Kyle Ketelsen was born in Clinton, Iowa, and graduated from Clinton High School in 1989, after which, for a brief time, he took general education courses at Mount St. Clare College in Clinton. With the intention of becoming a helicopter pilot, he joined the Army National Guard, in which he served from 1990 to 1996. In 1991 he transferred to the University of Iowa. Having been musical since a young age, he sang for the vocal faculty, and they encouraged him to become a music major.[1] He studied singing with Albert Gammon at the university, where he received a Bachelor of Music degree in 1995, and then, on Gammon's recommendation, with Giorgio Tozzi at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he graduated in 1999 with a Master of Music. Since 2008, he has studied with Scott McCoy.[2]
2016: Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (Jacques Imbrailo as Pelléas, Corinne Winters as Mélisande, Kyle Ketelsen as Golaud, Brindley Sherratt as Arkel), Philharmonia Zurich conducted by Alain Altinoglu, produced by Dmitri Tcherniakov, and recorded live at the Zürich Opera in May 2016[6]