MINNESOTA
Sheridan Zuther ’97
Singer and performer

Sheridan Zuther (B.M. ’97) has been performing since her childhood, but to very different audiences. As a little girl, Zuther would climb on top of large hay bales and sing to herds of cattle.

“Fun fact: cows really love music! They were always very attentive,” she says.

With no other children her age around, Zuther spent a lot of time with the animals that occupied her family farm on the central plains of North Dakota.

“They were my playmates and my first audiences who got to hear my made-up songs and see the shows I put on just for them,” she says.

Zuther also loved to sing in their concrete grain silo, a trick she discovered at just three years old.

“The acoustics bouncing off the concrete walls and tin roof were amazing, and I started doing what came natural to me,” she says.

At the age of nine, Zuther attended a summer singing workshop where she met her future teacher, Joseph Hegstad. Every week for the next 10 years, Zuther’s parents drove her 120 miles for voice lessons. Hegstad (D.M.A. ’71) led her to UMKC to study at the Conservatory of Music and Dance.

Through connections she made at UMKC, Zuther joined the nationally acclaimed quintet Five By Design, touring full-time around the U.S. and Canada.

“It was an amazing experience and I learned so much … so much that when I stopped touring I was able to self-sustain as a working musician, private music teacher and musical theater producer,” she says.

After seven years of touring, Zuther returned to Minneapolis where she now lives and works as a singer and performer.

“My purpose in life is to help people forget about their troubles for a little while and feel the wonders of life through music.”