Bio
Wagnerian heldentenor Patrick Parker has been praised for his rich, powerful voice, intuitive musicality, and sensitivity to the nuanced text and drama of Wagner’s masterworks.
At age 37, Patrick’s first year of professional singing includes chamber music in Norway with soloists from Oslo Opera and Den Norske Kirke while preparing for opera auditions.
Understanding early on that a Wagner tenor takes decades to develop, Patrick spent the first part of his professional life in the fields of church music and psychology.
Patrick received the Master of Social Work degree from the University of Houston, where he studied Jungian and Freudian principles (which were part of the zeitgeist in the generation following Wagner’s premieres). He applied those ideas as a counselor in Houston schools as well as food insecurity and domestic violence agencies. Patrick fused psychological concepts with his love of music and travel through his book, Becoming Who You Truly Are and his YouTube channel which has had several viral videos.
In his twenties, Patrick served as a church musician in the Episcopal Church, where he led choirs through the standard anthems, masses, and Evensong services of the Anglican cathedral tradition, including masterworks of Brahms, Britten, Duruflé, Fauré, Poulenc, Vaughan Willliams, and more.
As a prize-winning concert organist, Patrick performed the complete works of Reincken, Telemann, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. He was honored to give organ concerts in many of the world’s great houses of worship, including St. John the Divine and St. Thomas Fifth Avenue (NYC), Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart and Christ Church Cathedral (Houston), Wells Cathedral (UK), Nieuwe Kerk (Amsterdam), and Michaeliskirke (Leipzig).
While completing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Houston, Patrick founded and led Houston Baroque, performing a vast swath of German, French, and Italian Baroque instrumental and vocal chamber music and recording albums of Handel and Buxtehude and Rheinberger.
On the concert stage, Patrick has appeared with Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Texas Music Festival, Ars Lyrica Houston, Victoria Symphony, Austin Baroque, and American Bach Soloists Academy.
As a pianist, Patrick has enjoyed collaborating in nineteenth-century piano duos and trios with string players from major symphony orchestras, as well as song cycles with singers gracing the opera houses of Houston Grand, Metropolitan, Bayreuth, Bergen, Oslo, and many more.
Important moments in Patrick’s Wagner journey include hearing his first recording of Ben Heppner and living in Leipzig, Germany as an exchange student, where his life changed when he was able to hear almost all of Wagner’s operas in the city where the composer was born.
Now, after a lifetime of devotion and patience, Patrick is ready to come out in full force as a Wagner singer. Not for ego, but because of the deep power of Wagner’s art: music which holds eternal truth and has the ability to comfort, heal, and sustain.
