Saundra DeAthos has been heralded for the remarkable quality of both her vocal and dramatic presentations. Excelling in a varied and broad repertoire, she began her career as an Adler Fellow and in the Merola Opera Program with San Francisco Opera. Of her San Francisco Opera performances, OPERA Magazine admired, “Saundra DeAthos imparted vulnerability and an elegant soprano.” Accordingly, the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE noted, “Saundra DeAthos delivered a virtuosic performance… a real charmer of a soprano, [she] made one love the character.” SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE confirmed, “Saundra DeAthos nailed all of [her] coloratura flights and showed perfect timing.” She has received rave reviews at Utah Festival Opera for her portrayals of Giorgetta in Il Tabarro and the title role in Suor Angelica. The HERALD JOURNAL states that, “Defying typecasting, soprano Saundra DeAthos plays an unfaithful wife in Il Tabarro and a doomed nun minutes later in Suor Angelica. Ms. DeAthos captures the emotional torment in both roles, and her singing is breathtaking, especially in her tragic aria “Senza Mamma.”  Ms. DeAthos has graced the stages of many outstanding opera companies across the United States.  Ms. DeAthos made a stunning role debut as Cio Cio San in Madama Butterfly with the Helena Symphony and reprised the title role once again with Amarillo Opera. The North Texas Performing Arts News described her as “vocally…stunning. She meets the extravagant demands that Puccini makes on his hero without any strain whatsoever. She has a full-throated lyric-verging-on-verismo soprano and can still float a gorgeous pianissimo note at the top of her range. In the final scene, she ate the scenery and left the audience in tears.” Ms. DeAthos also received rave reviews for her portrayal of Micaëla in Carmenwith Denyce Graves for Opera Charleston. Of her heart-rending performance as Micaëla, Charleston’s POST AND COURRIER exclaimed, “Soprano Saundra DeAthos, who played Micaëla, possessed a beautiful, sweet tone and made you want to shake some sense into José, who might have married her if he hadn’t fallen for the wild gypsy temptress.” The CITY PAPER added, “Soprano Saundra DeAthos melted hearts with her portrayal of Micaëla; her silvery, emotionally naked singing made me cry in her lovely Act III aria.”  POST AND COURIER comments that her Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni is “portrayed to great comic effect with her supple voice…she is a woman on the verge.  Every time she came reeling onto the stage, DeAthos was a breath of deliciously craven air.”  In addition to her operatic activities, Ms. DeAthos performs regularly with symphony orchestras throughout the United States.  Saundra offers a remarkably broad concert repertoire that encompasses Handel’s Messiah and Jeptha, Mozart’s Requiem and Coronation Mass, Dvořák’s Te Deum, Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Poulenc’s Gloria, and Fauré’s Requiem. She was featured in Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem with Charleston Symphony and Chorus for a performance telecast on PBS.   In addition to a successful performance career, Saundra DeAthos has also gained recognition as an educator, a producer, and a director of opera.  She currently serves as the Director of Opera and Associate Professor of Voice at the College of Charleston. At the College, she produced and directed Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites and La voix humaine, and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.  During the pandemic, she created and produced an outdoor festival as a performance opportunity for CofC Opera students, as well as students in Theatre and Dance, at the College of Charleston’s beautiful 981-acre Stono Preserve. The festival was aptly called “Arts Under the Oaks”.  Not only was there a semi-staged performance of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro that she produced and directed, and a Children’s Opera performance of The Three Little Pigs, but as producer, she also oversaw performances of dance and music theatre in collaboration with CofC Theatre and Dance Department.  It was a two-day event with an invited, socially distanced, live audience and offered a livestreamed option.  Post pandemic, Saundra moved the performances to the main stage at the Sottile Theatre in the Spring of 2022 and established an official collaboration with the Charleston Symphony.  At that time, she produced Die Zauberflöte in collaboration CofC Department of Theatre and Dance.  In 2023, she produced and directed Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, and in 2025, Giordano’s rarely performed one-act opera, Il Re.   In the Fall of 2025, Saundra will enjoy a sabbatical performing and recording the song cycle, “…and we were the flawless”, she commissioned composer and pianist, Paul Sánchez, to write in collaboration with poet, Marcus Amaker.  In January 2026, she will assume the role of Chair for the College of Charleston’s Music Department.  Previously, she spent ten years as the Music Coordinator in the Theatre Department at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. She resides in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, Harold, and two children, Maggie and Gray. Twice GRAMMY®-nominated pianist and composer Paul Sánchez has been praised as a “great artist” (José Feghali; Cecilia Rodrigo), “the ideal interpreter… performing with clear virtuosity” (Fanfare Magazine), for his “clarity, sensitivity” (The New Yorker), and “prodigious technical capacities” (The Rehearsal Studio). ​ In a Fanfare Magazine review of Sánchez’ CD Magus Insipiens, featuring three of Sánchez’ song cycles, Colin Clarke wrote, “This is one of the most beautiful discs in my collection…. Haunting in the extreme,” and WFMT’s Henry Fogel, former president of the League of American Orchestras and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, described it as “hauntingly beautiful music… generously filled with melodic inspiration and evocative atmosphere…. works of originality and a distinctive musical personality.” Sherod Santos, American poet and translator of the Sappho texts in Sánchez’ song cycle ὁδοιπορία (the journey), describes Sánchez’ composition as “a magnificent achievement, a work of great innovation and hypnotic effect, impossible to walk away from unmoved.” Sánchez’ the journey is the subject of a chapter in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Song Cycles: Analytical Pathways Toward Performance, alongside chapters on works by Samuel Barber, William Bolcom, George Crumb, Benjamin Britten, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larson, Francis Poulenc, Dmitri Shostakovich, and other composers. ​ Sánchez is a recording artist with twelve CD releases as of 2025, and his compositions have been featured on the Soundset Recordings and Albany labels. Sánchez is a recording artist with twelve CD releases as of 2025, and his compositions have been featured on the Soundset Recordings and Albany labels. His most recent CD, Songs in Flight (Cedille Records, 2025), was a BBC Music Magazine “Album of the Month” and features music by Shawn Okpebholo, in collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens, Will Liverman, Reginald Mobley, and Karen Slack. Recent releases include his GRAMMY®-nominated Dreams of a New Day (Cedille Records) with baritone Will Liverman, which was a BBC Music Magazine “Album of the Month” and reached number 1 on Billboard’s “Traditional Classical Albums” chart; his GRAMMY®-nominated Lord, How Come Me Here? (Navona Records), with mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and baritone Will Liverman; Seria Ludo – Piano Music by Graham Lynch (Divine Art Records), for which Fanfare Magazine praised Sánchez’ “performance…. grand, noble, reflective, yet shot through with internal light;” and Mysteria Fidei (Innova Records) with his wife, soprano Kayleen Sánchez, as the duo Far Song, performing new music of David M. Gordon and praised by Fanfare Magazine for its “transcendental performances.” His live recordings of songs by Charles Ives, with William Sharp, are featured in the film “Charles Ives’ America” (Naxos Records), which, according to JoAnn Falletta, “may very well be the most important film ever produced about American music.” ​ Of his performances of Ives and Gershwin for Joseph Horowitz’ Music Unwound: American Roots, a program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Horowitz stated, “Sanchez’ account of Rhapsody in Blue was original – the most bewitchingly lyric I have ever encountered.” ​ His focus on new music has resulted in world-premiere performances of several important new works composed for him, including Fabular Arcana, a four-movement piano concerto by David M. Gordon; Consolation New, a work for one pianist playing two pianos, by David M. Gordon; White Book 3 and Absolute Inwardness, solo piano works by Graham Lynch; Mysteria Incarnationis, written for Kayleen and Paul Sánchez by David M. Gordon; and Two Black Churches, written for baritone Will Liverman and Sánchez by Shawn Okpebholo. ​ Sánchez is an audio engineer and producer, with credits for albums published by Albany Records, Divine Art Records, Innova Records, Navona Records, and Soundset Recordings. ​ Dr. Sánchez serves as Associate Professor of Piano at the Texas State University School of Music. He previously served as Director of Piano Studies and the International Piano Series at the College of Charleston, and on faculty at Baylor University and Wheaton College. He is co-founder of arts organizations including the San Francisco International Piano Festival, the Charleston Chamber Music Intensive, and the Dakota Sky Foundation. ​ Sánchez, a Fulbright fellow from 2005–2007, earned his Master of Spanish Music degree under Maria Teresa Monteys and Alicia de Larrocha. He studied with Tamás Ungár at Texas Christian University, graduating summa cum laude, and with Douglas Humpherys at the Eastman School of Music, where he completed his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. ​ Sánchez is a Steinway Artist.