From high school stages to a Grammy Award nomination, Whitney Morrison’s soprano career has evolved over the years.

Now, it’s hitting a new note.

The 33-year-old Chicago native has become the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s first artist-in-residence. Her first project, an art installation called “Growing Room,” starts on Sunday.

Morrison is an alumna of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center — Lyric’s professional artist development program — and performed on the recording of “X - The Life And Times Of Malcolm X,” which received a Grammy nomination in 2023.

WBEZ’s Araceli Gomez-Aldana spoke with Morrison about what the new role means for her and her craft.

Whitney, how did you begin your career in opera?

I guess I started with studying classical music. I started that in high school. My first voice teacher found me in the gospel choir on the front row and singing in the solos and in the Alto section in the concert choir and she offered me voice lessons. When it was time to go to school, I decided to go to school for performance and ever since then, I’ve kind of been on the path. I went to Oakwood University for my undergrad and Eastman School of Music for a master’s degree. Some people go straight from a master’s to a young artist program, but I had almost two years of auditioning, a whole season of, you know, no opera things, but lots of lots of independent work at churches and whoever would have me. And then eventually I started studying with Julia Faulkner, who is at the Ryan Center, and I got an audition there and that’s how I got into opera proper.

It’s so interesting to hear your trajectory. Looking back to when you started performing, when did opera pop into your head?

Oh, it didn’t! When I was in high school, my teacher just offered voice lessons. I had always wanted to take voice lessons. I had been just singing at school and in the gospel choirs, that kind of thing. As she was teaching me she would just say, “I’m digging for gold. I’m digging for gold.” I didn’t know what that meant, I was singing high. One day I was about to have a performance at school and I asked, “Do I sing this regular or do I sing it high? She said, “You’re going to sing it high.” And after a while, I realized I had a real facility for classical singing as I began to learn the repertoire and continue with the technique. That’s kind of how it went. It didn’t occur to me, it kind of happened to me.

Opera is a predominantly white career of choice, or people see it as predominantly white. What has your experience been?

As an African American woman in the U.S. there are a lot of different places you can go into, and, you know, they’re predominantly white. For me, it’s been interesting, because the people I’ve worked closely with at Lyric have gotten it and they’ve listened. So I think they’re continuing to listen, and we just continue to say the things that really matter. There is a kind of changing of the guard, I would say, especially during the pandemic, when people really started to understand. They were listening, but they really started to understand the gravity of the state of affairs here in the U.S. So programming, the first opera by an African American at The Metropolitan Opera, and then at Lyric with Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones, and different programming. The opera industry is slowly — but I think hopefully —, going in the right direction of including a lot of different stories and storytellers, and allowing those people to really be creative in those paths. I think that’s where we really find the richness of humanity is through the complete story being told.

The Lyric’s first ever artist-in-residence program has a theme. You’ll be exploring the concept of Natural Audacity. What does that phrase mean to you?

Well, I’m from the city of broad shoulders. So especially being born on the South Side and having that kind of Chicago bravado, if you will, I have a lot of nerve to really believe in myself in a way that we’re not always groomed to in art. It’s a kind of “prove yourself” kind of industry at first and it is what it is. For me, I have the audacity to believe that I have something to offer.

One of the first things you’ll be participating in is called a Growing Room. Is that a mobile greenhouse?

Yes, it is called Growing Room, and is a kind of performance art installation that will be popping up at different locations around the city. We’ve taken a greenhouse and turned it into a practice room with a piano, a mirror and some plants. I am taking to the streets of Chicago with my own private practice and illuminating that for the passersby and so I will not be engaging with the onlookers, but experimenting with my own focus on what it is that I need to do. It is a kind of advocacy for space, like a place to be, and space to grow. It’s about like a place where you can grow plants, but also the concept that young and developing artists really need more opportunities to cut their teeth and to go through the process, as opposed to being pressured to just have an outcome.

What are you most looking forward to as you begin the artist-in-residence program?

I’m looking forward to operating in a creative capacity. As a singer and as an emerging artist … we have to come in and be a part of a production and play the role that we’ve been assigned. It is a part of that discipline, but there’s a whole other side to the productions that I’ve been a part of, and that’s what they call the creative team. Those are the people that bring the concepts to the shows and I’m excited to have that conceptual capacity and to see the things that exist in my brain and my body exist in the second creation in the world and to be able to share them with the public.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Araceli Gómez-Aldana is a reporter and host at WBEZ. Follow her @Araceli1010.