Press Release

For Immediate Release:
March 10, 2006

Tenor Vinson Cole, a name familiar to many Bostonians because of his frequent collaborations with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and conductor Seiji Ozawa, will join the New England Conservatory voice faculty beginning with the 2006-07 academic year.

A native of Kansas City, the internationally admired tenor studied at the University of Missouri, Kansas City; the Philadelphia Musical Academy; and the Curtis Institute of music. He made his European debut in Angiers, France in Handel’s Acis and Galatea and followed that with the role of Belmonte in Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio with the Welsh National Opera. In 1977, his youthful promise was proclaimed when he won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, the WGN Competition, and was awarded both Rockefeller Foundation and National Opera Institute grants.

As his career unfolded, he went on to sing leading roles in all the major opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Opera National de Paris and Paris Opera-Bastille, La Scala, and the theatres in Berlin, Vienna, and Hamburg. For nine years, he sang at the Salzburg Festival. In the United States, he has sung with the New York City, Seattle, Houston, Santa Fe, and St. Louis opera companies.

In 1997, he returned to open the season at La Scala as Renaud in Gluck’s Armide with Riccardo Muti conducting. He made his Chicago Lyric Opera debut in the title role of Mozart’s Idomeneo in 1998 and his debut with the Royal Opera at Covent Garden in 1999 as Tito in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito. In the 2001 season, he returned to the Met as Alfredo in La Traviata opposite the Violetta of June Anderson.

Cole is most closely identified with the French repertory. He began moving in that direction in 1984, after he sang in the Manon centennial performances at Paris's Opéra Comique. Not long afterward, he sang the tenor version of Gluck's Orphée in Seattle, after which many other French works came his way: Lakmé, Werther, Carmen, Don Carlos, Faust, and La Damnation de Faust.

Cole has sung extensively with orchestras throughout his career and has worked with many of the world’s greatest conductors including Herbert von Karajan, Sir Georg Solti (with whom he recorded the Mozart Requiem on the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death), Sir Simon Rattle, Kurt Masur and James Levine. With the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he has performed numerous concerts. In 1996, for example, he was featured soloist in the orchestra’s tribute to Boston-born tenor Roland Hayes. He also performed Stravinsky’s Persephone, the Berlioz Requiem, Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Fidelio, La Vida Breve, Verdi Requiem, and the Mahler Eighth Symphony.

Cole has taught at the University of Washington School of Music for the past four years and at the Aspen Festival and School for the last six. He has also conducted masterclasses for the San Francisco Opera’s Merola program, the Canadian Opera Company and at New England Conservatory.

For more information, visit NEC on the web at www.newenglandconservatory.edu/faculty

ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY

Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.

The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.

NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year, many of them in Jordan Hall, its world- renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.

NEC is co-founder and educational partner of “From the Top,” a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by National Public Radio and is heard on 250 stations throughout the United States.