Award-winning composer Jake Heggie will present the Bienen School of Music’s convocation address to graduating students on Saturday, June 17, 2017, at 9 a.m. in Pick-Staiger Concert Hall.

The Wall Street Journal calls Heggie “arguably the world’s most popular 21st-century opera and art song composer.” His operas Dead Man Walking, Moby-Dick, Great Scott, Three Decembers, To Hell and Back, Out of Darkness, At the Statue of Venus, and The Radio Hour: A Choral Opera have been produced on five continents. Heggie has also composed nearly 300 art songs, as well as concerti, chamber music, choral and orchestral works, including the Ahab Symphony.

A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Eddie Medora King Prize from the University of Texas-Austin’s Butler School of Music, Heggie is a frequent guest artist and master teacher at universities, conservatories, and festivals throughout North America. He has collaborated as composer and pianist with such opera-world luminaries as Kiri Te Kanawa, Renée Fleming, Frederica von Stade, Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham, Bryn Terfel, Nathan Gunn, and Robert Orth. His opera It’s A Wonderful Life, based on the classic Frank Capra movie and written with librettist Gene Scheer, premiered at Houston Grand Opera in December 2016. Heggie received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Music degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Learn more about the Bienen School’s convocation ceremony

Heggie will also present a master class at the Bienen School of Music on Thursday, April 20, at 7 p.m. in the Mary B. Galvin Recital Hall. This special Tichio Vocal Master Class will feature Heggie at the piano accompanying Bienen voice and opera students in performances of his songs.

More information.