OPERA/MUSICAL THEATRE
The Bachelor of Music in Performance degree
With an emphasis in Vocal Performance
Wayland Baptist University is teeming with opportunities to perform! Here at Wayland we offer a performance degree which will train you with an emphasis on the possibilities and realities of staged performances as experienced in New York City and around the United States.
Productions
Every year our students participate in both Opera and Musical Theatre performances. In the fall we offer a Children’s Opera for the city of Plainview and the surrounding communities; several thousand children attend this production every year! Also, every other year in the spring we produce a main stage Opera or Musical. In conjunction with these offerings we give students who are enrolled in the Opera/Musical Theatre Class an opportunity to perform numerous scenes from famous productions that have been created throughout the ages.
Training
The training in the Opera/Musical Theatre Class includes audition etiquette and technique, improvisation, set construction, lighting, acting (for both Opera and Musical Theatre and large and small performance venues), movement, character development, stage combat, and the utilization of your body as an instrument of expression!
Even more opportunities
The Opera/Musical Theatre program works very closely with the Theatre department at Wayland under the direction of Dr. Marti Runnels. While you may be a performance major in music, you are encouraged to take classes in acting, scene design, make-up, and directing as well as perform in one or more of the four main stage theatre productions or a summer production at the Sacramento Mountain Theatre in Ruidoso, New Mexico.
WBU also invites students to perform in the Choral program as well. We have the International Choir that tours regionally and abroad, Wayland Singers, Singing Men, Singing Women, and Spirit, an 11-member choir that performs a variety of music from contemporary Christian to jazz.
Degrees offered at Wayland
*Bachelor of Music in Performance
*Bachelor of Music in Music Education
* Bachelor of Music in Church Music
* Bachelor of Arts in music with an emphasis in:
* General Music
* Theory/Composition
* Church Music and Worship
Scholarship Information
Wayland’s School of Music offers a large number of scholarships that may be awarded following the audition process. For more information, see our Web site at www.wbu.edu/music or contact Joe Berry for an audition application packet at berryj@wbu.edu.
About the Director
Mr. Jeff Kensmoe is the Director of Vocal Studies and Opera/Music Theatre and has been with the music faculty at Wayland Baptist University since the fall of 2005. He received his Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, pursued graduate studies at the University of Maryland at College Park, and received his Master of Music degree from the University of Northern Colorado.
Mr. Kensmoe has spent a number of years living and working out of Washington D.C. and New York City where he premiered the roles of Jake Pewlet in Roger Ames’ Amarantha, Amos in Lawrence Moss’ The Queen and the Rebels, and featured vocalist in Grace Ann Adamo Companies’ Drowned Woman of the Sky. He found success bridging the Opera/Musical Theatre gap touring the world with Phillip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach, Europe in the title role of Yeston/Koppit’s Phantom, the United Kingdom as Raoul in The American Phantom, and the United States in Alan Hovhaness’ Killer of Enemies.
Some of his Opera and Musical Theatre roles include Papageno in The Magic Flute, Peter in Hänsel and Gretel, Giralimo in The Secret Marriage, Horace Tabor in The Ballad of Baby Doe, Judge in Trial by Jury, Frank Maurant in Street Scene, Lancelot in Camelot, Georg in She Loves Me, Michael in I Do! I Do!, and the Shepherd in the off-Broadway production of Bending Toward the Light: a Jazz Nativity.
He has been a bass-baritone soloist in a number of Masses and Oratorios across the United States, including Bloch’s Sacred Service, Stravinsky’s Les Noce, Brahm’s A German Requiem, Fauré’s Requiem, Mozart’s Grabmusik and Requiem, Clausen’s a new Creation, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Haydn’s Pauken Messe and Theresien Messe, Schubert’s Mass in G and Mass in E Flat, and Handel’s Messiah.
Mr. Kensmoe has appeared on television in the Guiding Light and has been a guest artist at the New Zealand and former West German Embassies.
Contact Information
Mr. Jeff Kensmoe, Director of Vocal Studies & Opera/Music Theatre
1900 W. 7th Street, CMB 341, Plainview, Texas 79072
(806) 291-1061 kensmoej@wbu.edu
The School of Music at Wayland Baptist University is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Music