Rate My Professor Keith Colclough

Keith Colclough serves as Associate Professor of Music and Director of Opera in the Fine Arts Division of Seaver College at Pepperdine University. A bass-baritone praised in Opera News for his "rich authoritative" voice, he maintains an active performing career as a soloist with organizations including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Opera Santa Barbara, Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera, Pacific Opera Project, LACMA Sundays Live, Salastina Society, and the Santa Barbara Choral Society. He also gives frequent recitals of art songs and musical theater, and has experience as a choral and studio singer. Dr. Colclough was a vocal fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar, Music Academy of the West, the Aspen Opera Center, and Songfest. He served as a studio artist at Opera Santa Barbara and participated in their Opera Lab outreach program, improvising operas at elementary schools in Santa Barbara and Ventura County.

Dr. Colclough earned his Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2015 and 2013, respectively, and a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Music, Voice, from Pepperdine University in 2008. As a Student Fulbright Scholar, he studied voice at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Mannheim, Germany, and performed with the Opernschule. His DMA document, "Schubert's Incorporation and Transcendence of Recitative in Lieder" (2015), explores the influence of opera and cantata on early German Lieder. Additional academic interests include vocal acoustics, vowel perception, German language, and vocal literature. He has received a Chancellor's Fellowship to UC Santa Barbara and participated in the National Association of Teachers of Singing Intern Program. Previously, Dr. Colclough taught at the AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Los Angeles. At Pepperdine, he directs the Flora L. Thornton Opera Program, producing annual fully-staged operas in original languages such as Massenet's Cendrillon, Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, Purcell's Dido & Aeneas, Strauss's Die Fledermaus, Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance and H.M.S. Pinafore, and Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte, and Cosi fan tutte. He has presented lectures including "First Formant Tuning" at the University of Northern Colorado (2018), "American Art Songs for Young Men" at the Classical Singer Convention (2017), and his DMA lecture recital on Schubert's Lieder (2015).