Shauntai Sherree
About
Starting out as a singer songwriter in Inspirational Soul & Gospel, Shauntai has now embarked on a career in the world of opera, classical music, composition and theatre making. She is vocally versatile and has the ability to cross genres seamlessly. A compositional voice. full lyric soprano, Shauntai is making a name for singing in Indigenous language and has done so with Short Black Opera, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, for the Indigenous All Stars Basketball Round 2023, Port Fairy Spring Musical Festival and Australian Dance Theatre, to name a few and is currently in the process of writing her first Australian Musical which is supported by Creative Victoria, inspired by the life of her late father Wally ‘Wait a While’ Carr an Indigenous boxer who is inducted in the boxing Hall of Fame in Melbourne.
Sherree made her operatic debut at the Sydney Opera House in 2010 in Pecan Summer, written by Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO, and featured in the role of “Old Alice” in 2011, 2012 & 2014, of which she was nominated best actress and best supporting actress in an opera in the 2016 Australian BroadwayWorld awards, for that same role. Shauntai made her Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Sidney Myer Music Bowl debut singing Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO’s musical acknowledgement of country Long Time Living Here in the language of the Boon Wurrung and later went on to open their 2021 Peter and The Wolf season at Arts Centre Melbourne. In 2021 Shauntai made her Victorian Opera Debut as Mrs Waa and has returned in this glamourful role in 2023 with Short Black Opera. Shauntai will be performing with VO again this year in Christopher Sainsbury and Jane Harrisons’s ‘The Visitors’. Sherree is establishing herself as a vocal coach for theatre (Monica Jasmine Caro – Heart is a Wasteland) and musical theatre (Ayanda Dladla – Hairspray) and in 2023 was the co-musical director for ‘Exquisite Corpse’ an annual creative production by Federation University Arts Academy’s third year students.
