Stephen Powell

2-time Grammy nominated and world-renowned Operatic Baritone Stephen Powell is a leading American baritone with a long career of performances in both opera and concert music. He has made several appearances at New York's Metropolitan Opera and is a fixture of regional opera schedules. To date he has amassed over 1,000,000 streams on Spotify alone. his latest album ARCHETYPE with the Nashville Sinfonia was released on the Lexicon Classics label.

Powell was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, in November of 1964. He continues to live in the area. Powell grew up in a musical family; his father had played saxophone and clarinet in big bands, and his mother was a classical music enthusiast whose family had season tickets at Philadelphia's Academy of Music. Powell started piano lessons at age six but also enjoyed pop music, sang in a rock band called Paragon, and aspired to be like Billy Joel. He studied piano at Northwestern University but switched to theory and composition before graduating in 1986. A voice teacher suggested that Powell take up singing, and after four years of teaching piano in the Chicago area, he accepted the suggestion and enrolled at DePaul University, earning a master's degree in 1991 and a certificate in performance in 1993. That year, he began a three-year apprenticeship at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and after that, he was steadily engaged for major roles. Powell has appeared several times at the Metropolitan Opera, as Ping in Puccini's Turandot and as Schelkalov in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. He favorably impressed New York critics as a last-minute substitute in the title role of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler on the opening night of the New York City Opera's 1995-1996 season and has appeared multiple times with that company. He has also appeared at a large range of smaller companies around the U.S. and abroad. Powell is in demand for concert engagements with major American orchestras, having appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, and the Sydney Symphony, with which he toured North America as the soloist in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125. He often appears in Baroque choral works and has sung Handel's Messiah, HWV 56, with the Handel & Haydn Society in Boston. Powell is an avid recitalist as well, often appearing with his wife, soprano Barbara Shirvis, in a program of love songs called "Hearts Afire."

Powell has appeared on a variety of operatic recordings including, in 2020, a Boston Modern Orchestra Project release featuring Norman Dello Joio's 1956 opera The Trial at Rouen. That year, he released his solo debut, American Composers at Play, featuring works by William Bolcom, Ricky Ian Gordon, Lori Laitman, and John Musto; the album earned a Grammy nomination for Best Classical Vocal Performance. Powell is on the faculty at Mannes School of Music in New York, often serves as a guest instructor at the Potomac Vocal Institute in Washington, D.C., and gives voice lessons and master classes.