Serena Hill LaRoche, DMA, is an active concert artist having recently been featured in works such as Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Mozart’s Requiem, and Vaughan William’s Dona Nobis Pacem. She has had the opportunity to engage as a soloist or clinician with various festivals and arts organizations, including most recently with the Puerto Rico Center for Collaborative Piano, Music on a WIM (Women’s Initiative Music Series), Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra, Masterworks Chorus, and Varna International Music Academy, as well as notable past engagements with Greenville Light Opera Works, South Carolina Philharmonic, Bechtler Museum of Art, Palmetto Opera, Firenze Lirico, Columbia Museum of Art, and Abadía Benedictina de la Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos with other performances in both Spain and Italy. Her opera credits include Micaela (Carmen), Lady with the Cake Box (Postcard from Morocco), Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus), Fiordiligi (Cosi fan tutte), Countess (Le Nozze di Figaro), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) and the title role in Dominick Argento’s Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night.

An award-winning vocal artist, LaRoche has earned praise for her “power, virtuosity…and elegance” with “a thrilling instrument at the top of its range.” She was a 2003 finalist in the Southeast Region Metropolitan Opera Auditions, a 2012 and 2008 NATS Artist Award Regional Finalist and the 2006 Artist of the Year with FBN Productions, Inc. In 2003, she was the Bizet Award winner for the Orpheus National Young Artist Vocal Competition and a Palmetto Opera Competition Finalist in 2005.

In collaboration with pianist Catherine Garner, LaRoche performs regularly across the U.S., with a strong focus on new music and works by underrepresented composers. Their album “Saloons, Salons, and Salutations: a celebration of female composers,” was released with Albany Classical in 2023. An upcoming album release of female composers is scheduled in 2026 with PARMA Records

LaRoche earned a Doctorate in Musical Arts as well as a Master of Music from the University of South Carolina, both in Vocal Performance, and a Bachelor of Music from the University of North Alabama. Currently, she is an assistant professor of voice at the University of South Carolina where she has the great privilege to work with eager undergraduate and graduate singers in applied voice, diction, and vocal pedagogy courses.