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The American tenor and music pedagogue, Marquese Carter, was involved from a young age in elementary school choral programs, and sang in his local church choir. By high school, a talent for solo singing was discovered when he auditioned for and was accepted into the selective Innovations Show Choir of Marion High School. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree (Voice Emphasis) Cum laude, Minor in African American Theatre from University of Louisville (2008-2012). He completed Coursework in Topic Tonal Theory, Professor Kofi Agawu at Princeton University, under the tutelage of Christopher Arneson and Kathy Kessler Price. He obtained his Master of Music degree in Voice Performance/Pedagogy with distinction from Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Princeton (2012-2014), where he served as a volunteer lab assistant at the Presser Voice Lab; and his Doctor of Music degree in Voice Indiana University in Bloomington (2014-2018), where he was Associate Instructor of Voice (2016-2017). He continues to study voice with Brian Horne.
A rare combination of scholar, performer, and pedagogue, Marquese Carter is quickly distinguishing himself as talented young teaching-artist. Having premiered five new solo vocal and chamber works in the last three years, he is a specialist in the music of living composers. As a choral musician, he has sung with such conductors as Daniel Barenboim and Esa-Pekka Salonen at venues ranging from the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia to Carnegie Hall in New York City. He recently premiered Nathan Stang’s Tres sonetos de amor at the Midwest Composers’ Symposium, and is working on several collaborative projects with living composers. He was Tenor Section Leader at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton (September 2012-June 2014); and Tenor Choral Scholar at First Christian Church (July 2014-June 2016).
Marquese Carter has passion for teaching. He has combined his love for outreach and new music by singing with Re-Imagining Opera for Kids (Bloomington, Iindiana) - a company that presents live opera at primary and secondary schools throughout Monroe and Brown Counties. He looks forward to participating in the premiere of the new opera for high-schoolers Spirits by Anthony Plog this year.
As a scholar, Marquese Carter has presented peer-reviewed voice science research at the 2014 National Association of Teachers of Singing Convention in Boston, and was selected by the American Musicological Society as a 2013 Eileen Southern Travel Grant recipient. As a specialist in African American musical traditions, he was recently invited to present on the history of African American Art Song at the University of Maryland, College Park by the voice department. His forthcoming dissertation “The Black Madonna”: Exploring the Art Songs of Florence B. Price will feature previously unpublished manuscripts of Price’s art songs and will contain musical analyses of many of the published art songs.
Marquese Carter is a member of numerous learned organizations including NATS, AMS and the Society for American Music. He is the president of Student NATS at IU and chaired the New Voice Educators Symposium voice research conference in February 2018. He has been Tenor and Voice Teacher at Carter Voice Services since August 2011. In addition to pursuing a Doctor of Music in voice at Indiana, he served as the instructor of undergraduate voice pedagogy (since January 2016), and taught secondary voice lessons. |
