Brandon Harris wows as a countertenor 

(News4usonline) – Brandon Harris is a rarity in the opera and singing world. His uniqueness as a singer is that he is not your typical tenor or baritone. The first time you hear him open his mouth to sing, you’ll be blown away.  

Harris, who is performing this weekend in the Verdi Chorus Spring 2023 Concert,  “VERDISSIMO! Plus!,” at First Presbyterian Church, Santa Monica, you see, is a countertenor. 

“I’m pretty, pretty excited,” Harris said. “It’s really great because I really have a strong passion for opera and opera choruses, and so to be able to do a full concert of that specifically, a lot of (Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco) Verdi works, one of the greatest opera composers, is really great to participate in this concert.”  

In layman’s terms, a countertenor is a male singer who has the ability to sing at the highest register. That means this individual has the ability to sing all up to the range of mezzo-soprano, a pitch typically sung by female opera singers. 

Coming from a musical background, Harris knew early that he had a voice that was different. 

“I did come from a musical family. My mom would tell me that I always wanted to sing in the highest register [I] didn’t really know if that was going to translate into me being older and me being a professional musician,” Harris said during an interview with Dennis J. Freeman. 

“But it was during high school, my senior year when I expressed to my teacher, my choir teacher, that I wanted to possibly study music. She mentioned to me that you know,  “a lot of the time you sing with the sopranos and altos, and I think you might be a countertenor. She explained to me what that was.”

Seeing a countertenor perform is not your everyday occurrence. Being Black and performing as a countertenor is even more extraordinary. 

“It’s pretty rare,” It’s not uncommon. Personally, I know about four other African American countertenors. It is very rare, but it is not one hundred percent uncommon. There’s definitely way more white and European countertenors than African American countertenors.”

 While he has a highly unusual and magnetic sound when he sings, Harris doesn’t always unleash his countertenor’s voice. That is reserved only for certain types of genres, he said. 

“I don’t only sing countertenor, but I mainly sing countertenor mostly in my professional world,” Harris quipped. “ I mostly sing countertenor when it comes to classical, choral, and opera.” 

 With the rarity of his voice hitched to his hip pocket, Harris would someday like to be the lead of a heralded opera piece on a big-time opera stage. When and if that happens, it happens. For now, Harris has plenty on his plate that he can do. 

Harris currently serves as the director of Choral Music at John A. Rowland High School. He was recently awarded a scholarship through the Verdi Chorus Sahm Foundation Apprentice Singers program. And just last fall, Harris appeared in LA Opera’s “Omar.”  

So Harris is not sitting around, twiddling his fingers waiting around for that one big opportunity to come around. He’s already creating those opportunities by simply performing every chance he gets. 

“For me, performing is definitely about my love and my passionate enjoyment for performing music in general,” Harris said. “What I do now currently, I perform with a lot of choirs. I do like other chorus stuff. I perform at the LA Opera and whatnot. I really enjoy what I do, and I feel like I want to continue doing that. I also do like some solo works at churches.

“Of course, I think I would love to possibly play a principal role on a main opera stage, you know, sooner or later in my life,” Harris added. “But What I’m doing now is something that I would love to do and to do it at higher levels.” 

Speaking of higher levels, perhaps no one embodied opera in its fullness as quite as the great Leontyne Price did it. To Harris, Price is his all-time favorite when it comes to opera singers. 

“My favorite opera singer of all time is Leontyne Price,” Harris said. “The pureness of her tone and the beauty of her tone, I feel like is like no one else’s in the history of opera.”