Bradley Christensen, baritone

Award winning baritone, voice teacher, and guest clinician, Bradley Christensen enjoys a busy multi-faceted career in the arts. He holds four degrees: a BMUS (Hons) in Vocal Performance and a BA in Italian, both from the University of Auckland, and a MMus and a DMA in Voice Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Toronto. In 2016, he was invited by The Royal Conservatory of Toronto to hold one of seven positions in its prestigious Rebanks Family Fellowship and International Performance Residency Program. He also furthered his development as a young artist with Opera on the Avalon, Highlands Opera Studio, and Opera North.

Bradley has had the pleasure of working with many arts organizations across Canada and internationally through the realms of opera, operetta, oratorio, chamber music, song recitals, and musical theater. On the concert stage, Bradley has appeared in Canada as a soloist with the Grand Philharmonic Choir of Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph Chamber Choir, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Orchestra Toronto, Ottawa Choral Society, Peterborough Symphony Orchestra, and Thirteen Strings to name a few. In his native New Zealand, Bradley has sung as a soloist with the Auckland Choral Society, Hamilton Civic Choir, and at the University of Auckland, he presented a semi-staged rendition of Brahms’ epic song cycle, Die schöne Magelone, conceptualized with Aria Umezawa. Bradley is also a keen recitalist, having performed in the Canadian Opera Company Concert Series, Concerts @100, the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, and with the Pocket Concert Group.

In opera, Bradley has performed with the Canadian Opera Company, Cultureland Opera Collective, Manitoba Underground Opera, New Opera Lyra, Opera on the Avalon, Southern Ontario Lyric Opera, Toronto Masque Theatre and Opera Atelier, for which Stephen Bonfield of Opera Canada wrote "And then there was striking baritone Bradley Christensen as the High Priest lending essential dramatic lower tessitura counterbalance to the opera’s preference for upper register roles. Christensen is an excellent singer and actor and I look forward to seeing him in more roles with OA.” Bradley made his US debut in 2017 performing the role of Agamemnon with Opera North in Offenbach’s La belle Hélène, while also covering the role Fred/Petruccio in Cole Porter’s Kiss me Kate. 

Awards include the Sondra Radvanovsky scholarship, awarded by the International Resource Centre for Performing Artists as one of 10 ‘Singing Stars: The Next Generation’; the Pears-Britten singing scholarship (University of Auckland); the Marie D’Albini scholarship in singing (University of Auckland); and a travelling scholarship to study in Italy in 2007 (University of Auckland). Bradley has also been a top 10 finalist in the New Zealand Aria Competition, the LEXUS Song Quest and the Rochester International Voice Competition.

As a voice teacher and pedagogue, Bradley has worked at the University of Toronto as the vocal coach for the Tenor/Bass Choir and a mentor to the undergraduate voice pedagogy students. He has served as a ‘Teaching Artist’ at the Canadian Opera Company and a vocal coach to the Ontario Youth Choir. Currently, he is a sessional faculty member at McMaster University teaching singing and voice pedagogy; runs his own private voice studio and serves as a guest clinician to various arts organizations, high schools, and universities providing vocal workshops and masterclasses. Among his list of clients includes Chorus Niagara, Earl Haig Secondary School, Hamilton Children’s Choir, Havergal College, Oakville Children’s Choir, Rosedale Heights School for the Arts, the Toronto Children’s Chorus, and Western University. Last year, Bradley also had an article published in the National Association for Teachers of Singing Journal of Singing, Vol. 80, no. 5 (May/June 2024), titled “Choosing and Assessing Vocal Repertoire: A Comparative Study of Grading Rubrics Which Determine the Difficulty Level of Art Songs.”