Haslett High graduate to perform at Carnegie Hall

LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – A graduate of Haslett High School is currently gracing the stage of the Boston Symphony Orchestra – and on Tuesday his talents and work with the BSO will land him on the storied stage of Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Brenden Gunnell, 40, says his journey from Haslett to European opera stages and back to the U.S. arose from a promise to himself.

“I just made a deal with myself,” he says. “I said, to myself, ‘go out and enjoy it. You worked so hard, if one note gets away, or one entrance isn’t as crisp as it should, just enjoy it. This business is hard enough, go out and just enjoy the moment of what you’re doing.’ Everyone wants you to do your best when you’re out there, so you might as well enjoy it and trust that you know what you’re doing.”

And that theory of life has landed him in the role of Sergei in the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s concert production of Shostakovich’s opera ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.’

The production opened Thursday night in Boston, and Gunnell will perform again Saturday on that stage, before heading to NYC to perform at Carnegie Hall.

The opera was one of Shostakovich’s first – written when he was just 24 years old, according to the BSO website. While it was well received by most attendees in 1934, attendance by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1936 led to an unsigned editorial in Pravda, titled “Muddle instead of Music,” that trashed the opera, according to the BSO. Such disfavor by Stalin put the composer in danger of being swept up in ongoing political arrests and purges. In response to the potential threat to life and limb, the composer created the “ostensibly heroic, triumphant Fifth Symphony.”

Gunnell credits his teacher and chorale director Erich Wangeman for encouraging him to believe that Gunnell could, one day, perform a complicated operatic role such as Sergei.

With Carnegie Hall in his very near future, Gunnell wants to share that same inspiration with aspiring opera singers.

“If it’s what you really burn for, and you’re passionate about, good things will happen,” he says. “You will be in the right place at the right time at some point. But if, you know, if you really believe, I would say to you know, my teenage self, just stick with it, kid. Just keep going.”

He says he is excited his mother and step-father will be in the audience Tuesday when he and his castmates – plus the orchestra from Boston – take the stage. He says he hopes to one day perform with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

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