Norah Long

Born in Hollywood to a musically-inclined family–including cousin Richard Crooks who was a leading Metropolitan Opera tenor in the 1940s, and father Ron Long who toured with Stephen Stills and Peter Torkin the 1960s–Norah Long has built upon her family's legacy, establishing a vibrant performing career of her own spanning music, theater, and film. Long’s career began when, after moving to Minneapolis from Columbia MO, she was hired still in college as the youngest-ever member of The Dale Warland Singers, a professional choral ensemble. Soon branching into solo work, she has since performed over 60 leading roles in regional theaters across the country, including Florida Stage, Arvada Center, Arts Garage Delray Beach, Riverside Theatre, and Paper Mill Playhouse. In the Twin Cities where she resides, Long has established ongoing working relationships with the Guthrie Theater, Nautilus Music-Theater, History Theatre, and Chanhassen Dinner Theatres; for St. Paul’s Skylark Opera, she has performed 16 roles and recorded a CD of Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy duets. She also has a thriving non-musical theater career, in classical work from Strindberg to Shakespeare and contemporary work from Goetz to Gilman. Long has collaborated on a number of premieres, working alongside Bobby McFerrin, Jeffrey Hatcher, Ricky Ian Gordon, John DeLancie, Francesca Zambello, Chan Poling, Kira Obolensky, Stephen Paulus, Rachel Sheinkin, Rachel Portman, Marsha Norman, and many others in the developmental process. She has premiered eight fully-produced musicals and has recorded and premiered many musical compositions including Mark Warhol’s Crazy Rabbit Songs for which she memorized seventy pages of random-note music. Long has toured Japan, Germany, and the US as a concert soloist and was featured on Lorie Line’s 2008 holiday tour and CD. In 2013, Norah was a featured soloist with the National Symphony of Cuba, commissioning and premiering symphonic Broadway arrangements by Tony Award winner Robert Elhai for Havana’s nationally-televised Cuba disco Festival finale concert.Resident soloist at St. Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church, a 5,000-member congregation, Long is a frequent guest speaker and performer for churches, universities, and arts organizations and and has often been on-air forMinnesota Public Radio as both performer and guest host. Long is also an ongoing Teaching Artist for Upstream Arts, an arts-based education program for people with disabilities. She is featured int he short filmThe Switch Keydue for a 2015 premiere and appeared live and on video throughout 2011-12 as founder Juliette Gordon Low for the Girl Scouts’ Centennial celebrations. Long has been honored inMinneapolis Star-Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press best-of lists multiple times and has been profiled in feature articles for newspapers and magazines around the U.S, including American Record Guide, Opera Today Magazine, and Backstage Magazine.