Padraic Costello, Press and Marketing DIRECTOR
Countertenor Padraic Costello maintains a busy schedule as an opera, solo, and ensemble singer in the New York City area. Mr. Costello received graduate degrees in voice performance and ethnomusicology from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where his research and performance interests focused on new music and theater by Japanese composers. His career has focused on utilizing music and performance as a means of investigating social relationships and identity. He is a strong advocator of new music and multidisciplinary performance, and frequently collaborates as a performer with musicians and artists from the United States, Asia, and Polynesia. Mr. Costello is also trained in several traditional Asian music performance genres, and has been studying the Japanese koto for six years as a member of the Sawai Koto Kai school.
In New York, Mr. Costello is a member of the professional Choir of Men and Boys at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, which is regarded by many as the leading ensemble of its kind in the United States. Recent opera roles include Oberon in Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, separate engagements as both Endimione and Pane in Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto, Goffredo in G.F. Handel's Rinaldo, and Ottone in G.F. Handel's Agrippina.
Through his work with Japanese and East Asian composers, Mr. Costello has become especially passionate about the opera and art song of composers in East Asia. He gave two separate recitals of Japanese art song over the past year, which have included premieres, and has presented several papers on the global spread of the art song genre, cosmopolitanism, and cultural intimacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as part of ongoing research.
Mr. Costello also has a soft spot for 19th-century art song, and is delighted to be joining the creative team at ASPS as the Press and Marketing Director. His absolute favorite song cycle of the moment is Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe.
In New York, Mr. Costello is a member of the professional Choir of Men and Boys at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, which is regarded by many as the leading ensemble of its kind in the United States. Recent opera roles include Oberon in Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, separate engagements as both Endimione and Pane in Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto, Goffredo in G.F. Handel's Rinaldo, and Ottone in G.F. Handel's Agrippina.
Through his work with Japanese and East Asian composers, Mr. Costello has become especially passionate about the opera and art song of composers in East Asia. He gave two separate recitals of Japanese art song over the past year, which have included premieres, and has presented several papers on the global spread of the art song genre, cosmopolitanism, and cultural intimacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as part of ongoing research.
Mr. Costello also has a soft spot for 19th-century art song, and is delighted to be joining the creative team at ASPS as the Press and Marketing Director. His absolute favorite song cycle of the moment is Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe.