WANDA BRISTER-RACHWAL, Assistant Professor of Voice, joined the College of Music faculty at Florida State University in 2003. Prior to this appointment, Miss Brister was Artist/Teacher of Voice at the University of Arizona, and served on the faculty at Baylor University. She taught privately in the New York metropolitan area for several years, and joined the faculty as artist-in-residence at the Schlern (Italy) International Music Festival in July, 2006.

Lyric mezzo-soprano Wanda Brister has sung in forty-three of the United States and in fifteen countries around the world. She has performed more than forty operatic roles with companies such as Opera Orchestra of New York, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Baltimore Opera, New Orleans Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Pittsburgh Opera Theater, Connecticut Grand Opera, Lyric Opera of Waco, and the New England Lyric Operetta. Miss Brister has been soloist with orchestras in several states, and has sung under the batons of Krzysztof Penderecki, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Rutter, John Nelson, Philippe Entremont, Arthur Fagen, Chris Nance, and Leopold Hager, to name a few.

Miss Brister performed over one hundred concerts with the solo quartet New York Vocal Arts Ensemble between 1986 and 1996 in a variety of situations, including festivals in Bulgaria, Germany, Poland, and a tour of the former Soviet Union. She is featured on Strauss Waltzes for Singing with the ensemble on the Arabesque label. She has also recorded a CD of French Mélodies (music of Chausson, Fauré, Debussy, Poulenc, and Satie), entitled Le premier matin du monde, released by Cambria Master Recordings in 2006. She is also featured on a CD entitled Clarikinetics on Mark Records.

Miss Brister has perfromed at some of the great halls in the United States, including a solo recital, three operas, and three oratorios on the main stage of Carnegie Hall. She has also concertized at Weill Recital Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and the Kennedy Center.

Miss Brister attended Loyola University of the South and holds degrees in vocal performance from the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Southwestern Louisiana. She served as an apprentice with the New Orleans Opera before enrolling at the Academy of Vocal Arts, Philadelphia, and then served as an apprentice with the Opera Company of Philadelphia. After studying with such operatic luminaries as Nell Rankin, Beverly Wolf, and Enrico Di Giuseppe, Miss Brister earned the Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, under the direction of Vocal Literature Scholar, Carol Kimball, in 2004.

Dr. Brister is an avid promoter of art song literature, and has sung recitals in fifteen states. She specializes in research on English composer, Madeleine Dring, as well as French and Polish vocal literature. She is a contributor to the NATS Journal of Singing, has been a clinician/recitalist for Alabama NATS, and a NATS teaching intern under James McKinney. As a winner of many prizes in opera, oratorio, and recital singing, she is also in demand as an adjudicator.

Dr. Brister maintains a personal website at www.wandabrister.com