| home | bio | resumé | cds & films | reviews | tickets & events | voice studio | interviews | gallery | representation | blog | contact george |
Fan Videos:
Listen to George:
The Prayer
(with Jenny Frogley)
Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Gabriel's Oboe
(Nella Fantasia)
All Creatures of Our God and King
Opera singer got his start in Roanoke chorus
By Tom Angleberger
Monday, January 19, 2009
Q: Can you tell me more about George Dyer, the operatic tenor who sang in the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra's Holiday Pops Spectacular? As a retired kindergarten teacher with Roanoke, I am interested in his early musical experiences. -- Sharon Capps, Roanoke
A: How do you get from a Roanoke chorus class to singing lead roles in real, honest-to-goodness operas?
You're going to love the answer: good teachers.
Let's hop in the wayback machine and return to Hidden Valley Junior High in the mid-1970s.
George Dyer was new at school. He had grown up in Roanoke but had moved around a lot after his parents' divorce. In fact, he had spent the eighth grade living in Utah with his dad.
Now he was back. A ninth-grader with a crush on a girl who was a lot more popular than he was. Ah, it's the classic story -- but it's about to take a twist straight out of a teen movie.
Young George was walking down the hall one day when he saw a sign up for a school talent show.
"Come hear George Dyer sing 'Dust in the Wind,' " it said.
"I went ahead and signed you up," explained his chorus teacher, Barbara Kyle.
Flash forward to the show, George Dyer, backed by a student rock band, is the finale.
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone,
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity,
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.
Standing ovation. Dyer's the man of the hour. People are treating him differently.
And the girl? She invites him to eat lunch with her in the cafeteria.
"Wow, this is what I really want to do," he realized.
Dyer has forgotten that girl's name now. But not the lesson. It's his selfish epiphany -- when he realized what singing could do for him personally. But another realization awaited him.
He spent a lot more time singing in the next few years, notably under Bill Snider, Salem High School's chorus teacher. That was a fantastic experience, he says. He even got to sing in an opera at Roanoke College.
When he was finished with high school, he had an obligation to fulfill. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints, he was slated to become a missionary. The Roanoke kid was sent to Argentina for a year and a half.
And there he flourished. His mission director loved to hear him sing. The man told him it was a gift and should be used.
So Dyer sang in the streets and shared not just his music, but also his faith with the people he met in Argentina.
When he left one town, the church youth came to the bus stop and said goodbye by singing the songs he had sung.
This was the unselfish epiphany. He could make people happy. He could help connect them to God.
He returned to Roanoke with a desire to make music his life. But he found little opportunity and soon moved to Utah again.
There he decided to take vocal lessons. He wanted to be a singer, maybe country or adult contemporary. His teacher wanted him to try something a little more classical.
He didn't even want to try.
All he knew about opera at that time, he said, came from Looney Tunes. "Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit!" (Yes, he actually sang it for me.)
So, not unlike that ninth-grade chorus teacher, his vocal teacher signed him up for a competition at Brigham Young University. He finally gave classical music a try and, as he says, it was a new world. And it was a world that embraced him. He got an agent, a chance to sing with the New York City Opera. Bigger and bigger roles.
He's appeared in more than 40 operas: "Faust" in Harrisburg, "Romeo et Juliette" in Utah and Hawaii, "The Mikado" in New York. And, not forgetting his ability to share his faith through music, he has recorded several albums of spiritual songs.
"If it's meant to happen, doors will open up," he said. There have been times when he was scared, he said, but he kept walking through the open doors.
The holiday concert with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and Chorus was his first performance here in his hometown.
"I take a lot of pride in telling everybody I'm from Roanoke, Blue Ridge Mountains, Star City of the South," he said. "I'm one of your own, and I've had some success and I want the community to enjoy it with me."
He's hoping to return this spring, but first he's off to join the Hawaii Opera Theatre for Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio."
PODCAST: Click Here for "A New Song" Fireside Chat with George Dyer
Program originally aired on Friday, 20 Jan 2006
Everyday Lives, Everyday Values
Interview with George Dyer about "A New Song."Program originally aired on KSL Radio on March 14, 2004.
Host: Doug Wright
Doug: Welcome to the program today, Everyday Lives, Everyday Values. And a great friend of mine, it is so good to have George Dyer back with us. George, welcome to the program.
George: Thank you, Doug. It's a pleasure to be back, as always.
Doug: I was telling our studio audience today that, you know, within my neighborhood and within my family, esteem went up considerably when you--it was not this past Christmas but the Christmas before--we had the opportunity to hear you sing at our stake center. And when I introduced you to my mom and my wife and several of my neighbors I want to you know I'm still living off that. I'm still basking off that. So it's great to have you back.
George: Oh thank you.
Doug: I asked him what he's been doing; he goes, "Oh well, just three, almost four weeks in Hawaii." What were you doing over there, George?
George: I was singing with Hawaii Opera Theater doing the role of Ferrando in Cosi fan Tutte; it's a Mozart Opera.
Doug: Wow.
George: Yeah, so it was a lot of fun. A lot of work, but it's actually--a quick little plug--I'll be doing that with Utah Opera in April of next year, of 2005.
Doug: Wow.
George: Yeah.
Doug: Well, now, other than the little voice thing, how do you get a gig like that?
George: You can get them various ways. You can have an agent that will really push you. Most of them you get through auditions. This one and many of them I get now are from places that I've already worked. This is my second time working in Hawaii; last year I sang there. Usually conductors--this next engagement, I'll leave this Sunday morning to Austin, Texas to do a role in the Flying Dutchman, and I got that role from doing Cassio in Otello with Utah Opera in Fall of not last year but the previous year--and the conductor runs that company and so he hired me to come and do this. So, a lot of my work now is coming from people that I have worked with, either conductors, directors, or companies I've been with before and getting hired that way. Which, for me, it's my favorite way. I hate auditions.
Doug: Yeah, auditioning, that's kind of a bummer.
George: Yeah.
Doug: Yeah, those cattle call things just don't click. There's a brand new CD out, and it's called A New Song. And, when did you actually get this recorded and in the can ready to go?
George: We recorded it last November, and the final mixing was done, I think, the day before Thanksgiving. So the process of putting it together, as far as the recording process, went fairly quickly.
Doug: Before we talk more about the CD and play, obviously, some cuts from the CD, I just don't want to assume that everybody has heard our interviews in the past. I'd like to give new listeners an opportunity to get to know you a little bit better. Your dad was in radio here in this area.
George: Yes. Thank you for remembering. Yeah.
Doug: We've compared notes on that, and he, too, had such a wonderful broadcast voice. But the music aspect of it, for you, this direction in your life, when and how did it begin?
George: Well, I think that we're all born with gifts, and I can never remember a time that I wasn't singing along to the radio or to the jingles on commercials on TV and sitcoms and whatnot, listening to my parents' records.
Doug: Oh, I'd love to hear your version of the Flintstones song, you know.
George: Oh, you know what? The ones that I loved the best were Gilligan's Island, of course.
Doug: Ah.
George: And those, you know, from the latter `60s, that's when I was a young lad growing up.
Doug: Right.
George: So I always had this great love of music and singing, and I kind of recognized for the first time that I had a talent for it when I was twelve. I had just gotten into Young Men's/Young Women's in the LDS Church, and we were doing a road show.
Doug: Oh, the road show.
George: Yes, the famous road shows. And I was asked to do a, just a short little solo piece, and I did. And afterwards I had all of the adults in the ward coming up and telling me that I had my mother's talent. Because my mother was the one with the singing voice, and she was singing all the time. So that's when I realized that, "Hey, maybe I have something here." And then in school, in choir and whatnot, getting recognition that way, and so I knew I had something. And then when I served my mission to Argentina, I was lucky and fortunate enough to have a mission president that loved music. And he heard me sing in one of the zone conferences and told me to use my voice, my talent in every aspect of the mission field.
Doug: Yeah.
George: Door approaches, as we're teaching the gospel to the investigators, and all of that. It really opened my eyes to the effect that my talent could have on other people and their lives, including my own. And so coming back from my mission after about six months at home going to school I moved out here to Utah and got a voice teacher, and she got me involved in singing classical music and opera.
Doug: Yeah.
George: And from that point, once I fell in love with it, after a while of arm twisting because I wanted to do country music or adult contemporary. That's what I kind of grew up on. I was never really exposed to classical music growing up. So once I was, I fell in love with it and knew that that's what I wanted to do. So I started putting my efforts into that and, you know, long story short, joined the Utah Opera Chorus, did an apprenticeship program with them and met the gentleman who is my agent now and got an audition with City Opera with him and in `96 I started a professional career singing opera.
Doug: And the rest is history.
George: The rest is history. And the future, hopefully.
Doug: Yeah. How many CDs is this now, George?
George: This makes three that I've done with Shadow Mountain, which is under the Deseret Book family, and the first two were of a sacred nature. This one we are doing, it's more mainstream music. We wanted to do something, I was getting a lot of compliments from people and comments along with those compliments, "We love your singing, we love your voice, but we'd like to hear you do something other than just sacred music."
Doug: Right, right.
George: So this last planning meeting with Deseret Book, they said, "Okay. Let's do something else."
Doug: I'm looking at some of the titles here, I mean, everything from Handel's Messiah to the motion picture Far and Away.
George: Right.
Doug: So we've got things all over the place here.
George: Correct. Yeah, it's got a pretty wide spectrum of things. We have original songs on here, one by Kurt Bestor, another by Donald Stirling and Sam Cardon.
Doug: Sure.
George: And then Kurt Bestor actually did the lyrics, wrote lyrics to Far and Away because the motion picture Far and Away was simply...
Doug: The score.
George: It was simply the score. And Kurt wrote some beautiful words to it. And it's, I guess, kind of along the lines of a "Danny Boy"-esque type of a song, but it's really wonderful.
Doug: That is great.
George: Yeah.
Doug: Now we are going to play cut four here.
George: Yes.
Doug: And it's called "The Prayer." Tell us just a little bit about that.
George: "The Prayer" is a song, it's a beautiful duet that was originally scored for the animated motion picture Quest for Camelot. And I heard it for the first time when Andrea Bocelli had done a version with Sarah Brightman, and I thought, "What a beautiful song." And then I heard it again and became more familiar with it when Josh Groban came out with his first CD, and he did it with Charlotte Church.
Doug: Mm-hmm.
George: And for those who remember watching the closing ceremony of the Olympics that were here in 2002, he and Charlotte did that during the closing ceremonies. And I have started doing the song and have just loved it. And so when we were planning and choosing the songs I said, "This is one that I absolutely want to have on it." And so we put it on, and we got Jenny Jordan Frogley, who is an amazing vocalist.
Doug: She's fabulous.
George: Yeah, she's one of those, kind of, hidden jewels in Utah that hopefully people are going to start knowing more and more about her. But she came into the studio and we did this song, and she did a fabulous job on it. And I'm not one for a lot of self-promotion, but I will say that when we finished this and we heard the final play of it I said, "You know what? This is as good as anything that I've heard."
Doug: Wow. This is "The Prayer."
(Song Plays)
Doug: George, that is just breathtakingly beautiful.
George: Thank you.
Doug: That's wonderful.
George: Thank you. It was fun.
Doug: Let's take a brief break, and we'll come back. I'm sure everybody wants to hear at least one more cut, and we'll do that on Everyday Lives, Everyday Values with George Dyer.
Doug: We're talking with George Dyer. It's just a delight to have him back with us. The new CD is called A New Song, George Dyer, and it's from, of course, Shadow Mountain. George, I'm sure everybody wants to hear more from this, and we promise one more song. But I want to know a little bit more about the CD. We talked a little bit about this is a different direction, it is not just sacred music, although something does come from Handel's Messiah.
George: Right.
Doug: But it's a real variety show.
George: It is a variety. We wanted to do a little bit more mainstream to make it a little more accessible to others that maybe would shy away from sacred music. So, actually, when we decided to do this Kurt Bestor had really wanted to do--what he told me, and this was a great compliment for me--that he wanted to do just something strictly with me. He had done arrangements for my previous CD, but he wanted to something exclusively with him to give it a sense of continuity. So we, Deseret Book approved that, and we started working together and chose the songs. He did all of the arrangements, with the exception of the one song by Sam Cardon. And it was a great experience. Stacey Peters and Tyler Castleton did some work with us on it, Stacey especially with vocals, producing vocals in the studio.
Doug: Yeah.
George: So it was a joint effort, but it was primarily Kurt Bestor doing most of the work on it. And I'm very proud of it. I think it turned out beautifully.
Doug: George, again, thank you so much for not only your friendship but for joining us on the program, for your great talent. The title of the new CD, it's George Dyer, A New Song, and it's from Shadow Mountain. And what is this cut we're going to listen to?
George: This is a song that was made famous by Andrea Bocelli, so I was a little nervous about doing it, but I love the song. It's called "Time to Say Goodbye," and it's the only phrase in the entire song that's in English, the rest of it's in Italian. And it's a beautiful song about saying to someone that, in my case, a man who loves a woman, "When you're away from me I think of you and I can't stop thinking of you. And I dream of a time that we can sail away across the horizon together and explore worlds and places that we've never seen."
(Song Plays)
Everyday Lives, Everyday Values Interview with interview with George Dyer about his album "Wondrous Love."
Program originally aired on KSL Radio on December 24, 2000.
Host: Doug Wright
Doug: This morning on our program on this very special day, Christmas Eve, we have George Dyer who has joined us. And you know, I've heard people, I've heard Lex de Azevedo, I've heard Kurt Bestor, I've heard others tell me about this fabulous tenor by the name of George Dyer. And I have heard his work on some CD's with Lex and so on, but the first time I heard George in concert was at a special Shadow Mountain Showcase. It was for all of the booksellers and those who deal in LDS products around the nation. They had gathered in Kingsbury Hall for a very special concert, and I heard George sing live for the first time. And it was just spectacular. George, when I met you at the elevator I said, "I am your biggest fan." And I mean that sincerely. Thank you so much for joining us on the program.
George: Oh, thank you. It is truly my pleasure to be here.
Doug: Your voice just puts me on the floor. I had invited my son, my daughter and my mother to join me at the Shadow Mountain concert, and then the other night I had my whole family at the Kurt Bestor concert in downtown Salt Lake City at Abravanel Hall, and every single one of them, they were just mesmerized. Where in the world did you come from? Where have we been hiding you?
George: Well, I come from Virginia, but I have been living in Utah since 1985. I moved out here after an LDS mission to Argentina. And I came out looking for a wife of course; no--my wife will be happy to hear that, she will say that is the truth. No, I came out to try and pursue education and I had always loved singing, had done some small things and had done a lot of singing on my mission, actually. My mission president gave me a directive when he heard me sing, to use it, you know, in door approaches--every opportunity that I got in church, baptismal services, etc. But I had never had any formal training, never gone to any schooling or had a voice lesson. And so when I moved to Orem with some friends of mine from Virginia, I decided I would take voice lessons, found a wonderful voice teacher by the name of Ruth Melville, who used to teach at BYU and was teaching privately at that time, and went to her. And she said, "Wow, what do you want to do with that voice, young man?" And I said, "Well, I would like to use it to sing; make a living, if possible." And she suggested that I look seriously at classical music, opera, oratorio--along those lines. And I fought her for about six months because I really had no experience with it or exposure, except through Looney Tunes cartoons, of course.
Doug: Yeah, right. That is how most of us know our classical music.
George: Exactly. "The Hare of Seville". But after about six months she just took the bull by the horns and entered me in a vocal competition at BYU. So I had no choice, she paid my entrance fee and everything. And so she sat me down and played an album of great tenor arias by great tenors. And that is all it took. I was hooked immediately.
Doug: Which tenors do you most admire?
George: Well, getting into it later in life I was exposed to those that were, I guess, the hot tenors of the time. And the two were Luciano Pavarotti--and he was really the only one by name I recognized when I started studying--the other is Placido Domingo. And he is, in my opinion, overall, I think, the greatest acting tenor that there ever was. He does not have, in many respects, the great "Italian-ate" sound that Pavarotti, who has got those great high C's. Domingo, really never has had those. But he sings with such passion and emotion and he is a fabulous actor. And I think that my voice, not being the bright "Italian-ate" sound, lent itself more to the Spanish, or kind of the warmer sound that Domingo has. And so I have tried to pattern myself and my singing and my acting after Placido Domingo.
Doug: I'm sure many of our listeners are just dying to hear a cut from the brand new CD called GEORGE DYER: WONDROUS LOVE. And maybe I could get you to introduce us to cut number one?
George: Sure. This is a Kurt Bestor arrangement, one of three that he did for me. It is a hymn that will be familiar not only to the LDS market, but also to anyone in the Christian world. It is a song that the words were taken from a poem by St. Francis of Assisi, and it is "All Creatures of our God and King", and it has been one of my favorites. I have a little list of songs that I keep with me in my Day-Timer that, when I'm feeling down and low, I will pull out and I will go down the list and one will jump out, and I'll sing it--and that is on my short list of songs to make me feel better when I'm feeling down.
[Played "All Creatures of our God and King"]
Doug: George, that absolutely gives me chills. Your voice is incredible! I asked you just as we were intro-ing that song off the air if the rest of your family sings as well. When we come back from this break I want to get the lowdown on where this voice comes from.
George: You got it.
Doug: George Dyer is our guest today on Everyday Lives, Everyday Values. The title of the CD: WONDROUS LOVE.
Doug: It is so much fun to do this show because I have the opportunity to meet so many terrific people who are so gifted within the LDS community. But I have to admit, when we have our musical artists on, that is truly a special day. And particularly when it is George Dyer. George, I mentioned before we took our break that I wanted to know where this gift came from. I mean, did this just come out of the blue or does everybody in your family--do they all sing?
George: Actually, they do. My mother, boy, I tell you what, she has a beautiful voice. And I remember as a child in church, everybody was always, "Oh, we have to have Theresa Dyer sing." And my two older sisters--my wiser sisters, excuse me--they have great voices themselves. I am the only one that has had any training vocally, but in spite of that, my sisters, they were in a very, very successful band that was very well known up and down the East Coast of the United States and were actually ready to sign a big record contract when they decided it was time in their lives to settle down and get serious and get married and have families. But they have beautiful voices. All of us have been given them, just through our own parents. My father was a drummer in a band and also, when he lived out here in Utah, was a DJ over at one of your competitors--can I say?
Doug: Oh, absolutely.
George: KALL Radio. Yeah, for years. The George Dyer Show. I don't know if any of our listeners remember him.
Doug: I do. I hadn't made that connection.
George: I'm George Dyer the Third and he was Junior.
Doug: I'll be darned. I had not made that link. And he had a great voice.
George: Yeah, he has that big boomy voice. So, I guess, between the great beauty of my mother's voice and the resonant voice that my Dad has, I got a nice combination to sing classical music.
Doug: That is terrific. For you, I've mentioned some of the performances: Kurt Bestor's Christmas Concert I saw you perform at, the Shadow Mountain Concert up at Kingsbury Hall. For you, when you look back at your performances, where have you performed and where would you like to ultimately perform?
George: As an opera singer, of course, the ultimate would be to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. I've sung very close, right at the Lincoln Center, there is another opera company called the New York City Opera. And that is where I made my official professional debut as a tenor.
Doug: What did you sing?
George: I did the role of Ralph ("Rafe") Rackstraw on H.M.S. Pinafore.
Doug: George, I wish that we had hours to talk, but we are limited to a half hour here and I want to make sure that we have plenty of time to leave our listeners with at least one more cut. Very quickly, are you working on other projects and things that we'll enjoy?
George: I'm working with Lex and Peggy de Azevedo on "Hosanna", which is the third installment of the LIFE OF CHRIST trilogy. I've got nothing specific, with the exception of possibly--we're trying to twist Kurt Bestor's arm and have him collaborate with me on a Christmas CD for next year.
Doug: Wouldn't that be something?
George: I would love it.
Doug: We would love it, trust me. As we listen to this final cut, perhaps you could introduce it. But before you do, let me thank you for joining us. Thank you so much--and you have to come back soon.
George: Oh, any time. This next number is the Malotte "Lord's Prayer". A little behind the scenes: When I sat down with Deseret Book/Shadow Mountain to negotiate where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do, when we decided we were going to work together, I wanted to do a collection of sacred music--sacred songs that would really touch and uplift people in times of sorrow, make their hearts lift a little; moments when they needed to feel at peace with themselves and their lives to have that. And so we put together, I feel, a very special collection of songs. This last one, I think, is appropriate that it is the last one, being that it is the Lord's Prayer. And a good friend of mine who I gave a CD to, who lost her husband about a year, year and a half ago. She told me, I just saw her recently and she told me--and this to me was the greatest compliment that I could get from this CD. She said, "George, after I sat down and listened to it from beginning to end, I felt I had been in church. I felt I had been worshipping." And that is really what I wanted to do, is I wanted to help people feel what I feel when I sing, especially sacred music. A communion with our Heavenly Father and with our Savior. And this song, I think, is perfect for that. It is another Kurt Bestor arrangement, and he makes it out to be a personal prayer, and I think we can all relate to not only the words of this song as we listen to it, but also to the great depths of beauty and emotion that Kurt has given for me to try and express vocally.
[Played "The Lord's Prayer"]