Mezzo-soprano Helēna Sorokina was born in Riga,
the capital of Latvia. She gained her first musical
experiences at the age of five in violin,
piano, and voice. She studied choral conducting at
the Latvian Music Academy and worked as a conductor with several
choirs. Since 2010 she has been studying singing at the
University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, first with
Claudia Rüggeberg and later with Antonius Sol. As a
participant in several choir conducting and singing
competitions she achieved honorable achievements. In
2008 she won the Emilis Melngailis Competition for Young
Conductors in Liepaja, Latvia, for the Best Interpretation of a
Choral Orchestra Work. In the same year, she was in the
final four of the International Choir Conductors Competition
Towards Polyphony in Wroclaw (Poland) and was awarded the Special
Jury Prize.
Sorokina works regularly as an oratorio and concert singer for
the EuropaChorAkademie and various orchestras in Germany and
abroad. Under the direction of Joshard Daus she sang the old
parts in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Handel’s
Messiah, Bruch’s The Song of the Bell, and
Mendelssohn’s Paulus in some of the largest concert
halls in Germany, Italy, and Austria. Thanks to her absolute
ear, in 2013 she was able to create one of the main roles (1st
woman) in the premiere of the opera Asteroid 62 by D.
Kourliandski and in 2016 the alto in the world premiere of the
opera performance Paradise by M. Hiendl at
the musikprotokoll, Styrian Autumn festival.
As a soloist she performed as part of the International
Bruckner Festival Linz 2014 (EntArteOpera). Since 2015 she
has been a scholarship holder of the American Institute of
Musical Studies (AIMS) and LiveMusicNow. She regularly
organizes recitals, including her 2015 concert “Shadow
Theater with Harpsichord” as part of the Riga Festival for Early
Music and Dance, and in 2016 the concert “Heavenly Sounds
and Voices” as part of Linzer Höhenrausch. She regularly
performs chanson programs together with Professor Karlheinz
Donauer and their popular interpretations include songs
sung by Zarah Leander and Marlene Dietrich. In this genre,
she has been performing in variety shows with the jazz orchestra
Eddie Luis and the Merciless. In 2017 she joined the vocal
ensemble for old and new music called “Cantando
Admont” under the direction of Cordula Bürgi. With this
ensemble she has performed at the Salzburg Festival, Yale NUS
College in Singapore, open music and the other string in Graz,
Klangspuren Schwaz, Imago Festival Ljubljana, Music and Church
Brixen, Brücken.
