Onella Piyatilake

Background

About Onella Piyatilake

Onella Piyatilake­ Soprano Onella Piyatilake, 21, student of Dr. Annie Picard. ​She is a Senior at North Park University who is majoring in Classical Voice Performance with a minor in Finance. The Sri Lankan born soprano began her training at age six with the Mary Anne Singers Academy of Music ( Colombo, Sri Lanka) and continued with the academy until 2010, when she and her family immigrated to the United States. Onella has won several awards in the classical and semiclassical division in for Sri Lanka’s All Island music competitions. She​ is an eight time title holder for Sri Lanka's All Island Competition, classical division, which is issued by the British Federation of Music, and received top honors for most outstanding performance three times. She is also a recipient of 2013's National Choral award (U.S.A) and the National Jazz studies award for 2012 from Niles North High school. One of her numerous achievements is having held the title of “Best Female Voice” at her alma mater, Lyceum International school (Sri Lanka), for five years consecutively. Onella has also made appearances on Sri Lankan radio and television. Recently, she placed third at the 2015 Chicago NATS competition and is a finalist at the 2016 Belcanto Festival. She was also invited to participate in Kishani Jayasinghe’s Masterclass, a student of Kiri Te Kanawa and is First Spirit principle and understudying Pamina in North Park University’s production of “Die Zauberflote”. Onella is also an avid volunteer and musician with missionaries of the poor under the guidance Father Richard Ho Lung (Kingston Jamaica). She is a member of Skokie Concert Choir, North Park Opera Workshop, North Park University and Chamber singers.