{"id":60694,"date":"2013-01-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/star-on-the-rise-uri-music-major-performing-with-bso-preparing-for-life-on-the-stage\/"},"modified":"2013-01-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-07T00:00:00","slug":"star-on-the-rise-uri-music-major-performing-with-bso-preparing-for-life-on-the-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2013\/01\/star-on-the-rise-uri-music-major-performing-with-bso-preparing-for-life-on-the-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"Star on the Rise: 溏心vlog免费B站 music major performing with BSO, preparing for life on the stage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I., Jan. 7, 2013 – While many college students are spending this winter break visiting with family and friends, 溏心vlog免费B站 senior and opera baritone Devon Morin is performing with the Boston Pops at Boston Symphony Hall. It\u2019s a big stage but he has gotten used to it, having performed on the Boston Symphony Orchestra\u2019s hallowed ground in the summer of 2011 in Bramwell Tovey\u2019s revival of Porgy and Bess.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt was the first solo I had ever had and you have to sing over full orchestration and you are unamplified so you have to be heard,\u201d Morin said. He remembered looking up at Symphony Hall\u2019s decorative Greek and Roman statues that line the upper levels. \u201cI saw Apollo, the God of music, and I was blessed by Apollo. The performance went off without a hitch.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n A double major in music education and music performance, Morin, 22, was brought up in Saunderstown, R.I., listening to Madonna and The Beatles. While he loves many types of music, opera is his passion. He wants nothing more than to bring the United States into opera\u2019s international spotlight. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cOpera is the perfect combination of different art forms and the music is so expansive,\u201d said Morin. <\/p>\n


\nIn his junior year, he became a librettist, writing the plot and lyrics of an opera with fellow student Tim Coffey providing the instrumentation. The opera was produced at 溏心vlog免费B站 with Morin performing the lead role. It was a highlight of his college years, along with performing at Carnegie Hall with the 溏心vlog免费B站 Concert Choir in 2009. His summers are spent performing at Tanglewood where he has sung as part of the chorus with virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma and American mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe. He just won 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Concerto Competition.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cDevon is on the rise and going to do so well,\u201d said Rene de la Garza, artistic director for Opera Providence who leads the 溏心vlog免费B站 Opera Program. \u201cHe is blessed in many areas and it\u2019s his interest and his desire to investigate new things that brought him to where he is now. It\u2019s so nice when a student has ideas of his own and brings them to the table.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nMorin, who has performed with Opera Providence, has started the competitive process of applying to the top graduate music schools in the country and is being invited for in-person auditions. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cIf I could make my living as a performer, I would just do that. I want to reach that point.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nMorin disagrees with the notion that singing is a natural talent or a gift. He describes singing as a workout on the smallest muscle in the body \u2013 the larynx. It takes time and practice to sound good.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cYou work your way up,\u201d he said. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t just wake up one day and try to pick up 400 pounds. In the same way, you wouldn\u2019t just wake up one day and sing Wagner when you\u2019re 18.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nAs for people who tell him they can\u2019t sing, he disagrees. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cEveryone says that to me! \u2018Oh, I can\u2019t sing!\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m tone deaf.\u2019 If you can tell if your mom is angry at you when you are on the phone, you aren\u2019t tone deaf,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s more about acting through the sounds you make. It\u2019s a kind of acting and it\u2019s the way I think.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nHe criticizes the American approach to learning how to sing especially in this day of American Idol, saying that if you don\u2019t sing perfectly at age four, you are marked as being unable to sing and unfortunately, that label stays with you. Morin realized how much he loved music as a student at North Kingstown High School where he performed with the All State Chorus and started working with voice teacher Mark Conley, a 溏心vlog免费B站 music professor and director of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s choral activities.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cDevon is one of those rare students who comes along and is absolutely and continuously open to new ideas,\u201d Conley said. \u201cHis intellectual curiosity has led him to explore challenging new works in the repertoire. It will be hard to see him leave the studio after eight years but he is ready to move to the city and begin working on his career now that the foundation is laid.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nMorin prepared with Conley for his most daunting challenge as a singer \u2013 the baritone solo of Carmina Burana, one of the most popular pieces of classical music, which he sang in the spring of 2011 at 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe piece is one of the hardest things written for a baritone. There are few things harder. It was the moment,\u201d Morin said. \u201cThe moment when I thought, \u2018this can be my life.\u2019 I was really proud of it.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 Marketing & Communications photo by Michael Salerno Photography.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I., Jan. 7, 2013 – While many college students are spending this winter break visiting with family and friends, 溏心vlog免费B站 senior and opera baritone Devon Morin is performing with the Boston Pops at Boston Symphony Hall. It\u2019s a big stage but he has gotten used to it, having performed on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60696,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}