“In Act I, Scene III, Villa’s Otello was well-partnered with Jenny Ohrstrom’s full lyric soprano as Desdemona in Già nella notte densa. She sang beautifully and with sensitivity and Villa matched her in the tender duet, when Otello’s joy at once again being with Desdemona overtakes him. A well-staged, well-acted and well-sung romantic moment.”
JENNY OHRSTROM has been captivating audiences and holding audiences captive since she was first introduced to The Little Mermaid as a kid.
She was an avid French Horn player all through middle school and high school, and went on to march Mellophone with the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps after graduating. A chance run-in at college with a friend from high school led to Jenny auditioning for Mt. San Antonio College’s choir, and she never looked back. Jenny’s involvement with singing started with choir, but it steadily expanded to vocal jazz, a cappella, opera, backup vocals, and video game samplers. Jenny’s college plans switched from French Horn Performance to Voice Performance, and she went on to get her AA (Mt. San Antonio College), BM (Central Washington University), and MM degrees (CSU Northridge) in Voice Performance.
Singing has taken Jenny to prestigious stages all over North America and Europe, including national and regional ACDA conventions (Los Angeles, Seattle, and Salt Lake City), Carnegie Hall, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Benaroya Hall, the Long Center, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Choral Grand Prix competitions (Varna, Bulgaria and Gorizia, Italy), the Operaen in Oslo, Norway, and Schlossbergbühne Kasematten in Graz, Austria.
Some of Jenny's favorite roles to perform include Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, Belinda in Dido and Aeneas, La Contessa in Le nozze di Figaro, Mother in Hansel and Gretel, the title role in Alcina. Jenny has also been seen on stage for concert performances of arias from Il trovatore, Carmen, Così fan tutte, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Rusalka.
Jenny is a winner of CSUN’s and CWU’s Concerto Competitions, and a recipient of the Village Voices Chorale Scholarship, Nancy Hooker Scholarship, NATS-LA Summer Study Grant, CSUN Graduate Research Fellowship, and the CSUN Graduate Fellowship for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity. She is honored to be an alumna of the programs Classical Singing in New York in June, Lidal North in Oslo, Norway, the Opera Studio of the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, and the Napa Music Festival in Napa, California.
Before moving back to Texas, Jenny was on the faculty at Cypress College (Cypress, CA), a member of de Angelis Vocal Ensemble and the Charles Dickens Carolers (Los Angeles, CA), and the soprano section leader and soloist at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church (Morovia, CA).
Jenny is the soprano section leader and a soloist at St. Martin's Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Director of University Singers and on the voice faculty at Concordia University Texas, one of the soprano section leaders at Last Chance Choir Camp, and maintains a large private voice studio in the Austin, Texas area. You can also catch Jenny performing with Austin Opera, most recently in Everest.
Jenny loves digging deep into vocal music and turning the dots and lines on a sheet of paper into magic. Jenny teaches healthy vocal techniques that free singers to express themselves through music. She’s a firm believer in the healing power of music, and is grateful for all of the friendships made on her musical journey. It’s an honor to teach students to hone their skills, and free them to create their own paths and build relationships through music.
When she’s not singing, teaching, or hanging out with her family, Jenny enjoys reading sci-fi and fantasy novels, gardening, and playing video games.