I sang for the first time when I was 24. I’d been an extra with the Canadian Opera Company in a production of Verdi’s Aida—extras take non-singing, non-speaking parts: soldiers, servants, crowds, monks, prisoners, peasants, and mobs; at times, there were 200 people on stage. The rehearsal period lasted nine weeks, and when the performances were over, I missed being around music so much, that I started to look for non-audition choirs to join. Finding a choir, and then a voice teacher, led me to return to college to study music and singing in Toronto, to do a doctorate in musicology here at Cornell, and to become a voice teacher myself. I say this here to tell you that you can begin to study voice at any time, and that you can begin (or continue) to build yourself as a singer, musician, and singing actor at any time.
Areas of interest: Musical theatre, American songbook, European tradition art song and opera, pop and a cappella. Recital and concert appearances include: Dichterliebe (Schumann); Winterreise (Schubert); Les nuits d’été (Berlioz); Letters from Composers (Argento); Ten Blake Songs (Vaughan Williams); Winter Words, Canticle I, Canticle III, Nocturne, Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (Britten); Carmina Burana (Orff); Petite Messe Solennelle (Rossini); For St. Cecilia, Ceremonial Ode (Finzi); Gloriana, concert excerpts (Britten); Proverb (Reich). Stage appearances include: Bardolph (Falstaff); Marvin Wilder (Cooperstown); The Preacher (Mass); Editor Daily (The Cradle Will Rock). Music director for the Department of Performing and Media Arts: The Nero Project, The Bourgeois Gentleman, As You Like It, The Body Project, Uncommon Women and Others, Inherit the Wind, Those Learned Ladies, God’s Ear, The History Boys, The Cherry Orchard, The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Stage director: Eumelio (Agazzari); Candide (Bernstein). Additional training: Aspen Music School and Festival (Vocal Chamber Program, 2000); Rasaboxes Intensive Summer Program (Ithaca College, 2005); Somatic Voicework, Levels 1, 2 (Baldwin Wallace, July 2017); The Singing Athlete Workshop (New York, Oct. 2017); Singing Voice Science Pedagogy Workshop (Montclair State, June 2018); Z-Health Essentials (New York, January 2018 and January 2019).
Gary’s Cornell NetID is gbm2.