Kelli Estes
California native Kelli Estes is known for singing the high-flying and eccentric leading ladies of the opera, oratorio and musical theater stages. She is an original cast member of Opera Company of Brooklyn, Opera in the Heights, Allentown Concert Opera, Lone Star Lyric and Philadelphia’s Center City Opera Theater and has frequently performed with the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, Main Street Theater and Shreveport Opera. Estes proudly holds memberships in the prestigious Actor’s Equity Association, Houston Tuesday Musical Club and The Lambs, America’s first professional theater club. A Bachelor of Arts from California State University Fresno and Master of Music from the Moores School of Music have helped her carve out a wide-ranging career in the creative lyric arts that continues to evolve.
A 12-year stint in New York helped Estes expand her lyric skills to include writing and directing. As Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Houston’s summer chamber opera festival, Lone Star Lyric, she’s employed more than 80 of Houston’s finest singers producing 23 operas, operettas and musicals mining the gems of the chamber-sized lyric theater repertoire. Adding to her growing portfolio Estes created and produces LSL’s, Lyric Cabaret, an eight-month cabaret series featuring the Great American Songbook.
Estes is currently on faculty of Wharton County Junior College, has a private voice studio, a frequent clinician for master classes, workshops and guest judges for universities across the country as well as the Greater Houston NATS Competition, Texas Private Schools of Music and Houston Grand Opera’s High School Voice Studio. She proudly returns to the vocal faculty of the American Festival for the Arts in June 2014.
Lone Star Lyric
California Poppy