Nicole Percifield attends the 2024 TSM Academy courtesy of the Dianne Henderson Fellowship.

Hometown: High River, Alberta 

Canadian Mezzo-Soprano Nicole Percifield has featured in concert performances with New Haven Symphony (Messiah), Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (D. Scarlatti’s Salve Regina and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater), North Bay Symphony (Elgar’s Sea Pictures) and the Minnesota Orchestra. Recently, Percifield performed Beethoven’s Mass in C with the UTSO under conductors Uri Mayer and Dr. Jamie Hillman, and won the 2024 Jim and Charlotte Norcop Prize in Song. 

A graduate of Yale Opera, Percifield has worked with Minnesota Opera (Salome, Faust), Santa Fe Opera (Le Nozze di Figaro, Rigoletto), Central City Opera (Werther, Cendrillon), the Banff Centre (Die Zauberflöte), and Opera Theatre of St. Louis (Ghosts of Versailles). She was a finalist at the Metropolitan Opera New England Regionals and performed Debussy’s Chansons Baudelaire at Carnegie Hall with Yale in New York. Percifield recently featured on CBC’s Tapestry program, performing and speaking about composer Gavin Fraser’s new work, Shared Isolation, inspired by birdsong collected during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Percifield is pursuing her doctorate at the University of Toronto with Wendy Nielsen, where she received the Joseph-Armand CGS Doctoral Scholarship. She can be heard singing the roles of Cathleen (Riders to the Sea), and Hostess (At the Boar’s Head), recorded live at the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw, Poland. The International Classical Music Awards nominated the recording for Best Opera Album, 2017.