Artists

Tyler Johnson, tenor

Tyler Johnson, tenor

Originally from Maple Valley, Washington, tenor Tyler Johnson currently lives in Cincinnati and enjoys a varied schedule of both solo and choral performances. This is Tyler’s fourth season as a member of the May Festival Chorus, with which he has also performed as a featured soloist.

He has been a member of the Cincinnati Opera Chorus, has performed with Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble, and previously spent two summers as an Apprentice Artist with Des Moines Metro Opera. In 2019, he was the tenor soloist in Carmina Burana with Cincinnati Choral Society and Blue Ash Montgomery Symphony Orchestra. Johnson is a recent graduate of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), where he earned both an Artist Diploma in Opera and a Master of Music in Voice. While at CCM he was the tenor soloist in Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor, Emilio in Handel’s Partenope, and participated in the workshops for Kevin Puts’ The Hours and Tobias Picker’s Awakenings with Cincinnati Opera’s Opera Fusion: New Works. Johnson holds a bachelor’s degree from Chapman University, where he sang Rinuccio in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and was the tenor soloist in Puccini’s Messa di Gloria and Mozart’s Davide Penitente. He is also an alumnus of Taos Opera Institute and SongFest, where he was the Ruth Williams Memorial Scholarship Fellow in 2016.

Avery Bargassé, tenor

Avery Bargassé, tenor

Tenor Avery Bargassé’s notable per- formances include singing the theme song for the HBO series The Wire, being a musical guest for then-Senator Barack Obama, singing as an opening act for R&B singer Gladys Knight, and singing as an invited guest at the

U.S. Department of Justice alongside gospel artists such as Sandi Patty, Rance Allen and the Winans family. Bargassé has made musical appearances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Soulful Symphony, and is an active member of the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus. His operatic highlights include a debut with the Cincinnati Opera Chorus of Porgy and Bess in 2019, and he has since enjoyed performances with the company in the choruses of Carmen, Tosca and Il barbiere di Siviglia. The Baltimore native is a graduate of Shenandoah Conservatory, where he was awarded the Cecilia Award for Vocal Excellence and holds degrees in both Contemporary-Commercial Voice Pedagogy and Voice Performance.

David Kirkendall, piano

David Kirkendall, piano

David Kirkendall has served as assistant director and accompanist for the May Festival Youth Chorus since 2006. He was choral director at Princeton High School in Cincinnati from 1980 to 2013, and for three years he served as choral director at Mount Saint Joseph University.

After earning his undergraduate degree, Kirkendall continued at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), receiving a master’s degree in Choral Conducting. He received a fellowship to attend the Choral Conducting Institute at the Aspen Music Festival, and has also completed studies for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Choral Conducting at the University of Illinois. His keyboard reductions and continuo realizations appear in the Roger Dean edition of the Vivaldi Gloria, and he has had an SSA arrangement published with Alfred Music Publishing.

Kirkendall served as rehearsal pianist for the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati at the time of its founding in 1978. For the next 10 years he performed with the Vocal Arts Ensemble (VAE) as pianist, harpsichordist and organist with conductor Elmer Thomas and also served as rehearsal pianist for various choral rehearsals of Michael Gielen, Jesús López Cobos, James Conlon, John Nelson and Robert Shaw. For the 1988–89 season, Kirkendall was Assistant Conductor for VAE with Earl Rivers.