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Wednesday, March 17, 2025 at 8 p.m.
Squires Recital Salon
Free; no reservation required

Brian Thorsett Hailed as “a strikingly gifted tenor, with a deeply moving, unblemished voice” (sfmusicjournal.com), tenor Brian Thorsett excels in opera, oratorio and recital across the world. Since taking to the stage, he has been seen and heard in over 100 diverse operatic roles, ranging from Monteverdi to Britten, back to Rameau and ahead again to works composed specifically for his talents. As a concert singer, he fosters a stylistically diversified repertoire of over 250 works, which has taken him to concert halls across the US and Europe. 

An avid recitalist, Thorsett is closely associated with expanding the vocal-chamber genre, and has been involved in premieres and commissions of Ian Venables, Stacy Garrop, David Conte, Scott Gendel, Michael Scherperel, Peter Josheff, Shinji Eshima, Gordon Getty, Michel Bosc, Eric Choate and Noah Luna among many others. Recent  projects include the premiere of Ian Venables The Last Invocation and Christopher Stark’s Scream. 

Thorsett has also been heard in recordings, commercials and movies as the voice for SoundIron’s library Voice of Rapture: Tenor. His CD releases include song cycles of David Conte and Scott Gendel’s Barbara Allen. He is a graduate of San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, Glimmerglass Opera’s Young American Artist program, American Bach Soloists’ Academy, the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme at Aldeburgh, England and spent two summers at the Music Academy of the West. He is currently Associate Professor of Voice at Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts and served on the faculties as Lecturer at UC Berkeley and Santa Clara University. 

Richard Masters is a soloist, opera coach, chamber musician, orchestral pianist, and an associate professor of piano and collaborative piano on the music faculty in the School of Performing Arts.

Masters’ significant collaborations include concerts with baritone Donnie Ray Albert, flutist Valerie Coleman, mezzo-soprano Marta Senn, the late mezzo-soprano Barbara Conrad, and many others. He has appeared with former Boston Symphony principal trombonist Norman Bolter, former Juilliard String Quartet violinist Earl Carlyss, saxophonist Harvey Pittel, and under the baton of the late Lorin Maazel. Masters has performed solo, chamber, and vocal recitals throughout the United States and in Europe.

As a solo pianist, Masters plays a wide variety of standard and non-traditional repertoire, including contemporary pieces written for or commissioned by him. A strong proponent of contemporary American composers, he has performed world premieres of pieces by Kenneth Frazelle, Charles Nichols, Kent Holliday, and many others. He is an enthusiastic performer of British music from the early 20th century, focusing in particular on the solo piano music of John Ireland. The critic John France wrote on MusicWeb International “Richard Masters approaches [John Ireland's Piano Sonata] with great style and understanding: all the facets of Ireland’s art are present here: ‘…the lyrical, the dramatic, the extrovert and the melancholy — the intense self-questioning and the open, almost naïve, avowals.’”

In addition to his performances as a pianist, Masters is active in the world of opera and musical theatre as a coach and conductor. 

Masters is a Yamaha Artist. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a master’s degree from The Juilliard School, and a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music.

Visitors to the Blacksburg campus Monday - Friday, 7 a.m. - 10 p.m. will need to display a parking permit, utilize the ParkMobile app, pay the daily charge for a pass, or pay for parking using an hourly meter. A range of parking options can be found here.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Susan Sanders at susansan@vt.edu prior to the event.

We are grateful to Main Street Inn and The Inn at Virginia Tech, the hotel sponsors for the Music on Mondays and Visiting Artist Series in the School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech.