David Dillard's headshot

David Dillard

Director of Graduate Studies, Professor
ddillard@siu.edu
618-453-5823
ALT 205
Music
Baritone David Dillard is Professor of Voice and Director of Graduate Studies for the School of Music at Southern Illinois University Carbondale where he has taught voice, song literature, voice pedagogy, diction, and opera history for over twenty years.

As a singer, he has performed dozens of roles, both leading and comprimario, with Union Avenue Opera and Winter Opera St. Louis such as Rossini’s Figaro, Dr. Malatesta, Sulpice, Nilakantha, Oroveso, Gunther, Polyphemus, and Owen Hart. In previous seasons, he appeared with Florida Grand Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, Lake George Opera, Dicapo Opera Theater, the San Diego Opera Ensemble and the Tanglewood Music Center. He has shared the stage with many notable singers including at Union Avenue Opera where he sang the role of the Vicar to Christine Brewer’s Lady Billows in Albert Herring. He has also performed with Frederica von Stade, Clay Hilley, Michael Fabiano, Alexis Lo Bianco, Mark Rucker, Dan Belcher, and Cindy Sadler, among many others. He has worked with conductors such as Robert Spano, Seiji Ozawa, Anton Coppola, Louis Salemno, Carl St. Clair, Kenneth Kiesler, Martin Katz, Daniel Beckwith, Joseph Mechavich, Kostis Protopapas, and Scott Schoonover.

Dr. Dillard has also sung in elite professional choruses including Craig Hella Johnson’s Conspirare, for which he recorded Bach’s Mass in B-minor. He also sang with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur and the Los Angelis Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen. Those performances were prepared by Joseph Flummerfelt.

He has been fortunate to study with some of the premiere teachers of voice and vocal coaches including Richard Best, Richard Hughes, Daniel Washington, Rose Taylor, Larry Weller, Doug Ahlstedt, David Garvey, Arlene Shrut, Alan Smith, Kenneth Griffiths, and Martin Katz who chaired his DMA committee and with whom he was fortunate to sing several performances of Schubert’s Winterreise. He sang in master classes with Grace Bumbry, Herman Prey, Waren Jones, Phyllis Curtin and many others.

As a scholar, Dr. Dillard's interests include voice science, song and operatic literature. His article La solita forma: Examining the Musical and Dramatic Structure of Bel Canto Arias was published in the NATS Journal of Singing. He presented in Vienna, Austria at the International Conference of Voice Teacher on the same topic. He has also presented at NATS and College Music Society regional and national conferences. His arrangements of operatic and oratorio arias with obbligato instruments are available from Classical Vocal Reprints. He was a participant in the NATS Intern Program and was a semi-finalist in the New York Oratorio Society’s Aria Contest. He holds degrees from The University of Michigan, The University of Texas at Austin and Principia College.

David lives in Carbondale with his wife and two beautiful children.

Courses:

  • MUS 140P-540P: Applied Voice
  • MUS 470: The History of Opera