Pieces of the puzzle.

Once people learn that Bray is in opera, the next question is typically "How did you get into that?"
It is indeed not one of the careers kids say they want to be when asked on the first day of pre-school. For Bray, it was a series of people and events, all falling into line, and leading to opera.
Bray grew up in Monroe, LA, and began participating in the local community theatre at about 16. Believe it or not, he began as only a stage-hand, and was actually told by one of the directors (who had seen him goofing off backstage) that he had to audition for the next show. From there, a local church music director heard Bray in the show, and offered to teach him voice lessons. This uncovered Bray's love for music, but he did not discover opera until college.

Bray had several connections to Moscow, ID by the time he was looking at school, and when the University of Idaho offered him a full ride scholarship, he decided he would major in vocal performance there. At the time, the U of I did not have a music-theatre major, and so Bray was 'forced' to major in classical voice. By his junior year, he had fallen in love with (well, me for starters) the challenges opera presented; the beauty and complexity of the music, the vocal technical difficulties, the amount of work it demanded, and also the great return when done well.

Like any career, there are several hoops one must jump through in order to move up in (or, in our case, survive) the world of opera. Although Bray has gone through several of them (summer programs, young artist programs, numerous competitions) there is still a long ways to go. This is a career where things can change in a moment: someone gets sick, and you are called to take their place, and make your 'debut,' a friend mentions your name to a company, and your career takes off, or a representative from a company hears you at some competition or concert and decides to ask you to audition. Needless to say, there is not a lot of planning ahead in opera. The planning and preparation is done with the constant training, honing and perfecting of vocal technique, musical artistry, diction, and overall 'operatic package.' Opera singers live and breathe opera, and, to me, it seems like they never stop singing. Within moments of Bray waking up in the morning, the apartment is filled with the sounds of vocal warm-ups, and this continues throughout the day. The voice is an amazing instrument, and I never tire of hearing snippets of different arias and songs. It reminds me why Bray does this: he loves it.



















Bray as Luigi in William Bolcom's A Wedding, in Santa Barbara, CA, 2008.