Distinguished American tenor, Stanford Olsen, has sung all over the world including at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, and Duetsche Oper Berlin..but today, he sang and taught in Tiedtke Concert Hall!
It was an honor to watch this witty, knowledgeable, funny and gentle educator work with singers from our area! This was made possible by the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition - Florida district.
Distinguished American tenor Stanford Olsen is one of his generation’s most successful and versatile artists, with a career spanning over 30 years and more than 1,500 performances on five continents. A four-time GRAMMY nominee, Olsen won an Emmy for the PBS broadcast of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd with the New York Philharmonic, featuring George Hearn and Patti Lupone. Winner of the 1989 Walter W. Naumburg Award for recitalists (the only tenor to do so in over 60 years), Olsen has also won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, as well as a Richard Tucker Foundation Career Grant.
Mr. Olsen has performed with the world’s great opera houses and orchestras, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Australian Opera. He has appeared with the symphony orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland; the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and most other major American orchestras. Outside the U.S., Olsen has been heard with the Berlin Philharmoniker, Concertgebouw, Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, L’Orchestre de Paris, L’Orchestre National de France, Philharmonia Orchestra, Israeli Philharmonic, Orchestre de Montréal, Oslo Symphony Orchestra, and Tokyo’s NHK Symphony.
An adjudicator for the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions for 25 years, he is a sought-after clinician and jurist. He has been on the faculty of the Taos Opera Institute, Musiktheater Bavaria, and the Castleton Festival, where he was head of the young artists training seminar and director of casting. This year he has adjudicated and given masterclasses for the Schmidt Foundation National Finals, , the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions, and the Young Professional division of the Classical Singer competition, among others. Stanford Olsen is currently a Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, where he has also served as chair of the Vocal Department., and is the founding director of MPulse Vocal Arts Institute for Solo Voice.