Soprano Heather Dudenbostel is a versatile singing actress, voice teacher, and stage director maintaining an active career on both coasts.
In New York City she made her Off-Broadway debut in the rock opera The New Hopeville Comics. As a member of Pacific Opera, she performed as a featured soloist across the greater New York area and in Carnegie Hall. She also performed the role of Euridice in Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice, which was featured by New York Magazine as an “Editor’s Pick of The Week” in Classical Music. The work was remounted as part of a live recital on Classical KING FM.
In Los Angeles, she was bestowed the Selvin Family “Follow Your Dream” award for her performance as Jenny in Cabrillo Musical Theatre’s Production of Company and was nominated for “Best Featured Actress in a Musical” by broadwayworld.com for her portrayal as Grace in Annie.
She has enjoyed multiple engagements with the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra, Bellingham Chamber Chorale, the WWU Symphony, and the Marrowstone Music Festival, performing such as Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, the Fauré's Requiem, and Menotti’s The Telephone. She has appeared in leading roles in regional theaters across the country including Cabrillo Musical Theater, Duo Theater, Encore Dinner Theater, Glendale Centre Theater, Mac-Haydn Theater, Mount Baker Theater, American Theater of Actors, Collaborative Stages NYC, and ACT in Seattle. She also sang for five years with the multi-Seattle Blue Society Award-nominated Cat House Blues Band, has been featured in numerous cabaret shows and concerts in New York and Los Angeles, and appeared in national commercials.
As a stage director, Dudenbostel made her Carnegie Hall debut with the NYC-based Pacific Opera’s Great Moments in Opera. She served as director (and soprano soloist) in Robert Kapilow’s Green Eggs and Ham and White Christmas in concert with the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra and has staged numerous WWU Theatre and Music Department Mainstage productions, including A Little Night Music, Kiss Me Kate, and The Secret Garden and Street Scene (performing April 2023). With the WWU Opera Theater, she produced and directed Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and the Northwest premiere of William Bolcom’s Lucrezia—coinciding with the composer’s residency at WWU in 2018 as well as Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and the National Opera Association award-winning production of Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Carlisle Floyd’s Slow Dusk in 2022.
Prior to joining the voice faculty at WWU, she served on the faculties of AMDA College Conservatory of the Performing Arts and NYU. Dudenbostel is a member of NATS and regularly serves as an adjudicator, presenter, and clinician at various vocal conferences and competitions. She holds degrees from NYU and Western Washington University where she serves as Assistant Professor of Voice and Dramatic Arts and the Director of Opera Theater.