Presented with the Ornest Award for her “excellence in academic and musical study,” Gwen Paker is equally at home on the operatic stage and in the concert hall. She currently studies at the Eastman School of Music, where she won the 2019 Eastman Voice, Opera, and Vocal Coaching Department Concerto Competition. An avid performer of opera, Gwen’s credits with Eastman Opera Theatre include Eleonora in Salieri’s Prima la musica e poi le parole, La Chauve-Souris in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, and Laura in Polly Pen and Peggy Harmon’s Goblin Market.* Gwen also sang Gertrude Stein in Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and spent a summer as a Studio Artist with Opera In The Ozarks, where she was awarded “Outstanding Performance by a Female Studio Artist.” With the German Vocal Arts Institute, Gwen performed as Zweite Dame and Zweite Knabe in Die Zauberflöte. Gwen has also excelled as a concert soloist. As the winner of the Eastman Voice Concerto Competition, she would have performed Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra.* Gwen made her Kodak Hall debut as the soprano soloist in Franz Liszt’s Missa Solemnis with the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dr. William Weinert. She covered the soprano soloist in Britten’s War Requiem with the Eastman Philharmonia, again conducted by Dr. Weinert.