Lauded by the Boston Classical Review for his “expressive energy and ringing high notes,” deemed “sweet and appealing” by the Boston Globe, and complimented for his “clear and even tone” by New York Arts, Eric Christopher Perry is gaining an international reputation for his "indefatigable" energy and his imaginative chamber music performance as a conductor, vocal artist, and educator.
Eric Christopher Perry made his professional singing debut at the Fredonia Bach and Beyond Festival under the baton of Grant Cooper in 2007. In 2010 he joined the Grammy-award winning Phoenix Chorale as a soloist in Bach’s Weihnachts-Oratorium during the inaugural Arizona Bach Festival. Later that season he made his national symphony debut as The Milkman in Krása’s children’s opera, Brundibár, with the Phoenix Symphony. In June of 2011 he was awarded the Ivars Taurins Fellowship with the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute in Toronto, where he performed as a soloist in Charpentier’s Messe de Morts and as the role of Evangelist in a reading of Bach’s Johannes-Passion. Since, he has performed across the United States, as well as in Canada, Germany, Iceland, Japan, and throughout Australia.
Mr. Perry relocated to Boston in 2012 and has performed as a critically-acclaimed soloist with The Boston Camerata, Cantata Singers, Musica Sacra, Ashmont Hill Chamber Music, Orpheus Singers, Capella Clausura, New Hampshire Master Chorale, Andover Choral Society, Singers of Stow, Cambridge Chamber Singers, University of Massachusetts Bach Festival, and in a one-per-part performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 with Cambridge Concentus under the baton of Joshua Rifkin.
Mr. Perry is frequently seen with the Handel and Haydn Society as a soloist and a member of the ensemble; the Boston Globe praised his “sharp physicality and ringing tenor voice” in his performance of BWV 10 in H+H’s annual Bach Christmas during the 2016-17 season. He has sung under the direction of Harry Christophers, Ian Watson, Scott Allen Jarrett, and Grant Llewellyn – in Boston, and on tour in California, Washington D.C., and in a special performance of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, broadcast worldwide on Facebook Live. In 2018 he sang the role of Damon in Handel's Acis and Galatea as part of the Connecticut Early Music Festival in 2018. He has also appeared in H+H recordings of Haydn’s The Creation, and The Old Colony Collection [Coro], and in H+H featured lunchtime recitals at King’s Chapel in Boston and concerts of music by black composers at Boston’s Museum of African American History under countertenor, conductor, and program curator, Reginald Mobley.
He is also a proud member of Emmanuel Music, with whom he has sung over fifty cantatas as an ensemble member or soloist, as well as performances of Bach’s Mattäus-Passion, a reconstructed version of Markus-Passion, and Weihnachts-Oratorium, and as a soloist in Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle. He has appeared under the direction of Ryan Turner, John Harbison, Michael Beattie, Brett Hodgdon, and David Angus. With Emmanuel Music he will appear as Harry Paddington in Benjamin Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera in the 2018-19 season.
Nationally, Mr. Perry has appeared with Spire Chamber Orchestra, Oregon Bach Festival, Phoenicia International Festival of Voice, and as a guest soloist at Colorado State University, Louisiana State University, College of Southern Idaho, Tennessee Wesleyan College, and Hamilton College, among others. In 2015 he was the emergency replacement in a concert of Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings with the South Arkansas Symphony Orchestra under Kermit Poling, which was later broadcast on public radio stations across five states in the American south. He has sung for several seasons with the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, with whom he performed in their widely acclaimed performance at the 2015 American Choral Directors Association National Conference in Salt Lake City – featured by Minnesota Public Radio. Devoted to the art of song recital, recent programs include Schubert’s Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin, Philip Rosseter’s 1601 Book of Ayres, Dvorák’s Cypresses, Christopher Berg’s Songs on Poems of Frank O’Hara and a recital of Australian art song at the Ballarat Art Gallery in Victoria, Australia in conjunction with the Australian Music Centre. An advocate for music by today’s composers, he has premiered works as a soloist and ensemble member in New England and abroad, including: Scott Farkas’s Moon in a Mason Jar – songs from a collection of poems by former Guggenheim-fellow Robert Wrigley set to music for percussion and voice, as part of the College of Southern Idaho’s Stage Door Series, Charles Stacy III’s A Rose Withered, a new hour-long cycle of songs for tenor and virtuoso piano based on A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, and James Piorkowski’s The Greatest of These for guitar and chamber ensemble [Nine: The Guitar and Beyond; Centaur, 2015]. Most recently, Mr. Perry can be heard as a soloist on The Vocal Music of Alan Beeler [Navona, Naxos Direct, 2016] and Cappella Clausura’s Exultet Terra: Choral Music of Hilary Tann [Navona, Naxos Direct, 2016].
Mr. Perry is the Artistic Director, conductor, and a founding member of Renaissance Men, New England's professional male vocal chamber ensemble. Founded in 2014, RenMen has toured extensively across New England, was featured by The Boston Globe for their musical retrospective concert – RenMen 1965, were guest artists at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and recently made their national debut as headlining presenters at the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Men's National Music Fraternity Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, with performances at St. Louis Cathedral and The Civic Theatre. Their debut record, RenMen Laments, produced by Grammy Award-winning producer and vocal engineer Chris Sclafani (Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran), will release in early 2019 on the Navona Records label.
Additionally, he made guest conducting appearances with the Nashua Sings Choral Festival and the New Hampshire Music Educators Association All State Women’s Choir. In 2013 he was the interim director of Plymouth State University’s University Chorale, with whom he conducted Adriano Banchieri’s madrigal cycle Il Festino nella sera del giovedì grasso. In 2013 Mr. Perry was the musical director/rhythm guitarist for concurrent productions of Spring Awakening at Plymouth State University and Emerson College. In 2017 he served as chorusmaster for two performances of the Hans Zimmer Live international tour in the New England region.
Mr. Perry currently serves as the Director of Choirs and Applied Associate of Music in Voice [Head of Voice] at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where he has led performances of Carol Barnett's The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass, Haydn's Schöpfungsmesse, and the North American premiere of Christoph Graupner's earliest known cantata, Ach, wo nun hin, from a new performance edition by Dr. Marius Bahnean. He served for three years as the Executive Director of the Nahant Music Festival, a summer music festival and young artist program in Boston's North Shore founded by acclaimed bass-baritone Donald Wilkinson, and continues to be involved artistically. Mr. Perry previously taught at the Phillips Academy Andover, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Plymouth State University, New England Conservatory Preparatory Division, and Federation University Australia in Ballarat, Victoria. He is a proud member of American Choral Directors Association, National Association for Music Education, and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and is currently serving his first term as a board member-at-large for the Greater Boston Choral Consortium.
FEATURED MEDIA
Haydn: Schöpfungsmesse (Creation Mass)
Colby Symphony Orchestra, Colby-Kennebec Choral Society
Eric Christopher Perry, conductor
May 2018