Andrea Solya

Biography

Dr. Andrea Solya currently serves as the Interim Director of Choral Activites and Teaching Associate Professor of Choral Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she also directs the University of Illinois Chamber Singers and Women’s Glee Club. She teaches choral conducting and literature to both undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Music.

In addition to her duties at the University of Illinois, she is in daily contact with middle school and high school choral singers of the Champaign-Urbana area as the director of Chamber Choir and Youth Chorale at the Central Illinois Children’s Chorus since 2006. A native of Hungary, she designed the current Musicianship curriculum used at the University of Illinois, which is based on a Hungarian model and stands on the major pillars of the Kodály method. During the summers, she teaches musicianship, conducting and choral methodology in the master’s program of the Kodály Institute at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Solya also serves as College/University Repertoire and Standards chair of the Illinois ACDA. Her research interest includes the choral music of Andreas Rauch as well as the art of teaching sight singing for the choral singer and beyond. She has performed and presented on national and international stages and has been working on a critical edition of 25 motets called “Thymiaterium Musicale” from 1625 by Rauch.