Linn Maxwell Keller was an embodiment of Saint Hildegard in both spirit and talent — truly worthy of being her own version of a patron saint of creativity. She didn’t just perform Hildegard’s music. She inhabited it. And in doing so, she gave contemporary audiences a direct, living connection to a voice that had been silent for eight centuries.
Linn Maxwell Keller — An Interesting Connection
I first heard of Linn Maxwell Keller during the spring of 2013 while researching Saint Hildegard online in Boulder for my film, The Unruly Mystic: Saint Hildegard. I discovered she was performing the very next night in Denver at DU — and while I couldn’t attend, I was teaching that evening, I called her the following day to introduce myself.
You never quite know how someone will receive an unexpected call from a filmmaker they’ve never met. Linn received it with warmth and openness. Besides inviting me to Jackson Hole later that year for an interview, she opened up an entirely new dimension of Hildegard’s music for me — the embodied, performed dimension that no amount of reading could have provided. She also allowed me to use clips of her work in the final film, a generosity that shaped it in lasting ways.
Through Linn, I was introduced to others in her community, most notably Dr. Beverly Kienzle, who was a professor at Harvard Divinity School at that time. These connections — one phone call leading to another — are exactly how this kind of documentary gets made. Sadly, Linn passed away far too soon, just a couple of years after the film was released. The loss was felt by everyone who had encountered her work.
Remembering Linn Maxwell Keller (Dec 6, 1943 – June 18, 2016)
On St. Hildegard’s feast day, many of us remember a beloved friend — Linn Maxwell Keller, an internationally acclaimed mezzo soprano whose life’s work became inseparable from Hildegard’s legacy. As The Times of London proclaimed in August 2010, and as anyone who witnessed her perform could confirm: “Hildegard is reborn as mezzo Linn Maxwell.”
Linn performed with world-class orchestras and international opera companies, and played recital halls across the United States and in twenty-five other countries. On April 19, 2015, she performed her play Hildegard of Bingen and the Living Light to a spellbound audience at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Cambridge, MA — then departed directly for a tour of Australia. She completed a second play, St. Hildegard: Trumpet of God, also available on CD. With her ensemble The Hildegard Singers, she recorded two CDs of Hildegard’s music: O Greenest Branch: Songs of St. Hildegard of Bingen and Hildegard of Bingen: Songs from the Abbey. Her recordings ranged from medieval sacred music to opera to cabaret — a span that itself says something about the depth of her gifts.
Linn is deeply missed by all of us who knew her — family, friends, fans, and the communities she supported and sustained.
Her work lives on through interviews and selected scenes from her film at hildegardofbingen.net. You can also see more of this remarkable woman in The Unruly Mystic: Saint Hildegard, where her presence is one of the film’s most memorable gifts.
With thanks to Dr. Beverly Kienzle for this remembrance.
