Patrick Dailey
(He/Him/His)
Patrick Dailey has been described as possessing “a powerful and elegant countertenor voice” (Los Angeles Daily News) and a “VOCAL STANDOUT” (Boston Classical Review). His artistry was identified early through the national NAACP ACT-SO Competition (2005 and 2006), the NFAA ARTS, and Grady-Rayam Prize In Sacred Music of the Negro Spiritual Scholarship Foundation. Dailey made his professional operatic debut with Opera Saratoga as the first countertenor member of the company's Young Artist program and was the first countertenor invited to Opera New Jersey's Victoria J. Mastrobuono Emerging Artist program. Operatic repertoire includes Oberon in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Nerone in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, and Belize in Eötvös' Angels in America. He performs regularly with Harlem Opera Theater, ALIAS Chamber Ensemble, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared with the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra (NC), Soulful Symphony, Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, he is a featured artist with Cook, Dixon, and Young (formally Three Mo’ Tenors) On January 19, 2009, Mr. Dailey sang a featured duet with Aretha Franklin as the finale for the annual Let Freedom Ring Celebration at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 2014, Mr. Dailey made his west coast operatic debut as Satirino in Cavalli’s La Calisto with Pacific Opera Project of Los Angeles and sang the role of Endiminone with Queens Baroque Opera. He debuted with Opera Memphis in their historic first baroque production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in 2015 won first place in Opera Ebony’s 1st Benjamin Matthews Vocal Competition. At the invitation of Trumpet Foundation founder and CEO, Xernona Clayton, Mr. Dailey performed the opening invocation for the 2015 Trumpet Awards in Atlanta, GA.
In 2016, Mr. Dailey made international debuts in the UK and Brazilian premieres of Hasse’s Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra with the Woodhouse Opera Festival and Il Festival de Ópera Barroca de Belo Horizonte. Additionally in 2016, he made his Subculture NYC debut at the invitation of Tony Award winning composer Jason Robert Brown as a part of Brown’s broadway cabaret residency. In the spring of 2017, he debuted with Opera Louisiane as Telemaco in Michael Borowitz’s world premiere jazz-gospel orchestration of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria. Mr. Dailey returned to the U.K. that fall for the international premiere of Soosan Lolavar’s I.D. Please in the Tete a Tete New Opera Festival in London. In the fall of 2018, he sang the role of Mini-B/Boris the Boar in the world premiere of Dan Visconti and Cerise Jacobs’s Permadeath: A Video Game Opera with White Snakes Projects in Boston, MA to great acclaim. Mr. Dailey became the first countertenor to appear with Shreveport Opera singing Kyle in Robert Paterson’s Three Way: Masquerade in 2019. The remainder of his 2018/2019 season included debuts and appearances with the Austin Baroque Orchestra the IRIS Orchestra of Memphis, TN, Music By Women Festival, and Boston Early Music Festival.
In the summers of 2015 and 2016, Mr. Dailey was a young artist with the American Bach Soloists. Concert repertoire includes Bach’s Mass in B Minor and Magnificat, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Mass in C, and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. Mr. Dailey sang the world premiere of Grammy Award winning country songwriter Marcus Hummon’s Frederick Douglas: The Making of an American Prophet in 2016 and debuted with the Grand Rapids Symphony singing Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms in 2017. He is featured in Fatherhood, a documentary directed by award winning London based director, Ben Gregor, which premiered on FUSE TV in 2019. Additionally, Mr. Dailey is a featured artist on the debut album of acclaimed duo Louis York, American Griots (2019), Adrian Dunn’s Redemption Live in Chicago (2020), and the self-titled from the Aeolians of Oakwood University (2020).
Growing in his reputation as a scholar, he was invited to the Center for Black Music Research's inaugural Black Vocality Symposium in 2013 to give a performative presentation entitled "The Anatomy of the Black Voice: Peculiarities, Challenges, and Regional Differences". Since that time, he been Artist-in-Residence and presented masterclasses and lectures at Southern University, Prairie View A&M University, the University of Arkansas, and Vanderbilt University among others. Mr. Dailey was lead soloist and served as vocal music curator of the official MLK50 Commemoration at the National Civil Rights Museum on April 4, 2018 in Memphis, TN. In the fall of 2019, he presented at the inaugural Harry T. Burleigh Week organized by the Burleigh Legacy Alliance of Burleigh’s hometown of Erie, PA. Most recently, Mr. Dailey curated and presented a virtual clinic and webinar entitled “A Stirring in My Soul: The Negro Spiritual and Social Justice Movements” presented by the National Museum of African American Music.
Mr. Dailey is a graduate of Morgan State University and received his masters of music in voice and opera from Boston University. Mr. Dailey currently serves on the voice faculty at Tennessee State University (TSU). At TSU, he established the Big Blue Opera Initiatives (BBOI) and the annual Harry T. Burleigh Spiritual Festival. Additionally, he is the founding artistic director of the W. Crimm Singers (aka Wakanda Chorale), professional ensemble in residence of BBOI and a co-founding member of historically informed crossover ensemble, Early Music City. Mr. Dailey serves on the board of ALIAS Chamber Ensemble, the International Florence Price Festival, the Artistic Planning Committee of the Nashville Symphony, and holds membership in the National Association of Negro Musicians, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity of America, inc.
I Wonder” - Louis York (featuring Patrick Dailey, Caroline Randall Williams, and the W. Crimm Singers (aka Wakanda Chorale)
“Precious Lord” - arr. Adrian Dunn (featuring Patrick Dailey)
“Ach, bleibe doch, mein liebstes leben” from JS Bach’s Ascension Oratorio, BWV 11 (final performance in Fatherhood Movie from British filmmaker, Ben Gregor)
“Psalm 91 (My Soul Hath Found Refuge in Thee)”
Evelyn Simpson-Currenton, composer
The Aeolians of Oakwood University
Jason Max Ferdinand, conductor
“There are Angels Hoverin’ Round” - arr. Uzee Brown Jr. for New Camerata Opera’s 2020 United We Sing Benefit Concert
“If I Can Help Somebody” Alma Androzzo, arr. Nathan Carter
Memphis Celebration Chorus
James Abbington, conductor