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Colin Balzer
Performer (tenor)

A Germany-based Canadian lyric tenor who offers assured musicality and the communicativeness and varied tonal palette of a lieder specialist, Colin Balzer is fast becoming one of the most sought-after concert soloists of his generation. In the 2006-2007 season he appears with Concerto Palatino (Gabrielli program), Collegium Musicum Basel (orchestrated Schubert and Copland songs), Hans-jörg Albrecht and the Munich Bach Choir (Mozart’s Requiem and Freimauerer Cantata), Bernard Labadie and Les Violins du Roy (North American tour of Mozart’s Requiem and Veserae solennes de confessore), Schwäbisches Oratorienchor (Schumann’s Paradies und die Peri), Early Music Vancouver and Les Boréades de Montreal (Bach cantatas), Ann Arbor Symphony, Calgary Symphony, and the Vancouver Cantata Singers (Handel’s Messiah), Klauspeter Seibel and the Quebec Symphony (Mendelssohn’s Paulus), Tafelmusik (Bach’s St. John Passion and Handel’s Solomon) and a production of Lully’s Psyché at the Boston Early Music Festival.

Equally at home with period instrument groups and modern orchestras, Mr. Balzer has enjoyed critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, working with such conductors as Helmuth Rilling, Simone Young, Simon Preston, Leopold Hager, Bernard Labadie, Kenneth Montgomery, Mario Venzago, Yoav Talmi, Gabriel Chmura and Christof Perick, and performing with the Hungarian and Polish National Radio Orchestras, Luxembourg Symphony, Het Brabants Orkest, Stuttgart Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Les Boréades de Montreal, Tragicomedia, and the New Jersey, Indianapolis, Oregon, Vancouver and Québec Symphonies, among many others. Also esteemed as a recitalist, he has been welcomed at London’s Wigmore Hall (accompanied by Graham Johnson), the Britten Festival in Aldeburgh, Allice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center, the Bruges Festival Musica Antiqua in Belgium, the Boston Early Music Festival, Festival Vancouver, the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival, the Wratislavia Cantans in Poland, and at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden. Recordings to date include Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch and Eisler and Henze song anthologies.

A recent prizewinner of the 55th ARD International Music Competition in Munich, Germany, Mr. Balzer has also won prizes at Holland’s ‘s-Hertogenbosch Competition, the Wigmore Hall Song Competition in London, the Hugo Wolf Competition in Stuttgart, Germany, and holds the rare distinction of earning the First Prize Gold Medal at the Robert Schumann Competition in Zwickau with the highest score in 25 years. Masterclasses have been with such artists as Phillip Langridge, Robert Tear, Elly Ameling, Brigitte Fassbaender, Rudolph Jansen, and Christoph Prégardien. Born in British Columbia, he received his formal musical training at the University of British Columbia with David Meek and at the Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg/Augsburg with Edith Wiens.