Ms. Gorrell received her B.A. in music from Hood College, her M.Mu. in voice from the Yale University School of Music and her M.A. in musicology from the Yale University Graduate School. She also studied voice with Ilse Krause in the Peabody Preparatory Department of the Peabody Conservatory and was later a student of Paul Ulanowsky in the Yale Summer Music Festival at Norfolk, Connecticut. She received a Certificate at the International School for Singers, in 's-Hertogenbosch, Holland where she studied with Hermann Shey, Roy Henderson, Erik Werba, and Janine Micheau. She had three years of private vocal study in New York with Cornelius Reid and Carolina Segrera, as well as movement classes with Mata and Hari.
Ms. Gorrell has published articles on music and voice in The Music Review, The National Association of Teachers of Singing Bulletin, The Musical Mainstream, The Christian Science Monitor, The American Music Teacher, The National Association of Teachers of Singing Journal, Music and Musicians, Initiatives, Women of Note Quarterly, and the Journal of Singing. Her book, The Nineteenth-Century German Lied (Amadeus Press, Portland, Oregon, 1993) was selected by Choice Magazine in its January 1995 issue as one of the best academic books of the year. In 1998, it was reissued in a Korean edition. Her new book, Discordant Melody: Alexander Zemlinsky, His Songs, and The Second Viennese School has been published by Greenwood Press. She has been a guest artist in the United States, Canada, England, the Netherlands, and Germany and has sung for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Dutch Radio, and U.S. Public Radio and Television.
She has sung at numerous colleges and universities including: University of Saskatchewan, University of Victoria, Victoria Conservatory of Music, St. Hilda's College at Oxford University, Yale University, Emory University, University of Kentucky, University of Kansas, Goucher College, Georgetown University, University of Florida, Peabody Conservatory, Rockford College, Christopher Newport College, Pennsylvania State University, Harpur College of SUNY Binghamton, West Virginia University, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Central Piedmont Community College, Essex Community College, Queens College, NC, Appalachian State University, Wingate College, Columbia College, SC, Francis Marion College, Erskine College. Ms. Gorrell has presented recitals at various concert halls and art galleries including: the Cleveland Museum of Art, Merkin Concert Hall in New York, the Spencer Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Victoria Art Gallery, Canada.
Honors and Recognition: Woodrow Wilson Fellow to Yale University Francis Tate Fellowship to the Yale University School of Music Tuition and stipend fellowship to Yale University Graduate School Tuition, board, and room provided by the Ellen Battel Stoeckel Trust to the Yale University Summer School of Music and Art at Norfolk The Powell Players of the Chester Little Theater honored Lorraine Gorrell as the top female performer of the year for her role as the Mother Abbess in "The Sound of Music" (June, 1992).