David Small, baritone, continues to enjoy a vibrant career in opera and concert, having performed over 70 different roles in nearly 60 operas, including Rigoletto, Tosca (Scarpia), Traviata (Germont), Bohème (Marcello), and Il barbiere di Siviglia (Figaro, which he performed well over 100 times). He has been featured as soloist with the Cincinnati May Festival Orchestra, Austin Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, and Fort Wayne Philharmonic in works such as Elijah, Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Bloch’s Sacred Service, and Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater. Small has collaborated with conductors James Conlon, Anton Coppola, Peter Bay, Valery Ryvkin, Victor DeRenzi, Dr. Robert Larsen, and many others. An avid recitalist, he has performed recitals with Anton Nel, Jean Anderson, Joachim Reinhuber, Steve Wogaman, John Novacek, and Eugene Cline, and has sung Schubert’s complete Winterreise 13 times (and counting).
Small retired from the University of Texas at Austin and moved to Boston in 2020. He was invited to join the voice faculty of Boston Conservatory at Berklee in 2021, where he teaches singing, performance seminars, and a course he designed called The Mindful Performer. In 2011, he was selected as one of four NATS Master Teachers, and his students have been finalists in the Metropolitan Opera National auditions and the International Verdi Baritone Competition, among others. He earned a Bachelor of Music in voice performance from DePauw University’s School of Music while studying with Thomas Fitzpatrick (protégé of American baritone, Mack Harrell) and earned an Artist Diploma in opera and an Master of Music in voice performance from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, under the tutelage of the great Italian basso Italo Tajo.
Jean Anderson, piano, is a nationally-recognized vocal coach and pianist. She is the principal opera coach at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where she also coaches art song, and teaches courses in operatic recitative and aria studies. She also teaches art song and collaborative piano courses at Boston University. She has been active as musical advisor, pianist, and coach for the Boston Opera Collaborative, and has served as vocal coach and pianist for Canto Vocal Programs, Berklee College of Music’s Summer Opera Intensive in Valencia, Spain, University of Alaska’s Summer Arts Festival in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Northern Arizona University’s summer opera program Flagstaff in Fidenza in Fidenza, Italy. She has worked with Boston Lyric Opera, the Tanglewood Music Festival, The Tanglewood Festival chorus, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Opera Providence, Harvard University Summer Chorus, the Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus, the Back Bay Chorale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been in residence at many schools of music, including Rollins College, University of Texas (Austin), University of Connecticut, and Northern Arizona University. She collaborates in recitals regularly with her husband, baritone David Small, as well as mezzo-soprano Felicia Gavilanes and soprano Emily Siar.
Anderson maintains an active schedule as a recitalist, performing with singers in the United States and Europe. Engagements have included concerts in Boston; New York; Pittsburgh; Rome Santo Stefano, Italy; Hartford, Connecticut; Austin, Texas; and Valencia, Spain. Her performance of Mirror with singers from the Boston Opera Collaborative was named one of the ten best Boston classical music performances of the year in Boston’s Classical Music Review. She recently recorded an album with mezzo-soprano Felicia Gavilanes, featuring song settings of the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. She is also the author of The Young Classical Singer’s Toolbox.
Anderson holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from New England Conservatory. Her principal teachers include Margo Garrett, Irma Vallecillo, Kayo Iwama, Kenneth Griffiths, and Hartmut Höll.
