Dean Southern


Dean Southern, baritone, has performed in opera, oratorio and recital throughout the United States and Europe, including Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in New York, Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. He created and has performed in We Have Both for a Long Time Been Silent, a multi-media presentation of songs, letters, and visual projections centered on Hugo Wolf’s Italienishes Liederbuch. Other recent performances include an appearance at Florida's Mainly Mozart Festival, Lutosławski’s Les espaces du sommeil with the CIM Orchestra, the world premiere of Steven Mark Kohn’s Three Impudent Arias.

Dr. Southern is the author of the “Distant Voices” column in Classical Singer magazine. The magazine has also published several of his articles and an interview with legendary mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig. His multimedia lecture series “Distant Voices: Listening to Singers of the Past" is a popular event with colleges, festivals, and arts organizations.

After graduating from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, he earned M.M. degrees in both Piano and Voice Performance. He earned his DMA in Voice Performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music and subsequently apprenticed with Santa Fe Opera. He gives master classes at universities and conservatories worldwide, including: Kungliga Musikhögskolan (Royal College of Music) in Stockholm (Sweden); Conservatorio Profesional de Música in Valencia (Spain); Interlochen Arts Academy (Michigan). He has taught at the American Institute of Musical Studies (AIMS) in Graz, Austria for eleven summers, taught as Assistant Professor and Stage Director of Frost Opera Theater at the University of Miami Frost School of Music (Florida), and joined the Voice and Opera faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2013. His students have been accepted to prestigious young artist programs and graduate schools and awarded the Fulbright grant, and they have gone on to successful careers as performers and voice teachers.

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