Mezzo-soprano

            Having been hailed as having a “juicy” and “colorful” tone as well as a “flair for comic mugging,” mezzo-soprano Jennifer Blades has been active in the Baltimore area for over a decade as a classical singer, performer in opera and cabaret, and as a director.   Opera credits include Public Opinion (Orpheus in the Underworld), Arminda (Mozart’s La finta giardiniera), the Mother (Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors), Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Bianca (Britten's The Rape of Lucretia), the Sorceress (Dido and Aeneas), and Narciso (Handel’s Agrippina) for Opera Vivente; Second Nursemaid (Kurt Weill’s Street Scene) for Wolf Trap Opera; and Dinah (Trouble in Tahiti), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni) and Valencienne (The Merry Widow) as a guest artist for Opera AACC. Ms. Blades has also performed both Tessa in The Gondoliers and Mad Margaret in Ruddigore with the Young Victorian Theatre. She spent the summer of 2003 as a member of the Young Artist Ensemble at Bel Canto at Caramoor under the direction of Maestro Will Crutchfield. Last summer, Ms. Blades sang the role of Dinah in Trouble in Tahiti for Baltimore’s Artscape with Opera Vivente.

            An avid cabaret singer, Ms. Blades has performed three solo shows at An die Musik in Baltimore: Desire, Despair, Deceit and Delight: A Holiday Cabaret (December 2005), A Promised Kiss: Songs of Spring (April 2006) with pianist Jerome Tan, and most recently, My Funny Valentine (February 2008), a cabaret tale of looking for and finding love, with pianist Eileen Cornett. This past summer, Ms. Blades had the opportunity to study with and perform alongside some of cabaret’s greatest musicians, Andrea Marcovicci, Shelly Markham, Karen Mason, Christopher Denny, Barry Kleinbort, and Norma Curley at the Art of Cabaret Professional Workshop in Colorado. She has also spent time in New York working with Helen Baldassare and has performed in the club Don’t Tell Mama.

            At home on stage whether singing or acting, Ms. Blades was recently featured in the Pantolites’ first production of the British-style pantomime tradition, Puss in Boots, as the Good Fairy Proverbia. Of her performance, The Baltimore Sun stated, “Much of the magic in this show is spread by the Good Fairy narrator, Proverbia, who is embodied with storybook charm by Jennifer Blades.” The online publication Broadway World wrote that Ms. Blades “play[ed] her role with all of the requisite charm and goody-ness, but with a sly wink to being a modern woman.”

            Ms. Blades has been a featured soloist with the Handel Choir of Baltimore, the Harford Choral Society, the Bach Concert Series, Anne Arundel Community College’s Chorus and Orchestra, and Howard Community College’s Chorus and Orchestra. Credits include the Bach Magnificat, Handel’s Messiah, Vivaldi’s Gloria, the Duruflé Requiem, the Kodály Missa Brevis, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass and several Bach Cantatas. Recital appearances include The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA; First Trinity Lutheran Church Concert Series in Washington, DC; Edenwald Towers, Roland Park Place, Charlestown's Our Lady of the Angels Chapel, Emmanuel Episcopal Church, and the Noonday Series at Old St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore.

            In June 2004, Ms. Blades presented a recital program of American song with baritone Will Heim and pianists JoAnn Kulesza and Jonathan Moyer entitled The Nature of Song…and Love at An die Musik in Baltimore. The program featured Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles as well as songs by Jake Heggie and Paul Bowles.        

            Ms. Blades received a Masters of Music and Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Conservatory where she is a faculty member and stage director with the Opera Department. She teaches Acting for Opera and directs the Outreach Program's touring productions of Papageno, Hansel & Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood.  For the 2007 season, she directed Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and will once again direct half of the Opera Etudes program in April 2008. Past Opera Etudes productions include three of the Faces of Myth in 2001 and three of the Facets of Freedom in 2006. Other directing credits include Orpheus in the Underworld for Opera AACC.

            In addition to her solo and directing work, Ms. Blades runs the Chamber Jazz Society of Baltimore, an organization that presents jazz concerts at the Baltimore Museum of Art, sings with the Baltimore Opera, is on the faculty of the Anne Arundel Community College, and is artist-manager for the Mt. Vernon Voices.