Maria in The Sound of Music, Anna in The King and I, Rosabella in The Most Happy Fella; Rose May Bud in Ruddigore, Yum-Yum in The Mikado, Laetitia in The Old Maid and the Thief, Geraldine in A Hand of Bridge, Lucy in The Telephone; Lizzie in The Ballad of Baby Doe, Christine in The Phantom of the Opera, Susannah in Susannah, Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Pamina in The Magic Flute, Tatiana in Eugene Onegin, Maddalena in Andrea Chenier, Violetta in La Traviata, Tosca in Tosca, Marguerite in Mephistofele, Mimi in La Boheme, Liu in Turandot, and numerous others.
Ms. Baron also plays the flute, the U.S. fife, First Nations drums, Japanese fife, Japanese Shimee and O-Taiko drums, African drums, Thai kaen and glong, the Afghani Harp, and the Burmese Harp, among other instruments. One of her paintings has been displayed electronically as part of a MoMA (New York) exhibit of postwar impressionist-style art; her multi-arts visual poem-and-aria “Amelia’s Scream” has been displayed as part of Light City Baltimore On Demand. Ms. Baron has been presented an International Day of Music Citation (from the Minister of Culture in Kyrgyzstan) for her vocal performances. Closer to home, Ms. Baron has been honored with a Maryland General Assembly Citation (awarded by Senator Susan C. Lee), for written and spoken-word poetry.