Baritone Patrick Mason has been hailed by critics and audiences for his masterful performances of an enormously wide range of repertoire spanning the last ten centuries. He studied voice at the Peabody Conservatory with Francesco Valentino and art song with Ellen Mack. His performances and many recordings reveal his broad interest in music of all types and styles. His deep passion for teaching and Pedagogy finds an outlet at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he is a Berton Coffin Faculty Fellow.
Patrick Mason has sung and recorded tenth-century chant with Schola Antiqua, Medieval and Renaissance music with the Waverly Consort and Baroque music with the Boston Camerata. He has concertized with his recital partner, guitarist David Starobin, since 1970 in festivals throughout the United States and Europe. His commitment to contemporary music has resulted in performances and recordings with many of this era’s most notable composers including Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Elliott Carter and George Crumb. He has been a soloist with the Syracuse Symphony, the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic, the Colorado Symphony and many regional orchestras in the Requiem settings of Brahms and Britten as well as contemporary works such as The Wound Dresser by John Adams.
His recording of the dual lead in Tod Machover’s opera, VALIS, was named the New York Times Best CD of the Year. He premiered John Duffy’s opera, BlackWater (libretto by Joyce Carol Oates,) to great acclaim in Philadelphia. As the vocal coordinator of the John Duffy Composer’s Institute (an annual two-week event which is part of the Virginia Arts Festival) Patrick Mason works with young singers and composers to create and hear new works for the musical stage.
Since 1972 Patrick Mason has made recordings for Sony, l’Oiseaux Lyre, Erato, Nonesuch and CRI. His long and successful association with Bridge Records was crowned in 2006 when his CD of The Songs of Amy Beach was nominated for a Grammy Award. Other Bridge recordings include Schubert’s song-cycle, Winterreise, and a recital of French melodies by Faure, Poulenc, Dutilleux and Ravel. Most recently Patrick Mason has appeared on a CD of songs by Stefan Wolpe. Upcoming releases on Bridge include songs by the New York composer, John Musto, with the composer at the piano, a recording of American Orchestral Songs by Horatio Parker, Virgil Thompson and Charles Griffes, and the recording of Pulitzer Prize winner George Crumb’s American Songbook V, which Mason will premiere in September of 2007 with Orchestra 2001 in Philadelphia.
Patrick Mason was born and raised in Wellsville, Ohio. He has collaborated with his childhood friend and longtime Kent resident, P. Craig Russell, in adapting operas such as Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Wagner’s monumental Ring of the Nibelung for the comic books medium. Being raised in the Ohio River Valley his passions are (naturally) hiking and ceramics.
