Lisa Raatikainen

When I first came to Vermont in 1999 to study at Middlebury College, I immediately felt a sense of coming home. Since my graduation, I’ve lived in various parts of this gorgeous and free-spirited state, making music with some of its finest musicians, and teaching piano and voice to students of all ages.

Highlights from my musical life here include performing in and serving as choral director for the original Vermont cast runs of Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown; singing in Vermont composer Erik Nielsen’s original opera, A Fleeting Animal; and watching starry-eyed at my own studio’s piano recitals, as students who started with Twinkle Twinkle blow me away with sensitive renditions of Beethoven and Debussy.

I hope to give all of my students at Mater Christi a taste of just how powerful music can be when we work together attentively in the service of creating something beautiful.