A ground-breaking program in the teaching of German Lieder
John Parr is the head of music staff at San Francisco Opera. A native of Birmingham, U.K., Parr studied piano at the Royal Northern College of Music with Sulamita Aronovsky, and musicology at Manchester University. He was a prize-winner in the International Viotti Piano Competition in Vercelli, Italy in 1980 and worked for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from 1985 to 1988, touring with the company to Japan and Korea in 1986. He was engaged at Scottish Opera from 1988 to 1990. In 1991, he joined the Lower Saxony State Opera in Hannover, Germany, where he was head of music staff and musical assistant to music directors George Alexander Albrecht, Christof Perick and Andreas Delfs—specializing in the Wagner and Strauss operas. During this time he developed an extensive series of Lieder recitals and chamber music programs for the Opera, and also broadcast on SFB Radio Berlin and on NDR Television. With San Francisco Opera, Parr has developed and performed in numerous recital programs. In the summers from 2002 to 2005 he worked as a coach at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, and has also given recitals in the Wagner Museum there. In June 2005 he initiated a series of vocal and chamber music recitals entitled “Basically British” at Old First Church in San Francisco. Over the last few years, he has appeared with one of the world’s leading cellists, Lynn Harrell, in chamber music concerts in the Bay Area, and in recitals for the Marilyn Horne Foundation and for San Francisco Performances and LIEDER ALIVE! He has accompanied singers in the Schwabacher Recital Series since 2000. In the summer of 2011 he will leave San Francisco Opera to become casting director and assistant to the music director at the Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe, Germany, where he will also launch a series of vocal recitals. He plans to return regularly to San Francisco to coach young artists in the Merola and Adler Fellowship programs of the San Francisco Opera, and to continue his collaboration and advisory role with the teaching and concert program, LIEDER ALIVE!
