Dr. Suna Gunther (she/her/hers) joined the Glenn Korff School of Music in Fall 2021 as Assistant Professor in the Voice and Jazz areas.  Her teaching responsibilities have included Applied Lessons, Musical Theatre Techniques, Basic Acting for Musical Theatre, Cabaret Performance, Graduate Diction, German Diction & Literature, and music directing collaborative productions between the Glenn Korff School of Music and Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film (Big Fish, Urinetown,and Bright Star). She also stage directed GKSOM’s touring production of La Traviata in 2022.

As a member of the SALT quintet, Dr. Gunther has co-commissioned eight composers and librettists to develop what has ultimately become a touring performance entitled A Mosaic of Mothers. This work, comprised of three micro-operas (by Rachel DeVore Fogarty, Forrest Pierce, and Lisa Neher), a 5-movement piano piece (by Jeeyoung Kim) and student-sung quartets (by Emily Feld) honor female ancestry across the United States by telling stories of real-life women of multiple generations. SALT has been selected to present at the College Music Society, National Opera Association, and as the keynote presenter at the 2026 No Barriers Conference.

As the co-founder and Director of Soo Opera’s Apprenticeship Program in Sault Ste. Marie, MI, Dr. Gunther has brought dozens of aspiring young artists from across the U.S. and Canada to Sault Ste. Marie, MI each summer since 2022, where they work with industry professionals to perform leading roles in their own orchestrated touring opera production, cover leading roles in Soo’s mainstage opera production, and perform arias and scenes in their Apprentice Showcase with professional orchestra. In this capacity, Dr. Gunther has stage directed Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Strauss’s Die Fledermaus.

Dr. Gunther received her Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University as a double major in Voice & Opera Performance and Instrumental Music Education with an emphasis in alto saxophone.  She received her Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music in Vocal Performance, with minors in Music History & Literature. In her doctoral research, she explored the ways composer Kurt Weill targeted specific audiences for propaganda pieces during World War II by conscientiously drawing from his past compositional styles.  At IU, she also spent four years as an instructor for the Music Theory department, first as a teaching assistant for graduate and undergraduate aural skills courses, then as coordinator and lecturer for her own courses. 

Dr. Gunther previously taught at Berea College in Kentucky while simultaneously serving as coach and pianist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.  She led 100 performances of children’s opera across the state of Kentucky as pianist, narrator, and assistant music director through UK’s outreach program, worked for the UK-affiliated Academy for Creative Excellence teaching K-12 Musical Theatre lessons and classes, and taught at the nonprofit Central Music Academy.  Dr. Gunther then moved to the University of North Dakota as their Instructor of Musical Theatre-Voice.  In that position, she worked with BFA students teaching Applied Voice, music directed all productions, and created specialized core curriculum classes catering to contemporary styles.  Her most recent role was Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Voice at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, where her teaching responsibilities included Applied Voice instruction, Vocal Diction (French, German, Italian, English, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, and Russian), Vocal Pedagogy, Performance Repertoire class, and Vocal Literature.  Her ensembles included Opera and Musical Theatre Workshops, Mixed Vocal & Instrumental Chamber Ensemble, Motown Ensemble, and a Beyonce cover band, in addition to directing, conducting, and producing numerous staged productions of musicals and operas.

Dr. Gunther was honored to represent UNL on a trip to Vietnam as part of the Global Arts Academy in 2024. She was also invited to be a faculty member at the Brancaleoni International Music Festival in Piobbico, Italy in 2023. She spent a decade prior as a “cultural ambassador” of the U.S. State Department, a role that took her to Saudi Arabia, Chile, Kuwait, Micronesia, Peru, Cambodia, Singapore, the Marshall Islands, Turkey, South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia.  On the behalf of embassies and consulates, she performed concerts representing the past century of American music and given workshops to local musicians.  She was a sixteen-year member of Chicago’s Grant Park Chorus and remains an active recitalist of solo and chamber music. Recent performances include the operatic roles of Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro), Musetta (La Boheme), Flora (La Traviata), and Dorabella (Cosi fan tutte) and concert performances with the Lincoln Symphony, Schenectady Symphony, Muscatine Symphony, and Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra.

Dr. Gunther is a strong advocate for music pedagogy that spans a breadth of backgrounds, representation, and genres.  She is on the Editorial Board of the SongHelix database which facilitates the research of varied and themed art song repertoire and was a member of the 2019 class of NATS interns. She has also developed ties with Ege University and Akdeniz University in Turkey, where she explores the use of improvisation in Turkish folk and art song genres. Dr. Gunther’s arrangements of Turkish Songs for Voice and Piano are under contract with Hildegard Publishing, with a targeted release of March 2026.