Dennis Bender

Dennis Bender has performed in opera and concert in the United States, Canada, and Europe in productions with Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Company of Boston, the Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, the Louisville Symphony and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Canada. He has sung at the Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi in Italy, and in a series of concerts in the Netherlands.

Bender’s students have appeared on international opera stages, including the Metropolitan Opera and the Deutsch Oper Berlin. Nationally they have sung with Wolf Trap Opera, Glimmerglass, Opera Saint Louis, Minnesota Opera, Arizona Opera, Fort Worth Opera, and Kansas City Lyric Opera. In concert that have sung at Les Ateliers de la Main d’Or, Paris, Carnegie Hall, Malmö Symphony, Sweden, and in America at Tanglewood and with regional orchestras. In Music Theater they have sung on Broadway and National tours.

His students have been winners of vocal competitions, including District and Regional Metropolitan Opera Auditions, the Innsbruck Cesti Competition, the Classical Singer Vocal competition, the Orpheus Vocal Competition, and NATS Chapter and Regional Auditions.

Bender is particularly interested in Russian art song, specializing in the solo vocal music of Dmitri Shostakovich, and teaching Russian Lyric Diction. His Russian Diction students have performed in roles from Russian opera with Opera Sarasota, Opera Neo in San Diego, and in an upcoming production of Eugene Onegin at Wolf Trap Opera this summer.

Dr. Bender earned the DMA degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and has been awarded the Alice Tully Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center and has been a winner of the Ezio Pinza Council for American Singers of Opera. Prior to joining the voice faculty at the University of Kentucky, Dr. Bender has been an affiliate faculty member of Harvard University, and has taught at the City Music Center of Duquesne University and Tanglewood Music Center.