Music
Phyllis Kinney
1922–2026 · soprano, folk song collector, music historian
Pontiac-born soprano who sang with the Carl Rosa Opera, married into Welsh culture and became a leading authority on Welsh folk music.
- Born
Pontiac, Michigan- Died
aged 103- Detroit years
- 1922–1943
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Kinney was born in Pontiac in 1922 and graduated from Pontiac High School before studying music at Michigan State College in East Lansing. There her teacher, the Welsh émigré Gomer Llewelyn Jones, introduced her to the songs of Wales, a country she later said she had hardly heard of, and by 1942 she was singing Welsh songs to Michigan audiences with Jones at the piano. After graduating in 1943 she won a fellowship to the Juilliard School, and in 1947 became a leading soprano of Britain's touring Carl Rosa Opera Company. On a stop in Bangor she met the Welsh folk musician Meredydd Evans; they married in 1948, and she learned to speak, read and write Welsh. Settled in Wales from 1960, the couple edited collections of Welsh song and researched its history for decades near the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. Their archives are now part of the library's Welsh Music Archive. She died in 2026, days before her 104th birthday.
Highlights
- Soprano with the Carl Rosa Opera Company from 1947
- Pontiac High School graduate; Juilliard fellowship (1943)
- Co-edited definitive collections of Welsh folk song with Meredydd Evans
- Honorary Master of Music, University of Wales (1991)