MUSIC

Rice University Shepherd School of Music presents a Guest Artist Recital,  Monday, November 8 at 8pm. Duncan Recital Hall - Alice Pratt Brown Hall. This is an opportunity to hear the star of Houston Grand Opera's Peter Grimes in an intimate solo recital performance - an experience not to be missed!

Featuring:
Anthony Dean Griffey, (pictured) tenor
Richard Bado, piano

Two-time Grammy Award Winning American tenor Anthony Dean Griffey has captured critical and popular acclaim on opera, concert and recital stages around the world. The combination of his beautiful and powerful lyric tenor voice, gift of dramatic interpretation and superb musicianship have earned him the highest praise from critics and audiences alike.

He has performed leading roles at the great international opera houses including The Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Glyndebourne, the Opera National de Paris, and the Teatro Comunale di Firenze to name a a few. He is a regular guest of the world’s orchestras just some of which include New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Montreal and Toronto and abroad in London, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Glasgow, Amsterdam and Melbourne and popular festivals including Tanglewood, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Saito Kinen and the Proms in London.

Mr. Griffey has collaborated with many of today’s pre-eminent conductors, including James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Michael Tilson Thomas, Sir Andrew Davis, Esa Pekka Salonen, Alan Gilbert, Kurt Masur, Donald Runnicles, Sir Colin Davis, Christoph Eschenbach, Valery Gergiev, James Conlon, and Charles Dutoit.

In the 2009-2010 season his concert performances will include the New York Philharmonic in Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex with Valery Gergiev and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with music director Alan Gilbert; highlights from Beethoven’s Fidelio and his Symphony No. 9 with the New World Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas; Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with the London Symphony Orchestra under Bernard Haitink, with the San Diego Symphony and Jahja Ling and with the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest Holland at the Concertgebouw, where he also reprises the Britten War Requiem; and will also perform the Preacher in Ricky Ian Gordon's The Grapes of Wrath with the Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie Hall and the New York City Opera’s Opening Gala.

Celebrated the world over for his powerful portrayal of the title role of Britten’s Peter Grimes, Mr. Griffey brings his signature role this season to Western Australia Opera. His critically acclaimed 2008 performance of Peter Grimes in a new production with the Metropolitan Opera was broadcast live in HD worldwide to movie theaters, featured on PBS and released on DVD (EMI Classics.) Also on DVD, Mr. Griffey can be seen in the Grammy winning Los Angeles Opera production of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Euroarts) which also aired on PBS; in addition to his performance in the 1999 Metropolitan Opera Tristan und Isolde (DG/Universal), the world premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire (Image Entertainment) with the San Francisco Opera; and on TV has been featured as an Artist of the Week on A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts.

On compact disc, Mr. Griffey’s latest release is Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (SFO) with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas also now on iTunes with the New York Philharmonic and Loren Maazel. He can also be heard in the Britten War Requiem (LPO) recorded live with Kurt Masur and the London Philharmonic at Royal Festival Hall, André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire (DG), Les Mamelles de Tirésias conducted by Seiji Ozawa (Philips), I Lombardi with James Levine (Decca/London), Amy Beach's Cabildo (Delos) and Of Mice and Men with the Houston Grand Opera (Albany).

This season, he performs a recital at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, presented by the Vocal Arts Society, and at Lawrence University with his frequent collaborator fellow-North Carolinian pianist Warren Jones. For his successful New York solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall in 2004, André Previn composed, and dedicated, a song cycle for Mr. Griffey and accompanied him on the piano with Mr. Jones also joining for the program. Mr. Griffey has performed with the major recital series throughout the U.S. including Ravinia, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Schubert Club in Saint Paul, and the Cleveland Art Song Festival.

Anthony Dean Griffey holds degrees from Wingate University, the Eastman School of Music , the Juilliard School and was a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Program.

Scheduled Program:
The two-time Grammy Award winning American tenor will perform an English-language program including music of Bernstein, Copland, Rorem, Floyd, Barber, and Vaughan Williams.

Free admission; tickets required for open seating. For tickets call 713-348-8000.