Biography
Baritone Jesse Blumberg is an artist equally at home on opera, concert, and recital stages. He recently created the role of Connie Rivers in Ricky Ian Gordon’s world premiere opera The Grapes of Wrath at The Minnesota Opera and The Utah Symphony and Opera and reprised the role at Pittsburgh Opera during the 2008-2009 season. In June of 2009, he made his Boston Early Music Festival debut, performing Adonis in Venus and Adonis and Mercurio in L’incoronazione di Poppea. Additional engagements for 2008-2009 included Silvio in Annapolis Opera’s production of Pagliacci. In the 2009-2010 season he will be seen as Harlekin in Ariadne auf Naxos with Boston Lyric Opera as well as making concert appearances with the American Bach Soloists for Handel’s Messiah and the Vaughan Williams Dona nobis pacem. Future seasons will see Mr. Blumberg will return to Minnesota Opera for Ricky Ian Gordon’s next premier, entitled “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.” Other recent engagements include his debut with Opera Delaware as John Brooke in Little Women. For his 2007 performance in the title role of Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses with Opera Vivente, the Baltimore Sun raved, “Jesse Blumberg commanded the stage, physically and vocally…lighting up the hall with his every appearance.” His other operatic roles performed include Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Papageno in The Magic Flute, Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas, Paquillo in La Perichole, and Pish-Tush in The Mikado.
On the concert stage, Mr. Blumberg has been a featured soloist with American Bach Soloists in the San Francisco Bay Area, with the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and at the Berkshire Choral Festival. He has given the world premiere of two important chamber works, Ricky Ian Gordon’s Green Sneakers and Lisa Bielawa’s The Lay of the Love and Death, the former at the Vail Valley Music Festival and the latter at Alice Tully Hall. He has also toured with the Waverly Consort and the Mark Morris Dance Group, and has been a guest artist with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players. As a member of the roster of the Marilyn Horne Foundation, Mr. Blumberg performed an “On Wings of Song” recital with pianist Martin Katz, which has since been heard around the nation on various radio broadcasts. He performed Die schöne Müllerin at the Austrian Embassy, as well as a recital of songs by Hugo Wolf, described by the Washington Post as “no less than revelatory.” In addition to his operatic engagements, this season he returns to American Bach Soloists for Messiah and will make his Paris debut in a program of American song with the Mirror Visions Ensemble.
Mr. Blumberg has participated in young artist programs at The Santa Fe Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, the Ravinia Festival, and Chicago Opera Theater. He has been recognized in several competitions, and most recently was awarded Third Prize at the 2008 International Robert Schumann Competition in Zwickau, becoming its first American prizewinner in over thirty years. In 2007 he took first prizes in the International Hilde Zadek Singing Competition in Vienna and the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artist Competition.
Mr. Blumberg received a Master of Music degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and received undergraduate degrees in History and Music from the University of Michigan. He is also the founder and artistic director of the Five Boroughs Music Festival, a new concert series in New York City.
