Frances Young Bennett

Frances Young Bennett has been a member of the voice faculty since 2005. She has directed several UCI Vocal Arts concerts: Nordic and Ukrainian Songs (2024), Liederabend (2025), and Echoes of England (2026). She currently sings for the Songs by Heart Foundation, providing music therapy to Alzheimer’s patients.

Solo recitals include Once Upon a Dream at Carnegie Hall, Music from the Heart at Royce Hall, Sundays at 4 on KUSC radio, Young Songmakers’ Almanac with Graham Johnson, and A Christmas Recital at the American Embassy in Paris. Bennett has been a featured soloist with the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, Musica Angelica and the Blackbird Music Project. She has performed with cellist Lynn Harrell at the Laguna Beach Music Festival and in a Holocaust Remembrance Concert at UC Irvine. The Los Angeles Times described Bennett as “a soprano of gossamer, sheer purity.”

Her operatic roles include Anne Trulove, The Rake’s Progress; Countess, Le nozze di Figaro; Rosalinda, Die Fledermaus; Rosina, Il barbiere di Siviglia; Pamina, Die Zauberflöte; Madame Silberklang, Der Schauspieldirektor; Belinda, Dido and Aeneas; Monica, The Medium; and Rosina Lickspittle, Hänsel und Gretel. Bennett was also a soloist in the IMAX film Top Speed.

Since 2020, Bennett has studied privately with renowned soprano Barbara Bonney. Bennett graduated from UC Irvine and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for postgraduate study at the Guildhall School of Music in London and the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh.

Awards include NATS Singer of the Year (Los Angeles chapter) and International Young Singer of the Year, Llangollen Musical Eisteddfod, Wales, U.K.

Bennett has taught at Pomona College, Fullerton College, and the summer programs SongFest and Idyllwild Arts.