Anthony Dean Griffey to Join Music Faculty as Artist-in-Residence

The following master classes will be open to the general public:

• Monday September 21, 4:00 pm, Person Recital Hall
• Monday March 15, 4:00 pm, Hill Hall Auditorium
  

We also want to thank Emil Kang and Carolina Performing Arts for working with the Music Department to help make  this hire possible. We continue to collaborate on short and  long-term projects which will enrich the lives of our students,  faculty and community.

Please see www.anthonydeangriffey.com for further information.

Click here for Jessica Jones' interview with Mr. Griffey, broadcast on WUNC radio: www.wunc.org.

+++

NEWS RELEASE

Celebrated tenor Griffey to be artist in residence    

Music students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will study this year with two-time Grammy Award-winning tenor Anthony Dean Griffey.

The High Point native will teach as artist-in-residence in the music department for 12 weeks during the 2009-10 academic year.

Between opera and concert appearances around the world, Griffey will teach master classes for voice students and Kenan Scholars – music students with full, four-year merit scholarships. Griffey also will provide one-on-one coaching for voice students, work with students in the University Chamber Players and the UNC Opera and speak in classes.

Two master classes will be open to the public:  Sept. 21 at 4 p.m. in Person Recital Hall and March 15 at 4 p.m. in Hill Hall auditorium.

“We are thrilled to have internationally renowned tenor Anthony Dean Griffey join our faculty this year,” said Terry Rhodes, professor and chair of the music department and director of UNC Opera. “His teaching and coaching will enhance the strong reputation in the arts that Carolina is building through its academic and performance programs in the College of Arts and Sciences and Carolina Performing Arts. These collaborations are enriching the lives of our students, faculty and community.”

The residency is supported by UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences and Office of the Executive Director for the Arts.

“I’m so grateful to the people who have passed along their knowledge to me, and I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve learned with the students in Chapel Hill,” Griffey said. “I’ve always been a supporter of arts education in North Carolina for children, and I think this is a natural next step for me.”

After graduating from Wingate University and the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., Griffey moved to New York City to study at the Juilliard School. He then spent three years with the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Program.

Griffey is widely recognized for his portrayal of Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes,” which established him as a new star in the opera world. In 2005, he was featured in Musical America magazine as one of 12 “exceptional singers of distinction.”

He first performed the role at the Tanglewood Music Center under the direction of Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa and has since performed it in many cities including New York, Paris, Glyndebourne, Sante Fe and San Diego.

In 2008, he reprised Peter Grimes at the Met in a new production that was transmitted live to movie theaters worldwide. Also televised nationally on PBS, the performance is now available from Decca/London on DVD. New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini singled out the tenor’s performance as the most memorable of the season, calling it a “personal triumph for a selfless artist who rose through the ranks of the Met.”

“Singing with exemplary artistry and raw emotion, Mr. Griffey found his own way into the daunting role of Grimes, fully conveying that reclusive fisherman’s instability and violent streak, while revealing the wounded child within.” Tommasini wrote.

Griffey also has received attention for his performance of Lennie, a character with a mental disability, in Carlisle Floyd’s adaptation of the John Steinbeck novella “Of Mice and Men.”Griffey said he drew inspiration for the performance from his prior experience as a special-education camp director in North Carolina.

He has performed these and other roles at major opera houses from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco, across Europe and in Asia and South America.

He is considered one of the leading artists on today’s concert stage. He has performed with virtually every major orchestra in North America and abroad, led by today’s leading conductors. In concert, he has performed works including Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” and Symphony No. 9,  Britten’s “War Requiem” and “Serenade for Tenor and Horn,” Elgar’s “Dream of Gerontius,” Mahler’s Symphony No. 8and “Das Lied von der Erde” and Mendelssohn’s “Elijah.”

Griffey’s many recital appearances have included the inaugural season of Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, for which Andre Previn wrote four songs in honor of Griffey.

Griffey won two Grammy Awards this year – Best Classical Album and Best Opera Recording – for Kurt Weill’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” with Tony Award winners Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald.  His other recordings include Britten’s “War Requiem” with the London Philharmonic, Andre Previn’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” and lives recording of “Tristan und Isolde” and “Of Mice and Men.”

For more information, call the music department at (919) 962-1039.