Kimberly Daniel de Acha has been on stage for nearly fifty years, singing musical theatre, opera, cabaret and pop, classical and country. She has laughed and cried, sung or talked her way through more than 200 productions, and twice that many concerts. National credits include Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts, North Shore Music Theatre, National Symphony Orchestra, Lincoln Center, Yale Repertory Theatre, Yale Concerts at Norfolk, the International Bach Society at Lincoln Center, Harvard University and Sanders Theatre Concerts at Harvard University, under batons that have ranged from Leonard Bernstein and Erich Kunzel, to Max Rudolf. TV and radio credits include The Mike Douglas Show, an NBC special hosted by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, appearances on ABC, NBC and CBS television, WQXR and WGBH Radio. Earlier this year (2007) she was featured in the Oscar nominated documentary, Rehearsing a Dream, highlighting her work as the Master Teacher for Voice for the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, a position she has held for the past four years.
Daniel is well known to South Florida audiences for her performances with New Theatre, GableStage, Dreamers Theatre, The Greater Miami Opera (as a guest artist with the Young Artists Program) Ring Theatre Professional Theatre Company (1990) and Festival Miami.
She has received numerous awards for her work, including Honorary Member for Life of Phi Kappa Phi, citing outstanding contributions to the arts. She has been recognized five times by the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society, and has received many performance awards throughout her professional career, including two National 1st Prize awards from the National Federation of Music Clubs, the Ethan Ayer Award, Regional 1st Prize winner of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, and a Kathryn Long Fellowship Award from the Metropolitan Opera. She has two Carbonell Awards, five Carbonell Nominations, A Curtains Up Award, and the 2006 New Times Editors Choice Award as Best Supporting Actress, for her performance as the Nurse in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
In l986, with husband Rafael de Acha, Daniel co-founded New Theatre, in Coral Gables, Florida—listed for several years as one of the 50 Best Theatres in America, by the New York Drama Guild. New Theatre commissioned and presented world premiers of dozens of new plays by national playwrights, including Anna in the Tropics, by Nilo Cruz, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and ran on Broadway in 2003—receiving a Tony nomination in 2004 for Best New Play.
Daniel de Acha has degrees from the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music and the New England Conservatory, and after many years as a faculty member at the University of Miami, Frost School of Music, now continues on as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Voice,
focusing on studio voice and acting for the singer. She founded of the Performing Arts Institute, providing Musical Theatre Program for High School Students, at U of M, each summer in July. She lectures, adjudicates, continues to train professional performers, and sits on the boards of arts related organizations. She is currently serving as a member of a Program Review Panel for the Miami Dade Division of Arts and Culture.
And, Daniel de Acha still is an active performer. Recently, she performed the role of Gertrude Stein, in the initial readings of Desmond Child’s musical, JazzAge and performed for Festival Miami in the past three seasons-- one concert honoring the legacy of Nadia Boulanger, another called Brothers and Sisters, featuring the writing of Holocaust survivors, and her one woman show, celebrating the legacy of Broadway legend, Jule Styne. That performance began a series of concerts and masterclasses at Georgia State University, Pennnsylvania State University and the University of Missouri. She also appeared in the world premiere of Ladies, and Not-So-Gentle Women, a play with music, written by Alfred Allan Lewis, and in 2008 will perform in Carly Simon’s opera, Rumulus Hunt, directed by Philllip Church.
email: deacha@miami.edu
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