Biography
The Madrid born soprano Marta Herrera had her first contact to music through piano and flute, with which she was awarded with the first prize in the prestigious German competition Jugend Musiziert three consecutive years in the genre of chamber music. After studying in the German School of Madrid and obtaining a Degree in Pharmacy, she began her vocal coaching with soprano Inmaculada Egido and received a Diploma from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) of the United Kingdom in the modality of Singing Music Performance. Concurrently to her singing studies, she provided artistic collaboration in the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid, where she sang in the lessons of Orchestral Direction and Vocal Accompaniment of Professors Antonio Moya Tudela and Juan Antonio Álvarez-Parejo. She completed her education as a soloist at the Internationale Sommerakademie of the Mozarteum University in Salzburg (Austria) and through several courses and masterclasses with Teresa Berganza, Barbara Bonney, Edda Moser, Miguel Zanetti, Horiana Branisteanu, Julio Alexis Muñoz and Jorge Robaina, as well as with Baroque music specialists Charles Brett, Ruth Holton and Robert Expert among others. She refined her dramatic skills thanks to the Course of Gestual Performance for Art Song Singers directed by Claudia de Siato.
Marta Herrera has had the opportunity of showing a vast repertoire of opera, zarzuela, operetta, oratorio and chamber music in many concert halls of Europe, USA and Latinamerica. She has worked under Oscar Gershensohn in the Third Annual Baroque Music Festival of Madrid and Dante Mazzola from La Scala of Milan in the Auditorio Padre Soler of the University Carlos III. With the company Agrupación Lírica de Madrid, she has been conducted by Montserrat Font in a large number of zarzuela main roles. In Italy, she performed a tour throughout the region of Puglia, whose closing concert in the Auditorio del Salone di Rappresentanza of Brindisi was broadcasted by the Italian television. Through another international tour she presented Spanish and Latinamerican music for voice, guitar and piano in the Salmagundi Arts Club and in the Steinway Hall of New York (USA), as well as in the Teatro Municipal of Villarica and in the Cultural Centre of Spain Juan de Salazar of Asunción (Paraguay), where she also led master classes of vocal technique for students of the Music Conservatory in Paraguay.
Recently, Ms. Herrera was invited by the Spanish Arts Foundation ARCYL to perform the solo role for soprano in the works Missa Katharina and Cantica de Sancto Benedicto by the contemporary composer Jacob de Haan with the Young Symphonic Band of Castilla y León and the University of Salamanca Choir under the direction of Johann Mösenbichler.
Her interest in History of Music and in unknown vocal repertoire led her to take courses in the Degree of History and Sciences of Music in the Complutense University of Madrid. In the last years, she has also deepened in Spanish folklore, especially in Flamenco and Classic Spanish Dance. At present, she is developing projects on opera-flamenco and lyric singing-tango fusion. Future engagements for next season include a monographic concert cycle devoted to the work for voice and piano of Joaquín Turina in Brussels and Berlin and a recital of art songs by José Inzenga in Madrid.
Marta Herrera lives now in Berlin, were she has performed Belinda´s role in Purcell´s Opera Dido and Aeneas in the XX Steglitz Festival of Ancient Music under conductor Egon Mihajlovič.