Artist Spotlight!

Hailed as a tall, dashing baritone “with a robust sound with ringing top notes,” Grant Youngblood’s many orchestral appearances have garnered enthusiastic praise for his “smooth lyric baritone voice bringing beautiful shading and color to the score.” Recent engagements for Mr. Youngblood have included returns to Dayton Opera as Rigoletto, Iago in Otello, and for their season opening Russian Panorama gala; a return to Central City Opera as Horace Tabor in its 60th anniversary production of The Ballad of Baby Doe; and performances at both Baltimore Concert Opera and Opera Delaware in the title role of Macbeth. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut & telecast in Capriccio. Mr. Youngblood made an international concert debut with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in the 1999 Liturgica Festival. He has performed for a Stravinsky Festival mounted by the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas; and has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in performances of Copland’s Old American Songs under the baton of Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Opera-in-concert appearances have included Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia with the Buffalo Philharmonic, as well as Ruggiero in Halevy’s La Juive with Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Youngblood’s orchestral repertoire includes major works of Bach, Barber, Beethoven, Bloch, Brahms, Copland, Duruflé, Fauré, Gounod, Handel, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Paulus, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, Verdi and Walton. More information at www.grantyoungblood.com/

Organist, pianist, conductor, and composer David Schelat is Director of Music at First & Central Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware and is president and artistic director of Market Street Music (MSM), a non-profit corporation that creates musical experiences for audiences and musicians in the Delaware Valley. David Schelat is a frequent organ recitalist in the United States. He has performed as organist, conductor, or composer for five regional conventions of the AGO, as well as for conferences of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, Organ Historical Society, and National Association of Pastoral Musicians. He has been heard in important venues such as Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta; St. Augustine’s Church in Vienna, Austria; and the Grand Ballroom at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. As well as writing for the ensembles he conducts, he composes on commission. Recent commissions include Trumpet Tune for Xiaojiao and Flourish for Andy (for a private individual), Piano Quartet (for Delaware Art Museum and Pyxis Piano Quartet), Just a Regular Child (for Mélomanie), Kokopelli: Trickster God (for the Philadelphia Chapter, American Guild of Organists “AGO”); Biblical Sketches for Trumpet and Organ (for the 2015 Mid-Atlantic AGO Convention in Pittsburgh), Anthem for the Annunciation and Before the Dawn of Time (for the 2013 SE Regional AGO Convention in Columbia, South Carolina). His music appears in the catalogues of Oxford University Press, MorningStar Music, EC Schirmer, Selah Publishing Co., and Augsburg Fortress, and is available at davidschelat.com.