About

With spirit and sensitivity, soprano Chelsea Helm brings a versatile voice to the concert stage.

An active choral artist, Ms. Helm appears regularly with Seraphic Fire, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, True Concord Voices & Orchestra, The Thirteen, Upper Valley Baroque, and Conspirare, with whom she was nominated for 2020, 2022, and 2023 GRAMMY® awards for Best Choral Album. She has also appeared with Artefact Ensemble, Vocal Arts Ensemble Cincinnati, Kinnara, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the American Soloists Ensemble, the Voices of Ascension, Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity, the Charlotte Bach Festival, Spire Chamber Ensemble, the Benedict XVII Ensemble, and the Concordia Chamber Players. This season she makes debuts with the Washington National Cathedral and the Washington Bach Consort.

As an oratorio soloist, major concert appearances around the United States this season included the Mozart Great Mass in C Minor, Haydn’s Creation and Lord Nelson Mass, the Pergolesi Stabat Mater, the Bach B Minor Mass, and she was featured in performances of Carissimi’s Jephte, Mondonville’s Dominus Regnavit, and Poulenc’s Figure Humaine. She enjoys returning often to Orff’s Carmina Burana, Handel’s Messiah, and the Brahms Requiem, and with deep affection, the masses and concert works of Haydn. She recently made her international concert debut performing Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony at the Seoul Arts Center in South Korea. Ms. Helm has been featured in concert with the Symphony Orchestras of Tucson, Johnstown, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Muskegon, the Brevard Festival Orchestra, the Rice University Orchestra, and at the University of Wisconsin La-Crosse, Missouri State University, and Dartmouth College. 

Her latest recital performances have showcased Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, the Richard Strauss Vier Letzte Lieder, and new works by emerging composer Julia Evans. In recent seasons she has presented art song recitals in New Mexico, Virginia, and Utah, featuring works by Samuel Barber, Andre Previn, Maurice Ravel, Leonard Bernstein, Craig Johnson, Gabriel Kahane, and Andrew Maxfield.

With a special affinity for new music and contemporary premieres, Ms. Helm has created numerous roles in chamber works for live theatrical and digital mediums. She was featured in Houston Grand Opera’s NOW, Episode 2 from their Star-Cross’d series of short-form operas, premiered on YouTube, and written by Avner Dorman with libretto by John Grimmett. She also created the title role in Lolly Willowes, a contemporary chamber musical that premiered at MATCH Houston in 2019, composed by Michael Alec Rose and based on the novel by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Ms. Helm holds a Master of Music in Voice Performance from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, and a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance and Music Education from Western Michigan University. Also a WMU Gold Company alumna, Ms. Helm recorded a Downbeat award-winning album in 2013 with vocal jazz quartet the Four Corners.

In addition to a small private studio, Ms. Helm is an Adjunct Instructor of Voice at Southern Virginia University, as well as Senior Voice Faculty at the Classical Music Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

A Michigan native, she is now based in Washington, D.C.