Devon Russo

New England based Bass-Baritone, Conductor, Composer and Educator, Devon
Russo serves as the Artist-Teacher in Classical Voice and Director of Opera Theatre at the University of Rhode Island, the Director of Choral Activities at Bryant University, the Assistant Conductor for the Handel and Haydn Society Youth Choruses, and is a Choral Fellow at Marsh Chapel. Devon Russo performs frequently as a soloist and ensemble member in Opera, Contemporary Music, and Early Music throughout the United States. He has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, the Boston Lyric Opera, Seraphic Fire, Sante Fe Desert Chorale, and Trinity Repertory Company. As a composer, he just finished my first large scale orchestral piece, While The Gods Were Dancing, and has have written scores for many theatrical productions including a full score for the Burbage Theatre Company’s production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, as well as adapting that score for a staged production starting at Providence College this past fall. He has also written his own modern arrangements of folk songs and Purcell’s solo bass voice songs for voice and keyboard and have just finished a first draft of a setting of Ecclesiastes 1:1 for Bass-Baritone and organ. All of these pieces can be found on his website and YouTube page. At the same time has been collaborating with his long time friend and colleague Jake Davenport, a DMA candidate in Jazz Education at the University of Maine, on a cross-over project entitled Perennial. Perennial focuses on combining the aesthetics of western classical music and its focus on text setting, vocal technique, and form with the styles and compositional approaches found in rock, jazz, and metal genres. The ensemble’s focus is to find new connections and audiences between genres that have had long standing narratives that they are opposed to one another. Devon has taken part in Young Artist Programs with the Boston Early Music Festival, the Internationalen Sommerakademie am Mozarteum Salzburg, the Voces8 Choral Scholars, the Académie Orford Musique, the Seraphic Fire at the Aspen School of Music, Tafelmusik, Orford Musique, Haymarket Opera Company, Source Song Festival, and the Amherst Early Music Festival. Devon is the 2023 winner of the American Prize in Voice (Friedrich & Virginia Schorr Memorial Award Men’s Divison) and was a semifinalist in the 2023 Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition. Devon earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts from Boston University, his Master’s in Vocal Performance from the Manhattan School of Music and Bachelors in Vocal Performance from the University of Rhode Island.