Celeste Marie Johnson is a pianist, coach, chorus director, and educator dedicated to exploring the compelling intersection of text and music in vocal repertoire. Currently the Principal Coach and Chorus Director at Minnesota Opera, she has held music staff positions with companies and festivals across the country, including the Lakes Area Music Festival, Opera Saratoga, the Boston University Opera Institute, Odyssey Opera, Inland Northwest Opera, the Atlantic Music Festival, and the Hawai’i Performing Arts Festival. In 2018, she was a faculty member at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.
A sought-after recital partner, Celeste regularly performs in the Schubert Club Courtroom Concerts recital series, including a world premiere of Libby Larsen's North Shore Songs with mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski in 2021. She has been featured by LOFT Recital and curated a program for the MN Opera Apart Together Artist Showcase series during the pandemic. She was a part of Renée Fleming's Song Studio at Carnegie Hall in 2020 and is a former recipient of the Marc and Eva Stern Fellowship at SongFest. Celeste will present Songs of Sun and Snow with tenor Evan LeRoy Johnson as part of MNOP+ in November.
Celeste received her BM in Piano Performance from Baylor University, MM in Ensemble Arts: Vocal Accompanying from The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and DMA in Collaborative Piano from Boston University. Passionate about holistic approaches to wellbeing for artists, she became a Certified Professional Coach through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching in November 2021. Celeste loves spending time with her husband Keith and cat Pushkin and enjoys practicing yoga, hiking, cooking, and poetry.