There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats
- Albert Schweitzer
Idioteque by Radiohead
Earth Intrudors by Björk
Britt Hewitt, Soprano
Recorded at the Juilliard School
American pianist Chris Reynolds has made a name for himself as both a soloist and a collaborator. His performances have been hailed by Opera News as “exquisite,” and played with “jaw-dropping virtuosity.” He is currently a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at the Juilliard School where he studies with Brian Zeger, Lydia Brown, Jonathan Feldman, JJ Penna, and Cameron Stowe. This season you can see him perform the complete run of Intimate Apparel, a new opera by Ricky Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage running from February 27th-May 3rd at the Lincoln Center Theater. Recent performances include those at Bayreuth, Carnegie Hall, and Tanglewood as well as collaborations with WQXR, the Kyoto Summer Music Festival, and National Sawdust. He is a three-time winner of the Juilliard Vocal Arts Honors Recital Auditions, which has led to recitals in Alice Tully Hall with soprano Felicia Moore, mezzo-soprano Natalia Kutateladze, and mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey. He has been a fellow at both SongFest and the Aspen Music Festival and School, and has worked at the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater as an opera coach/répétiteur. He has given a series of lecture-performances at Columbia University (on Schubert’s Winterreise) and Union College in Schenectady (on Liszt’s Piano Sonata and thematic transformation). During the summer of 2016 he joined the faculty of the Internationale Meistersinger Akademie in Neumarkt, Germany. His performances there were lauded by critics, including Mittelbayerische who described him as “exceptional” and commended his “sparkling energy and sensitive playing,” as well as Onetz which described him as “brilliant.” In 2015 he was a Schwab Vocal Rising Star at the Caramoor Center for the Arts as part of the NYFOS Emerging Artist Series, and presented two recitals of Italian and Italian-American song. These recitals were enthusiastically received by Opera News who hailed him as a pianist who “shows mastery of his instrument,” as well as QOnStage which lauded his playing as “impressive and exquisite.”
He has had a long association with the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), in particular with the eminent pianist and NYFOS founder Steven Blier, performing on numerous NYFOS concerts. He holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School, where he has studied with Julian Martin and Margo Garrett. He is on the voice faculty of the Mostly Modern Festival and William Paterson University. Beginning in May 2019 we will join the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Ensemble Pianist for the Ryan Opera Center.