Corinne Swall graduated with a degree in English from UC-Berkeley, a diploma in voice and opera from the Juilliard School of Music in New York, and a Masters in Music from San Francisco State University. She did further graduate studies at Golden Gate University, and completed a training program with the Environmental Forum of Marin. Ms. Swall has appeared as soprano soloist with symphonies and opera companies throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. She was the soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Rosa and Marin Symphonies. She sang world premiers of operas and works by Heitor Villa Lobos, George Antheil and Boris Papandopoulo. In Amsterdam, Holland, she starred in the Carre Theatre, in Los Angeles, California in the L.A. Civic Light Opera and in San Francisco, During her ten years on the music faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, she began to collect the fast disappearing music of the California Gold Rush, now incorporated into the online 19^thCentury California Sheet Music Collection.

Her archives and music collection served as the basis for an array of programs that she created and led to the founding the Mother Lode Musical Theatre. The company toured throughout the fourteen Western States, Canada and Australia presenting costumed concerts, lecture/exhibits and re-enactments: Gold Rush Nightingale, Divas of the Golden West, Glimpses of Alta California, Los Californios, Fiesta de Merienda. Outreach programs: I Come to Californay-aye and Gold Rush.Miss Swall wrote the libretti for three operas: comic opera "Gambling Jones" which toured throughout Canada and 14 Western States from 1980-1990; "Voices of Calafia", which premiered at CSU, Chico in 1991 and "Coyote’s Tail", to premiere with Contemporary Opera Marin in Spring of 2004.

She has provided all the research and scripting for the annual Drake re-enactment, Punta de los Reyes. She wrote and assembled the three teaching guides for the program FIRST ENCOUNTER – NOVA ALBION, as well as providing specific research materials to each classroom teacher involved. Her latest curricular guide is CALIFORNIA: GOLD RUSH. Ms. Small was also a founding director of the Marin Arts Council and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Marin Music Chest.