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- Serena Hill-LaRoche
Faculty and Staff
Serena Hill-LaRoche
| Title: | Assistant Professor / Voice Director of Carolina Music Studios (CMS) |
| School of Music | |
| Email: | shilllaroche@mozart.sc.edu |
| Phone: | 803-777-4026 |
| Office: | School of Music Room 225 |
| Resources: | UofSC Voice Program Opera at USC Carolina Music Studios |
Serena Hill LaRoche, DMA, is an active concert artist who has recently performed works including Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Mozart’s Requiem, and Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem. She has appeared as a soloist and clinician with festivals and arts organizations including 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. Previous engagements include Greenville Light Opera Works, South Carolina Philharmonic, Bechtler Museum of Art, Palmetto Opera, Firenze Lirico, Columbia Museum of Art, and the Abadía Benedictina de la Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos, with additional performances in Spain and Italy.
Her operatic roles include Micaëla in Carmen, the Lady with the Cake Box in Postcard from Morocco, Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, Pamina in 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” and for possessing “a thrilling instrument at the top of its range.” She was a finalist in the Southeast Region Metropolitan Opera Auditions in 2003; a NATS Artist Award Regional Finalist in 2008 and 2012; and Artist of the Year with FBN Productions, Inc., in 2006. She also received the Bizet Award in the 2003 Orpheus National Young Artist Vocal Competition and was a Palmetto Opera Competition finalist in 2005.
In collaboration with pianist Catherine Garner, LaRoche performs regularly across the United States, with a focus on new music and works by underrepresented composers. Their album, Saloons, Salons, and Salutations: A Celebration of Female Composers, was released by Albany Classical in 2023. In May 2026, Albany Records released their newest album, Unsung Gems: A Treasury of Songs by American Women Composers.
LaRoche earned the Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees in vocal performance from the University of South Carolina, as well as a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Alabama. She is currently Assistant Professor of Voice at the University of South Carolina, where she teaches applied voice, diction, and vocal pedagogy to undergraduate and graduate singers.