Recent Guest Artists Include
Joe Dan Harper, tenor
Hailed for his “magnificent purity of expression” (Fanfare Magazine) and “stirring delivery” (Boston Globe), tenor Joe Dan Harper is a versatile and engaging interpreter of a wide-ranging repertoire from Schubert to Britten. His credits include performances with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Mercury Opera of Rochester, Boston Academy of Music, Central City Opera, Handel & Haydn Society, Opera Aperta, Opera Unlimited, Plano International Arts Festival, South Carolina Opera, Utah Festival Opera and Utah Opera. He has been heard in such venues as Boston’s Jordan Hall, Berlin’s Gorki Theater, at SongFest (Malibu, CA), at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and on National Public Radio (WGBH Boston).
Sought after as an interpreter of contemporary music, Harper has premiered works by some of America’s most prominent composers, including Daniel Pinkham, Libby Larsen, Ned Rorem, and Lior Navok, and in 2009 joined the faculty of soundSCAPE new music festival in Pavia, Italy. A semi-finalist in the Naumburg International Song Competition in 2005, Harper is a passionate interpreter of song repertoire with a noted gift for expressive and poetic diction. Harper was a co-founder of the Florestan Recital Project and has performed as a recitalist throughout the United States and Germany.
Harper’s discography includes Florestan Recital Project’s recently released The Complete Songs of Daniel Pinkham, volumes 1 and 2, Daniel Pinkham’s opera The Garden Party in the role of “Adam” on the Arsis label, and Wesley Fuller’s setting of five poems by William Carlos Williams, A Solace of Ripe Plums, released on Capstone Records. He has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Steans Institute for Young Artists, Tanglewood Music Center and Tanglewood Bach Institute.
Harper earned degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music and Southern Methodist University, and is currently a professor of voice at the SUNY Fredonia School of Music.