Benton Hess |
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Benton Hess, conductor Conductor and Artistic Director Benton Hess began his musical studies with piano and several orchestral instruments at age five, encouraged by two musical parents. By his teens he was already playing professionally and winning piano competitions. After training at the New England Conservatory, Hess served as assistant conductor for several regional opera companies before taking the podium himself in 1970 for a Boston production of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, replacing conductor James Levine on a week’s notice. Critic Paul Hume in the Washington Post described Benton Hess’ conducting of Il Turco in Italia in 1971 as “the model of the way a Rossini comedy should be paced… and he moved both accompanied passages and harpsichord recitatives with all kinds of knowledgeable style.” Beginning in 1972, Hess was mentored by impresario Boris Goldovsky for whom he conducted and tour-managed several national tours. Since then he has conducted hundreds of performances for dozens of opera companies in America, Europe, and the Middle East. Local audiences will remember his work with the Opera Theatre of Rochester from the middle 1970s through the 1980s when he conducted no fewer than fifteen productions with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in the Eastman Theatre. Hess has presided over many world and important regional operatic premieres and has assisted numerous composers in presenting their works, David Amram, Carlisle Floyd, Lee Hoiby, Karel Husa, Libby Larsen, Daniel Pinkham, Greg Sandow, and Conrad Susa, to name but a few. Benton Hess has also served on the faculties of several prestigious institutions, Boston University, Boston Conservatory, the New England Conservatory, Mannes College of Music in New York City, the Hartt School of Music, and Rutgers University among them. For seven years he was the Covington Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro before coming to the Eastman School of Music in 2001 as Distinguished Professor of Voice and Musical Director of Eastman Opera Theatre. As one of New York City’s most respected and sought-after vocal coaches for more than twenty years, Benton Hess’ clientele reads like a “Who’s Who” in opera, from Nicolai Gedda and Eleanor Steber at the ends of their careers to Renée Fleming at the beginning of hers. Hess is also a composer; he has received numerous important commissions, and his songs and song cycles are in the repertory of some of the finest singers of our time. His first opera, Felice, was premiered in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2000 and was recently remounted at Nazareth College. Benton Hess appears regularly as conductor, pianist/accompanist, and master class clinician throughout the United States and abroad. Besides his responsibilities at Eastman and with Mercury Opera, Hess is the Artistic Director of "Si parla, si canta," an Italian language program for singers and pianist coach/accompanists in Urbania, Italy, and on faculty of the International Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv, Israel. His credits with Mercury Opera Rochester include Don Giovanni, Norma and Madama Butterfly, and this season he will be conducting both Amahl and the Night Visitors and Tosca. |