These concerts are the North Carolina Symphony debut of Damien Geter.

Damien Geter is a bass-baritone, actor, and composer who currently serves as Interim Music Director and Artistic Advisor for Portland Opera as well as Artistic Advisor for the award-winning vocal ensemble Resonance Ensemble.

This season, Geter returns to Portland Opera as Angelotti in Puccini’s Tosca and performs Sam in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti with the Reno Symphony, the title role in the world premiere of Errollyn Wallen’s Quamino’s Map with Chicago Opera Theatre, and William Still in Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road with the Oakland Symphony. He also appears as the bass soloist in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Richmond Symphony.

Geter made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the Grammy Award-winning production of Porgy and Bess as the Undertaker and performed the Immigration Officer in Seattle Opera’s filmed production of Jonathan Dove’s Flight. He made his television debut on NBC’s Grimm, and was also seen in Netflix’s Trinkets in 2019.

Geter’s work as a composer includes chamber, vocal, orchestral, and operatic works. An African American Requiem premiered in Spring 2022 in partnership with Resonance Ensemble and the Oregon Symphony, with subsequent performances at The Kennedy Center. 2022 premieres also include I Said What I Said for Imani Winds, co-commissioned by Anima Mundi Productions, Chamber Music Northwest, and The Oregon Bach Festival, and his second opera, Holy Ground, at the Glimmerglass Festival. Future commissions include world premiere productions in 2024 and 2025.

An alum of the Austrian American Mozart Festival as well as the Aspen Opera Center, Geter was a semi-finalist for the Irma Cooper Vocal Competition. In 2012, he toured with the American Spiritual Ensemble, a group that helps to promote the preservation of the American art form, the spiritual.