The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance announces that Chía Patiño will join the Department of Voice & Opera as an assistant professor in the fall of 2024. She brings extensive directing experience, having worked with opera companies in the US, Spain, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Chile, México, Brazil, Nicaragua, United Arab Emirates, and Egypt.
“I am honored to join the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. I perceive SMTD as a river of creativity that wants to feed the world, asking the right questions while flowing freely and nurturing the known and the unknown,” shared Patiño. “This feels quite exciting to me and I can’t wait to join the community of students and faculty and explore together.”
Patiño served as the executive and artistic director of the National Theatre in Quito, Ecuador, for ten years. Producing and curating five hundred events annually for the city and country, she elevated the level of the theatre to a respected and recognized institution in Latin America, and it joined Ópera Latinoamérica (OLA). In 2019, she was invited to join the Butler Opera Center at the University of Texas in Austin, and she re-established her connection with the Aspen Music Festival, where she teaches each summer.
Patiño is particularly interested in directing new works. This year she directed the workshop of Yevgeniy Sharlat and Stephanie Fleishmann’s Paradiso, written and performed by Estelí Gomez and Hub New Music. She will be directing The House on Mango Street by Derek Bermel and Sandra Cisneros in 2025 and is involved in the development of Macabea by Suzanne Farrin, based on The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector.
Recent engagements include the Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Tenerife, Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS, Northern Lights Music Festival, Williamsburg Opera, and the Butler Opera Center at the University of Texas.
“My colleagues and I are very pleased to welcome Chía Patiño to the department, where her voice will be an exciting addition to our team,” said Scott Piper, associate professor of music, Norma L. Heyde faculty development professor, and chair of the Department of Voice and Opera. “We believe that Chía’s many strengths will inspire our students and extend the reach of our department’s long-standing history of accomplishment in the vocal arts.”
Patiño completed her undergraduate degrees in composition and piano at the University of Louisville, and holds an MM and a DM in composition from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington, where she wrote and produced her opera Dreamwalker. She received her MFA in opera stage directing at the University of Cincinnati.