Susan Davenny-Wyner

Susan Davenny Wyner (born Susan Davenny, October 17, 1943) is a nationally acclaimed American conductor based in Massachusetts. Davenny Wyner had a promising career as a soprano, which was ended by an automobile/bicycling accident that damaged her vocal cords.

Early life and education Davenny Wyner was born October 17, 1943, in New Haven, Connecticut, where her father, pianist Ward Davenny, was professor of music at Yale University. She was originally trained as a violinist and violist. Following early studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Hartford School of Music, she graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University in 1965 with degrees in both comparative English literature and in music. She entered into vocal studies with Herta Glaz from 1969 to 1975. She received a Fulbright scholarship and a grant from the Ford Foundation, and also won the Walter W. Naumberg Prize. Ms. Wyner made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Woglinde in Das Rheingold under Erich Leinsdorf, on October 8, 1981. Davenny-Wyner studied at Yale and Columbia University and received conducting fellowships for study at the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. Since, she has had conducting positions at the New England Conservatory, at the Cleveland Institute of Music, at Wellesley College and Cornell University, where she had once studied, at Brandeis University. In 1998, she was the assistant conductor at Chicago's Grant Park Music Festival, a position that was created especially for her. She also leads two opera companies as music director and conductor: Opera Western Reserve in Youngstown, Ohio, since its creation in 2004 and the Boston Midsummer Opera since 2007.