Equipped with a bright, bell-like voice, Canadian mezzo-soprano Cassidy Stahr (B’Mus 2020, UVic) lives and works as a freelance vocalist in Victoria, BC. She is proficient in several genres of singing.
In the Pacific Opera Victoria chorus, she has performed a variety of classic and modern operas, most recently appearing in the Canadian premiere of The Birds, and singing a feature chorus role in Ainadamar. She was a featured artist in their summer outreach program, Pop-up Opera: an accessible concert series exhibited in various public spaces in the greater Victoria area. Recent roles include The Consul (Secretary) and Tuck Everlasting (Mae) with Opera NUOVA, and she looks forward to learning another operatic role very soon with Early Music Society of the Islands, where she will be understudying Galatea in Handel’s Aci, Galatea, e Polifemo.
Concert soloist engagements include Pacific Baroque Ensemble’s Old Music for the New Year concert, Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the Victoria Chamber Orchestra, Bach’s Magnificat and Handel’s Dixit Dominus with the Victoria Philharmonic Choir and orchestra, and Messiah with Bach on the Rock.
Cassidy loves choral singing as well as soloing; she was a choral scholar at Christ Church Cathedral for 5 years, and returns occasionally to sing with Cathedral Choir ensembles. She is a former member of the touring Vancouver Island Chamber Choir, which presents international and multi-generational ensemble pieces.
Throughout her undergraduate degree, Cassidy was a chief organizer of the award-winning UVic Vocal Jazz and Contemporary Music Ensemble, covering as director from 2021–22. She regularly composes arrangements for solo and small-ensemble vocal jazz groups. She is a background vocalist and dancer for The Midnights R&B band in Victoria, which toured to Denmark last summer to play in Copenhagen, and Aalborg’s Den Blå Festival.