Paul Austin Kelly
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Paul Austin Kelly (born 1960) is an American opera tenor and former rock musician who also writes, records and performs music for children on the Walking Oliver music label.
He was born in Kingston, New York.
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[edit] Musical Beginnings
When Kelly began his music career he was more likely to be found holding an electric guitar than an opera score and fronted bands with names such as Legend, Black Dog and Guilded Spice. He attended Rondout Valley High School in New York and the Hartt School of Music in West Hartford, Connecticut. Kelly sang an eclectic mix of rock, pop, folk and jazz although it wasn’t until he went to college that the operatic potential of his voice was discovered. His light lyric tenor has been in worldwide demand ever since.
[edit] Opera Performances
Kelly has earned particular acclaim for his performances in the operas of Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini. The role of the dashing Count Almaviva in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville has become his signature role ever since his debut with the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy in 1995. Recent career highlights include his critically acclaimed Opera Ireland debut in Dublin as the dashing prince in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella), and his debut at the famed Concertgebouw in the Netherlands in a concert performance of Verdi’s Jerusalem.
Kelly is a featured artist on the prestigious Opera Rara music label and can be heard on such recordings as the Rossini Three Tenors, Donizetti’s La Romanzesca e l’uomo nero and Zoraida di Granata. He also performs on the new Opera Rara recording of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s L’Esule di Granata.
[edit] Residence
Kelly currently lives in Lewes, a picturesque and historic village in southern England. It was while performing with the nearby Glyndebourne Opera early in his career that he became enamored of the local area and soon decided to settle there with his wife Carol and son Zack. He still returns frequently to his native USA. Recent Stateside opera appearances have brought the American tenor to Florida Grand Opera where he reprised the role of the Count Almaviva as well as to the Pittsburgh Opera, Kentucky Opera and the Glimmerglass Festival. He is also familiar to opera audiences throughout the United Kingdom and has recently sung with the Royal Opera, the Welsh National Opera and the Opera Holland Park in London. Kelly has also made numerous live performances on BBC Radio.
[edit] Recording
In 2003 Kelly launched the Walking Oliver children’s music label, a daring and unique move for an opera singer. Within a year the label won the National Parenting Publications Award organization (NAPPA) in the children’s music category for the CD Hello Michael Rosen. The recording featured the poetry of children’s literature icon Michael Rosen set to original music by Kelly. Other milestone recordings for Walking Oliver include Unleashed on British Isles, a fresh interpretation of British folk tunes sung by Kelly accompanied on guitar by the renowned British guitar player Richard Durrant. In what was perhaps his most inspired choice of musical collaborator, Kelly provided music and vocals for poems composed by primary school children from across the UK chosen as winners of the first Walking Oliver Poetry in Song Contest. The aspiring songwriters had the thrill of hearing their own written work professionally performed and released on the Walking Oliver CD appropriately entitled Dreams.
Making quality music for kids that parents can enjoy as well has been the Walking Oliver label’s mission from the start. It also gave the songwriter in Kelly the chance to bring together his many and varied musical influences while affording him a musical autonomy that opera singers rarely experience.
