Shawn Thuris, Tenor
Tenor Shawn Thuris brings a spectrum of vocal colors and experience in seven languages to his performances in recital, with orchestra, and on the operatic stage. But it didn’t begin there. “I started out playing rock guitar, then changed to clarinet before taking up singing,” Shawn explained to me.
“I was inspired to become a recitalist by hearing Peter Schreier perform Schubert’s Winterreise with Andras Schiff in Austria, and then started singing as a baritone,” Shawn said. “Opera really came into the equation only later, when my upper voice developed.”
Opera roles he has portrayed include Siegmund in Die Walküre, Radamès in Aïda, Mario in Tosca, and Hoffmann in Les Contes d’Hoffmann. He has sung at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Redlands Bowl Festival, and the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center. He has given many recitals of art songs, often with Robert Thies, with whom he is performing on our March concerts.
In comparing opera with art song, Shawn said, “Although we reach larger audiences through big, virtuosic music (opera in my case and concerti in Robert’s), we seek the combination of simplicity and subtlety that is possible in a chamber setting. There is a directness and emotional honesty about the best art song; it communicates dramatic truths that are often closer to our daily experience than those in opera. Of course, while opera can overpower us and sweep us into its train, art song demands more active engagement on the part of the audience.”
“Two of the Fauré songs we have chosen for the program relate directly, if abstractly, to the theme of Mixed Up World,” Shawn described to me. “First, Les Matelots speaks of the conflicting desires that drive a sailor towards both the comforts of the known and the bracing newness of the unknown. The other three songs in the group are on poems of Paul Verlaine. In Prison, which recalls Verlaine’s time in jail following his shooting of his lover Arthur Rimbaud, the torment of being a perpetual outsider stands in contrast to the pleasant calm he imagines pervading the lives of regular folk. We have also included one of Fauré’s most well-known, Clair de lune and one of our favorites, En sourdine.”
With his busy performance schedule, Shawn still finds time for his other pursuits. “I’ve had a lifelong interest in science and am thinking of pursuing an advanced degree in some aspect of brain science, eventually,” Shawn shared with me. And though he is now based in New York City, his previous experiences in LA were memorable and varied. “Among the many day jobs I have held down were radio announcer, proofreader, hotel concierge, and donut maker, but my fondest memories come from my time at the now-defunct Tower Classical Records store on Sunset.”
We’re very happy to be able to bring him back to LA, all the more so because it is the directness and emotional honesty of singing chamber music-with old friends and new-that has brought him back.
