David McFerrin
Baritone
New England Second Place Winner, 2008

Praised by the Florida Sun-Sentinel for his “magnificent voice” and “fine dramatic impact,” the young baritone David McFerrin has sung with the Santa Fe and Florida Grand Operas, and is also a critically acclaimed performer of concert and recital repertoire. This season his stage performances include the role of Aeneas in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Miami’s Seraphic Fire and the New York premiere of Ned Rorem’s Our Town with the Juilliard Opera Center, where last season he portrayed John Styx in Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers and Nardo in Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera. Other recent roles include Sam in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti and Morales in Carmen, which Mr. McFerrin sang in Santa Fe as a member of their elite Apprentice Artist program. Morales is also one of the sixmainstage roles he sang in Florida while completing a two-year residency in the opera’s Young Artist Studio. Mr. McFerrin has appeared with the Sarasota and Central City operas and at music festivals in England and Italy. In 2007 he was a finalist in the Middle Atlantic Region of the Metropolitan Opera National Council competition.

Mr. McFerrin’s recent concert performances have ranged from Mozart arias with the Miami Symphony to a program of Porter and Gershwin favorites in Omaha, Nebraska. Last winter he presented Schubert’s epic song cycle Die schöne Müllerin in New York, Florida and Minnesota, and this summer performed recitals as a member of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. Upcoming engagements include a concert with the New York Festival of Song, Eliot Carter’s Songs of Robert Frost with the Juilliard Focus Festival and a residency with the French Early Music ensemble, Les Arts Florissants.  Mr. McFerrin has been a soloist in Bach’s St. John Passion, Handel’s Messiah and Joshua, Haydn’s Creation, Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem and the Fauré and Duruflé Requiems. A native of western Massachusetts, he holds degrees from Carleton College and the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and is currently pursuing an Artist Diploma in Opera at Juilliard.

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