Artistic Personnel

Jean Strazdes

   Artistic and Chorale Director

Jean Strazdes is Seaglass' Founding Artistic Director (1993), the Choral Director, the Director/Music Director for Seaglass Players' musical theatre productions, as well as the past Director of the Overtones and Seaglass Kids.

She earned a Bachelor of Music and Art diploma from Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, a Master's in Music at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and did postgraduate doctoral work in Graz, Austria.

In her own right as a mezzo-soprano, Ms. Strazdes has performed extensively in the United States and Europe and toured Greece in the role of Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana. In St. Petersburg, Russia, she sang the leading role of Madam Flora in Menotti's opera, The Medium, in celebration of Catherine the Great's Theatre in The Hermitage Museum.

After teaching for a handful of years at Trinity College in Connecticut, Jean came to Ogunquit with the intention of traveling a few days a week to the college. Fate ruled otherwise: in 1993 she assembled a group of choristers she later christened "The Seaglass Chorale." Since then the non-auditioned Chorale has performed all over southern Maine as well as in Italy, Austria, Hungary, and at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. In November 2004, the Chorale joined the Paul Madore Chorale and sixty musicians from the North Shore Symphony Orchestra at Salem, Massachusetts to perform Brahms' Requiem.

Equally gifted in theatre, Jean's directing credits include The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, The Wizard of Oz, The King and I, Fiddler on the Roof, Camelot, Oliver!, Man of La Mancha, South Pacific, Into The Woods, and many others.

Recently, she performed the role of Principessa in Puccini's Suor Angelica with Boston Vocal Artists and continues to pursue her operatic career.

When not immersed in Seaglass events, Jean provides private voice lessons and serves as adjunct faculty (Voice) at Phillips-Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire.