Faculty

Profile

Praised by Opera News as a "vocally charismatic" performer with a "golden tenor", Martin Bakari continues to distinguish himself as a dynamic artist in a wide array of musical and theatrical genres. Mr. Bakari has recently joined Atlanta Opera, Arizona Opera, and Pittsburgh Opera for Daniel Schnyder's Charlie Parker's Yardbird, the Metropolitan Opera for Porgy & Bess, Seattle Opera for Eugene Onegin, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for Marsalis' Abyssinian Mass, Washington National Opera and the Kennedy Center for The Cartography Project, Dallas Opera for Madama Butterfly, Cincinnati Opera for La traviata, Cecilia Chorus of NY for Carmina Burana at Carnegie Hall, Syracuse Opera for Così fan tutte, Intermountain Opera Bozeman for The Barber of Seville, Portland Opera for Philip Glass' In the Penal Colony, Chicago Opera Theater for Mark Adamo's Becoming Santa Claus, Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival for Le nozze di Figaro, and Mirror Visions Ensemble for a United Kingdom recital tour. Internationally, he has also appeared at major venues in Munich, Hamburg, Dresden, Frankfurt, Cologne, Tel Aviv, and Bari. 

Mr. Bakari’s 2022-23 season includes the premiere of Paul Moravec’s A Nation of Others (Oratorio Society of NY - Carnegie Hall), Charlie Parker's Yardbird (New Orleans Opera, Dayton Opera), Turandot (Opera Colorado), Pirates of Penzance (Virginia Opera), the premiere of A Thousand Splendid Suns (Seattle Opera), Carmina Burana (Symphony San Jose), Messiah (Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra), a concert of arias and songs (Harlem Chamber Players), and recitals of Paul Laurence Dunbar songs (Seattle Opera) and German Lieder with Byron Schenkman (Benaroya Hall). In the 2023-24 season, Mr. Bakari sings Das Rheingold (Seattle Opera), Messiah (Oratorio Society of NY - Carnegie Hall), and three productions to be announced (Houston Grand Opera). A 2018 George London Competition award winner, Mr. Bakari's recording of Grigory Smirnov's Dowson Songs (Naxos) was featured by Opera News as a "Critic's Choice" album.

Before joining the Mannes voice faculty in 2021, Mr. Bakari served on the voice faculty at the University of Dayton. He has been invited to give masterclasses for classical voice and musical theater students at Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, University of Portland, Western Washington University, and Georgia State University. He has also joined the faculty at the Collaborative Piano Institute at Louisiana State University, where he has taught private lessons and given masterclasses on bel canto style, German Lieder, and the Great American Songbook for singers and pianists. In addition to their achievements in opera and musical theater, singers from his studio have won international awards and made important debuts in jazz. Mr. Bakari is an alumnus of the Juilliard School, Boston University, and the Tanglewood Music Center. www.martinbakari.com