Virginia Beach has produced a booming baritone who’s been racking up Grammy nominations over the past several years.
And this year, he’s done it again.
Opera singer and Virginia Beach native Will Liverman received a Grammy nomination this month in the Best Classical Compendium category for his album “The Dunbar/Moore Sessions Volume II.”
It’s his fifth nomination. He has won once, taking home a 2023 Grammy for Best Opera Recording as the headliner in “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”
Liverman’s latest album is set to the poetry of 19th and early 20th century poets and activists Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Dunbar-Moore. His music on the record incorporates sounds and styles drawn from jazz, gospel, classical and musical theater.
“I just took it upon myself to seek out my favorite poems and seek out my favorite collaborators,” Liverman said. “I wrote these songs just being inspired by these poets, and also to find out who I am, myself, as a writer.”
Will Liverman in “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” at the Metropolitan Opera. (Courtesy/Will Liverman)
Opera stars including Isabel Leonard, who won three Grammys, and Erin Morley, who won the 2022 Grammy award for Best Choral Performance, as well as Broadway star Mykal Kilgore are featured on Liverman’s album.
Liverman grew up singing in Hampton Roads. Before going pro, he was a member of the choirs at Norfolk’s New Hope Church of God in Christ and Virginia Beach’s New Jerusalem Church of God in Christ. He attended Cox High School and the Governor’s School for the Arts.
He later earned a master’s degree in music from Juilliard, starred in regional shows and in 2020 successfully auditioned for the title role in Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” The opera was based on the memoir of New York Times columnist Charles Blow and his coming to terms with having been sexually abused as a child. It was the first piece by a Black composer performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
The Grammy Awards will be presented Feb. 1.
Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8139, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com
