“Sonorous” (Opera News) and “Suave” (parterre box) American baritone Harrison Hintzsche is a recitalist, concert singer, and ensemble musician. He has been praised for his warm lyric tone, musical subtlety, and dedication to text.
In January 2018, Harrison made his international debut at London’s Wigmore Hall in a collaborative art song recital with pianist and scholar Graham Johnson as a part of Johnson’s recital series, “Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs,” and was noted by Opera Today for displaying a “strong sense of narrative” and “gentle poignancy” in his interpretations of Schubert’s work. He is the first-place winner of the 2020 Colorado Bach Ensemble Young Artist Competition, as well as the first-place winner of the Edvard Grieg Society of Minnesota’s 2018 Voice Competition. He was the first-ever recipient of the William H. Halverson Award, presented by the Edvard Grieg Society of America for an outstanding performance of Grieg’s music.
Recent performance highlights include performances of J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion with Nicholas McGegan and the Cantata Collective (bass arias, Pilatus), James Kim and the Colorado Bach Ensemble (bass arias), and Eric Jacobson and the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus (Pilatus); a semi-staged version of John Blow’s opera Venus & Adonis (Adonis) with David McCormick and Early Music Access Project, Handel’s Messiah with William Boughton and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and guest appearances with the Elm City Consort, Alkemie Medieval Ensemble, and Incantare.
A sought-after ensemble musician, Harrison has performed with a variety of vocal ensembles such as GRAMMY-nominated True Concord Voices & Orchestra (Eric Holtan), Bach Akademie Charlotte (Scott Allen Jarrett), the Handel & Haydn Society, the Cantata Collective, The VocalEssence Ensemble Singers (Philip Brunelle, G. Phillip Shoultz, III.), The Minnesota Chorale (Kathy Salzman Romey), the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart JSB Ensemble (Kathy Salzman Romey, Hans-Christoph Rademann), and Bach Ensemble Helmuth Rilling, among others.
Harrison received a Master of Music degree in Early Music Voice from the Yale School of Music, as well as a certificate from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, in 2020. There, he studied voice with tenor James Taylor and sang with the Yale Schola Cantorum and conductors David Hill and Masaaki Suzuki, and was awarded the Margot Fassler Prize in the Performance of Sacred Music. In 2016, he earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from St. Olaf College, where he toured with the St. Olaf Choir (Dr. Anton Armstrong) and studied voice with Dr. Robert C. Smith. Other educational credits include the Tafelmusik Summer Baroque Institute, Source Song Festival in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Bach Akademie Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina (Vocal Fellow), and SongFest in Los Angeles (Colburn Fellow). Hintzsche has had the immense pleasure of working with several notable musicians such as Graham Johnson, Peter Kooij, Peter Harvey, Masaaki Suzuki, Sanford Sylvan, David Hill, Scott Allen Jarrett, Peter Oundjian, Martin Katz, Håkan Hagegård, Julius Drake, Arlene Shrut, François le Roux, Roger Vignoles, and Patricia Caicedo.
He is a native of DeKalb, Illinois.