By Mary Richardson

Tenor Fred VanNess Jr., accompanied by pianist Lina Morita, will perform a concert entitled “Night Songs” for the third concert of the Summer Music Festival at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church on Tuesday, June 20.

The concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, 715 Kirkman St. A reception, hosted by the choir at Good Shepherd, will follow the concert. Tickets are part of a Summer Music Festival membership, and are also available at the door for $20, and online at www.GoodShepherd-LC.com. Children under the age of 12 are admitted free.

VanNess is returning home for the concert from Boston, Mass., where he has been singing professionally for a decade. He has most recently been part of the cast of the Pulitzer-winning opera “Omar,” and has just recently learned he will be singing with the Metropolitan Opera next year. He will be part of the ensemble for a production of “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.”

This concert is a result of an unlikely musical journey for VanNess. In his words, he “came late to music.” Becoming a professional singer never entered his mind when he was growing up in Kinder. “I wasn’t in a band, I didn’t sing in a choir,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about classical music, much less opera. It wasn’t even in my mind.”

However everything changed for him in a single day. He was 19 years old and a sophomore at McNeese State University when he happened to meet a friend in the quad who invited him to sit in on her next class – a class for beginning singers.

“It was amazing,” VanNess recalled. “They were talking about how to breathe properly, how to warm up, how to sing in a foreign language… I loved it.”

He credits his first voice teacher, Dr. Guilherme Rogano, with inspiring him to pursue music, and for sticking with it. “He was the first person to tell me that I could get a music degree from McNeese,” VanNess said. “I wasn’t aware you could get any music degree from a college.” He decided to major in Music Education. “I thought maybe I could go back to Kinder and teach music and maybe give those kids an opportunity I didn’t have,” he said.

But then, in another single day, his life changed again. He found opera.

Music students were required to attend a certain number of performances. He chose to go to the opera “Suor Angelica” by Giacomo Puccini because his friend and colleague Geralyn Mitchell was singing in it. Mitchell, a McNeese alumnus and Lake Charles native, sang the lead role and Michele Martin, then head of the Department of Music, directed. Afterwards Ms. Martin gave a talk about opera and asked people “to give it a chance.” But VanNess said, “I was already sold. I had never heard a Black person singing opera before. Suddenly I could see myself on stage, singing a role.”

He changed his major from Music Education to Music Performance. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing,” he said. “I didn’t know you could get a degree in performance.”

He credits two McNeese professors to his success – the late Dr. Fred Sahlmann and Keith Gates. “They were patient with me,” he said. “They were always willing to meet with me and help me.”

From the time he entered the music program until he graduated, VanNess sang in the McNeese choirs under the direction of Dr. Darryl Jones. He was a part of the McNeese Chamber Singers when Jones directed “An American Requiem” by Keith Gates, which was a part of the McNeese Banners Series and broadcast on LPB.

VanNess graduated with a BA degree in Music from McNeese. He was then offered a full scholarship to Louisiana State University and received a Master of Music degree. Feeling he wanted still more music education, he accepted a scholarship to Longy School of Music, a private music school in Cambridge, MA associated with Bard College, and earned a Graduate Performance Diploma.

While at Longy, he auditioned for Boston Lyric Opera and got his first professional opera contract. This year he was part of a new opera entitled “Omar,” by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels that has just won a Pulitzer Prize. The opera is derived from the 1831 autobiography of a West African Muslim scholar, Omar Ibn Said, who was abducted and sent to America to be sold into slavery. VanNess not only covered the role of Omar but also sang the role of Amadou. He will end his Summer Music Festival concert with an aria from this opera, “23rd Psalm – My Tongue Has Gone Silent.”

This year he has also been selected as a Boston Lyric Opera Jane and Steven Akin Emerging Artist, which he says is designed to help artists reach their next step becoming a professional artist. “I consider Boston Lyric Opera my operatic home” he said, “and I am honored to be with them.”

He is also a member of Castle of our Skins, an organization dedicated to celebrating Black artistry through music, and has performed several tenor solos for that group.

The program that VanNess developed for the Summer Music Festival reflects his experiences since leaving McNeese. He is dedicating the opening song “An Die Musik,” to Dr. Sahlmann, and he will dedicate four selections composed by Keith Gates to Gates: “Psalm 23,” “Psalm 121,” “Who Is a God Like Our God,” and “Soliloquy” from Gates’ Symphony No. 2, with lyrics written by Tony Kushner.

He has chosen two selections by French composer Henri Duparc, “Phidylé” and “Chanson Triste.” VanNess first performed these pieces for his Masters Recital at McNeese after hearing them on a CD by opera singer Paul Groves. “I listened to that CD all the time!” he said. These pieces will also showcase his accompanist, Lina Morita. “They have beautiful melodies and beautiful harmonies, and really make the piano a part of the story telling,” he said.

Through his work with Castle of our Skins, VanNess has become familiar with much classical music written by Black composers, and he incorporates it into concerts whenever possible. For this concert, he has chosen “Night Songs” — a cycle of six lyrical, evocative songs written by contemporary Black composer Leslie Adams. The movements’ lyrics are all by Black poets: “Prayer” (Langston Hughes), “Drums of Tragedy” (Langston Hughes), “The Heart of a Woman” (Georgia Douglas Johnson), “Night Song” (Clarissa Scott Delany), “Sence You Went Away” (James Weldon Johnson), and “Creole Girl” (Morgan Collins). “It is very accessible, very beautiful and well written,” VanNess said, “and people need to hear this music.”

The program will also include “Kuda Kuda,” one of the most famous arias in “Eugene Onegin” by Tchaikovsky.  Considered one of the most beautiful arias in all of opera, the poet/hero laments “Where have you gone, O golden days of my spring?” as he prepares for the duel in which he will die.

“I have loved this aria since I was at McNeese in my undergrad years,” he said, “but I knew I wasn’t ready to sing it back then.” Now he sings it at every opportunity. When he sang “Kuda Kuda” at his audition for the Boston Lyric Opera in 2022, it gained him a spot in the Emerging Artist Program.

Although he lives in Boston now, his experiences growing up in Kinder and attending McNeese are precious to him. He developed a one-man program entitled “When I Think of Home,” which he debuted at McNeese. “I wrote it about my time at McNeese, and I dedicated it to the memory of my mother,” he said. “This is in my heart.”

This concert is the third in the Summer Music Festival. The following Tuesday, June 27, the 2023 season will end with a program entitled “Musical Landscapes” by the husband/wife and guitarist/pianist couple Jay Kacherski and Lina Morita.

For more information, call the church office at 337-433-5244 or check the church’s website, www.GoodShepherd-LC.com, or the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church’s Facebook page.