by Richard Gray
At St. John’s, we are fortunate to have eight professional staff singers who serve as leaders within our choir. The combination of their musical skills, reliability, and spirit raises the quality of the music that we offer and contributes to creating a supportive and collaborative environment. We are featuring brief bios of our staff singers so our congregation can come to know even more about these wonderful leaders within our music ministry.
Tessa Wegenke, mezzo-soprano, is in her eighth year as an alto staff singer at St. John the Evangelist. Her warm, vibrant & focused voice shines whether she is performing oratorio, opera, or premiering new works by contemporary composers. She earned her Master of Music in Vocal Performance, emphasis in Vocal Pedagogy, from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University where she studied with John Shirley-Quirk and Ah Young Hong. Tessa earned her BA in Arts Management and BA in Vocal Performance from the University
of Wisconsin – Green Bay.
She has performed opera roles such as Rosette from Manon by Massenet, Maman from L’enfant et les sortileges by Ravel, La Grosse Dame from Les mamelles de Tiresias, among others. She has also been the alto soloist for Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor and Handel’s Messiah. She has sung with local groups such as The Singers – Minnesota Choral Artists, Consortium Carissimi, Northstar Consort, and has been a guest singer and soloist at the Byzantine Choral Festival.
