Guest Recital: Karina Brazas, soprano
About the event
Soprano Karina Brazas, described as “fiery and fetching”(Ladue News), and as performing with “sweetness, clarity, great beauty and innocence,” (Broadway World) is praised for her vocal beauty in opera, concert, and oratorio work. She will be presenting a guest recital on Friday, September 23 at 4:10 p.m. in Bryan Hall Theatre, sponsored by the School of Music, Student National Association of Teachers of Singing and Allegro, Student Association for Music Advocacy. The concert is free and open to the public.
Ms. Brazas graduated magna cum laude with her Bachelor of Music in vocal performance from Washington State University. While a student at WSU, she studied voice with Dr. Sheila Converse and was active in Concert Choir and Opera Worshop. She also sang as a young artist with both the Coeur d’Alene and Washington Idaho Symphony Orchestras. Later Ms. Brazas attend the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she received her Master of Music degree. Ms. Brazas was a 2013 district winner and 2014 regional finalist of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and was the recipient of MONC encouragement awards in 2010, 2011, and 2014.
The 2013-2014 season saw Ms. Brazas performing as Gretel in Hansel and Gretel with Opera Omaha and Rosina in The Barber of Seville with Opera for the Young, as well as an appearance as a featured soloist with the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra.In 2015-16 Ms. Brazas made her debut with Union Avenue Opera in Saint Louis as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, was featured as Young Pilgrim in Opera Omaha’s new work preview of Strangers from Paradise, and as the soprano soloist in Fauré’s Requiem with Orchestra Seattle and the St. Cloud Symphony. Ms. Brazas made her main stage debut at Central City Opera as Kitty Hart in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. As an apprentice artist with Central City Opera, she performed Susanna in the family performance of Le Nozze di Figaro, and covered Liesl in The Sound of Music. She returned to Union Avenue Opera in the summer of 2016 as Yum-Yum in The Mikado.
Fascinated by the global changes that resulted from World War I, Ms. Brazas has designed her recital to present an atmospheric experience of the era. Most of the music on the program was written in the decade of 1910-1920, loosely organized to reflect a world at the beginning of the war, leading into music that is a direct musical response to the time. Some composers represented will be Ravel, Debussy, Marx, Rachmaninoff, Barber, Gurney and George M. Cohan.