JR Fralick

Tenor Dr. JR Fralick has served on the BW Conservatory faculty since 2001 and joined the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in 2005. Before arriving at Baldwin Wallace he served on the faculty at Millikin University for six years. Fralick has served as a clinician and board member and has directed workshops for the National Association of Teachers of Singing, NATS.

Fralick made his professional singing debut as Alfredo in Colorado Lyric Opera Theater's production of La Traviata, about which The Denver Post praised "JR Fralick's Alfredo was full of beauty and youthful ardor." He also received critical acclaim from The Cleveland Dealer for his Don Ottavio in Lyric Opera Cleveland's Don Giovanni: "JR Fralick sang like a Mozartean dream." He earned similar accolades for his Rudolfo (La Bohème), Alfred (Die Fledermaus), Camille (The Merry Widow), Tamino (Die Zauberflöte), Martin (The Tender Land) and others.

"As Ottavio, JR Fralick was vocally suave, with a honeyed tone and liquid phrasing." - The Akron Beacon Journal.

Fralick's symphonic highlights include performances of Radzynski's "Shirat Ma'ayan" with the Jerusalem Symphony, Britten's "Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings" with the Kansas City Symphony and numerous performances of Handel's "Messiah" - and other oratorios - across the country.

An avid recitalist and supporter of art song, Fralick performed Britten's five Canticles for the Cleveland Museum of Art's "Musart Recital Series," recitals of Lieder with the exclusive Franz Schubert-Institut in Vienna, Austria and the program "Novello & Co." at both the International Conference of British Music and the International Conference on Physiology and Acoustics of Singing. He was selected to perform his lecture-recital "Donizetti's Influence Abroad: The Russian bel canto" at the International Donizetti Festival in Bergamo and Milan, Italy. Fralick frequently gives guest artist recitals at churches and universities and serves on the Governing Council of the Art Song Festival of Cleveland.

Always open to new ideas, Fralick has explored original cabaret songs, performing them in a number of venues, most notably on the Cleveland Playhouse's "Cabaret Sampler" concerts. He was also featured in Cleveland Public Theater's dance concert, "Companions," about which Linda Eisenstein of Cool Cleveland wrote "It was worth attending just to hear JR Fralick's melting sonorous tenor in Ricky Ian Gordon's ravishing song cycle Genius Child."

Fralick's expertise is nineteenth-century Russian music and Russian diction for singers. He is in great demand for masterclasses and residencies on the subjects, and Leyerle Press published his anthology, "Twenty Arias for Tenor," from the nineteenth-century Russian repertoire. He has taught courses on Russian vocal literature and diction, applied voice, music history, opera history, vocal pedagogy and opera workshop.