Barbara Hill Moore
Barbara Hill Moore, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Meadows Foundation Distinguished Professor of Voice at Southern Methodist University (SMU) has enjoyed an illustrious teaching career at the St. Louis public and archdiocese schools from 1965-1969 to Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois from 1969-1974, to SMU where she began teaching in 1974 and served as chair of the voice department from 1977 through 1992.
Professor Hill Moore has performed with orchestras throughout the United States and Europe where she sang as a guest artist with the Nürnberg and Kiel Symphony orchestras. She was a frequent recitalist in Western Europe, especially Germany, performing in concerts of American music annually from 1983 through 2019 and for which she also received a National Endowment Grant. Opera lovers at Theater Des Westens in Berlin know Professor Hill Moore for her interpretation of Jenny in Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera, sung in more than 50 performances in Berlin and Cologne and repeated with the Pittsburgh Opera in Philadelphia. She sang the role of Serena in the 50th Anniversary performances of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess-Charleston, S.C., the title role of Bess with the Florentine Opera, and in concerts and international opera productions, the role of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni with Houston Ebony Opera, title roles in Dido and Aeneas with Dallas Chamber Opera, and Aida with Shreveport Opera. She sang numerous concert performances of Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and the Strauss Vier letzte Lieder with the Dallas Symphony and the Meadows Symphony Orchestra at SMU: additional performances of Hector Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’Ete – Sherman, Texas Symphony, and a recent concert of American music in the 7th International Festival of Strings in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
She premiered songs and song cycles written for her by American composer Simon Sargon at the Zelt Musik Festival in Freiburg, Germany, and afterward, Justis Franz invited her to sing at a recital honoring Leonard Bernstein in a weekend celebration of his 70th birthday during the Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival.
In 2000, Professor Hill Moore began a long relationship with faculties and students at six of the largest universities in South Africa. She recruited and provided VISA support and graduate scholarships for more than 30 singers from these schools who presently serve as the first Black South Africans to chair voice and music schools in four of the top university programs in South Africa. Professor Hill Moore founded and directed an international study abroad program through SMU in 2011, where she teaches and directs a class in musical theater performance resulting in four public performances. SMU students collaborate annually with South African students in these musical theater productions, hosted for 6 years by the Opera School and Choral Academy (OSCA) at University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, and from 2016-2024 at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth, SA). In commemoration of the 10th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the tremendous suffering in its aftermath, she collaborated with Rosalyn Story, Dallas musician, SMU colleague, and author of the novel “Wading Home”; Mary Alice Rich, composer of the opera Wading Home; and 52 singers with an orchestra from Texas and the Southwest, in addition to SMU students and colleagues, to produce the opera premiere in the 2015 Dallas and New Orleans premieres of the opera Wading Home in both cities. Her dream of taking her students and colleagues to South Africa inspired Barbara together with her husband, LeAndrew, to fundraise for this project. She served as producer, musical director, and conductor of the productions presented in 2018 to critical acclaim at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), the University of Pretoria, and in Cape Town at Stellenbosch University. Serving twice on the distinguished artist judging panel of the UNISA (University of South Africa) Foundation International Voice Competition, in Pretoria, Professor Hill Moore has also been invited twice by the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) to serve as an artist teacher, mentoring beginning teachers of singing in the NATS Summer Internship Program.
She is founder and President of the Board of the Barbara Hill Moore and Bruce R. Foote Scholarship Foundation honoring her former University of Illinois teacher and graduate school mentor. The Foundation began awarding scholarships annually in 1989, to singers from the U.S., Mexico, South America, China, and South Korea, with many of the largest awards given to South African singers, chosen by the Advisory Board based on talent, career potential, scholarship, professional commitment and need. The 2024-25 opera and concert seasons feature former students of Professor Hill Moore with opera companies throughout the world, including the Berlin, Chicago, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston, La Scala, Munich, New York Metropolitan Opera, Paris, Salzburg, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Houston, St. Louis Opera, Johannesburg, and Cape Town Operas.
Among the many awards she has earned through a 59-year teaching career since 1965, with 50 years on the faculty of Southern Methodist University (SMU), Barbara Hill Moore is a recipient of the prestigious M Award at SMU; and was named The Meadows Foundation Distinguished Professor of Voice in May 2005; and was named SMU Distinguished University Citizen in 2009-10. SMU presented her with the 2022 Faculty Career Achievement Award and in 2022 the National Opera Association honored her with the Lift Every Voice: Legacy Award, in January 2023, the National Association of Teachers of Singing created and named the Barbra Hill Moore Award for Emerging Teaching Artists and, in 2023 she was awarded the Mu Phi Epsilon Elizabeth Mathias Career Achievement Award, and the Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Lincoln University, her undergraduate Alma Mater.
Barbara Hill Moore holds the Bachelor of Science in Music Education from Lincoln University of Missouri, the Master of Science in Music Education as a Graduate Fellow from the University of Illinois in Champaign, and the Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 2023 from Lincoln University.