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Gwenneth Bean
Michigan born contralto, Gwenneth Bean, is a graduate of Mona Shores High School. Her career has taken her to opera stages and concert halls throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. She has sung numerous roles with the New York Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, and opera houses in Dallas, Miami, Santa Fe, Toronto, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Philadelphia, Vienna, Rome, Paris, London, and more. She toured Japan with the Metropolitan Opera, and toured Europe and the United States with the late maestro Leonard Bernstein, conducting his own Songfest Cycle which aired on television as well as on PBS’s Live From The Capitol July 4th broadcast.
Ms. Bean has worked with conductors Zubin Mehta, Leonard Slatkin, Seiji Ozawa, Andrew Davis, Hugh Wolf, James Levine, Charles Dutoit as well as the late Leonard Bernstein, to name a few. She has been a soloist on the Carnegie Hall stage eleven times and has performed with The American Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, New York Oratorio Society, Denver Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, the Rome and Toronto Symphonies, and many others. She has appeared on several Live From Lincoln Center PBS broadcasts and numerous Texaco radio broadcasts.
Gwenneth Bean has shared the stage with Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Renee Fleming, Sherill Milnes, Samuel Ramey, Jerry Hadley, Jessye Norman, and many others. She has had an extensive career in recitals, concerts and oratorio works, and is on the roster of the Community Concert series. She has also performed in off-Broadway hits such as The Sound of Music, Carousel, and Girl Crazy.
She has three CDs available, The Contralto Voice, The Best Gift, and Behold His Glory. She has performed with Opera Grand Rapids in Faust, Romeo and Juliet, and The Flying Dutchman and recently was the alto soloist for Handel’s Messiah at DeVos Hall. Ms. Bean sang Mahler’s Eighth with the Grand Rapids Symphony and was featured in Night of the Opera with the Holland Symphony as well as playing the Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors.
Ms. Bean resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan, teaching private voice, and is the Director of Music and Worship at Spring Lake Christian Reformed Church. She sings as much as possible including the national anthem at many sporting events. She is often seen performing benefits for the charities and issues she supports.
