Dennis Bender, bass
Assistant Professor of Voice

Phone Number: 859-257-2287
Email: dennis.bender@uky.edu

Degrees:
MM Manhattan School of Music 1986
BMus Wilfrid Laurier University 1979
Certificate in Opera Performance, Boston University 1990

At UK Since: 2003

Dennis Bender has sung in opera and concerts in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He has performed in productions with Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Company of Boston, the Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, the Wheeling Symphony Orchesta, the Lexington Philharmonic, and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Canada. In Italy he has sung at the Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi.

Bender has appeared as Leporello in Don Giovanni, Don Alfonso in Cosi fan tutte, Osiride in Rossini’s Moise et Pharaon, Grenvil in La Traviata, Zuniga in Carmen, Arkel in Pelleas et Melisande and Frank in Die Fledermaus. He sang in the New York premiere of Shostakovich’s The Nose; other roles from contemporary operas include Reverend Hale in Robert Ward’s The Crucible, Umpire Buttenheiser in William Schuman’s The Mighty Casey and Grandpa Moss in Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land.

In concert, he has performed as bass soloist at Great Woods, Tanglewood and the Blossom Music Festival. His oratorio performances include Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, Mozart’s Requiem, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Verdi’s Messa da Requiem.

Mr. Bender has been awarded the Alice Tully Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center and has been a winner of the Ezio Pinza Council for American Singers of Opera. He has studied voice with David Adams, Phyllis Curtin, Claudia Pinza and Ellen Repp; and lyric diction with Nico Castel, Kenneth Griffiths and Thomas Grubb.

Mr. Bender is active as an adjudicator, clinician and recitalist. He is particularly interested in Russian art song, specializing in the solo vocal music of Dmitri Shostakovich. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.