(back to faculty list)

Laura Decher Wayte
(541) 346-3780
decherwayte@hotmail.com

Laura Decher Wayte, soprano, joined the UO voice faculty in 2007 as adjunct instructor. She has been teaching voice since 1999, including at the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, Loyola Marymount University, and privately. Wayte is gaining recognition for opera and concert work, singing both traditional and contemporary music. Since moving to Eugene from California, she has been a featured soloist twice with the Eugene Concert Choir and looks forward to engagements in 2008-09 with the Oregon Mozart Players and the role of Zerlina in Don Giovanni for Eugene Opera.

Originally from Seattle and a former newspaper reporter for the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, Wayte graduated with a master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she was awarded Outstanding Achievement in Opera Performance. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and German from the University of Vermont. Major voice teachers include Nina Hinson, Donald Stenberg, and Janet Parlova.

On the stage, Wayte appeared as Micaela with Nevada Opera, and as a soloist in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting. In 2001, she debuted with the Los Angeles Philharmonic singing music by Joaquin Rodrigo, and with the San Francisco Choral Society in Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. Other concert work includes Handel’s Messiah with the Santa Fe Symphony, Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Sacramento Choral Society, and a world premiere with Amsterdam’s Nieuw Ensemble. Her operatic repertoire
includes Clorinda in La Cenerentola, Mimi in La Bohème, Micaela in Carmen, and Beatrice in Beatrice et Benedict. A frequent soloist with Berkeley Opera, she performed Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Blanche in The Dialogues of the
Carmelites, and the title role in Lecoq’s La Fille de Madame Angot. A frequent soloist with Music at St. Albans in Los Angeles, Wayte performed oratorios by Mozart, Haydn, Handel, Brahms, and Bach.

As a mezzo-soprano, she performed the role of Hansel in San Francisco Opera Center’s Hansel and Gretel, and the title role in Berkeley Opera’s The Riot Grrrl on Mars, an adaptation of Rossini’s  L’Italiana in Algeri. Other mezzo-soprano roles include Angelina in La Cenerentola, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, and Dinah in Trouble in Tahiti. In addition, she covered several roles for San Francisco Opera.

Wayte was the 2002 NATSAA Regional winner representing California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada in the July 2002 finals. She was the 2001 NATS Los Angeles District Singer of the Year; a 2000 Winner of the Pasadena Opera Guild Vocal Prize; a National Finalist in the 1999 Loren L. Zachary Society Young Artist Vocal Competition; Grand Prize Winner of the 1998 San Francisco Concerto Orchestra International Vocal Competition; and a finalist in the 1999 Western Region Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions, the 1998 Portland Opera Eleanor Lieber Awards, and the 1997 Pacific Region Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions. She was a regional winner in the 1998 and 1999 McAllister Awards.