Currently serving as Artist Faculty and Associate Program Director of Opera at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts (CCPA), Dr. Evan Bravos has previously taught on the voice faculty at the University of Chicago and Carthage College. In June 2023, he was one of twelve participants for the NATS (National Association for Teachers of Singing) Intern Program, a highly competitive intensive for early career voice teachers. Having recently earned the Doctor of Musical Arts at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, Bravos and his three siblings launched The BravoStudio in 2020 and have enjoyed building and fostering a community of young musicians and families across Chicago. This season at CCPA he coordinates Copland: The Tender Land, OperaFest and Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro.

 

Marked as a “talent to watch” by the Chicago Tribune, baritone Evan Bravos has received critical acclaim for his “lovely lyric baritone” (Opera News). As a singer, Bravos kicked off the 2024-25 season in a concert of classic Americana with Opera Edwardsville; in September, he premieres a song cycle The Pure and the Impure by composer Elizabeth Doyle and librettist Don Gecewicz and in December, he sings Puccini: Gloria Mass, Bohéme and Beyond! with Janesville Choral Union. In the spring, Bravos returns to Helena Symphony for Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 1, A Sea Symphony and has three engagements singing the Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, the Grace Chorale of Brooklyn, NY and with the Evanston Symphony. He reprises his role as Kenny Kincaid in The Cook-Off with New Orleans Opera.

 

Bravos has performed regularly as a soloist with Chicago Opera Theater and has appeared as a chorister at Lyric Opera of Chicago. He has been a regular member of the Chicago Symphony Chorus for over a decade. 

 

In the 2023-24 season he revisited the role of Count in Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro as a guest artist at University of South Carolina (Columbia); sang Countess’ Lackey/Ivan Ivanovich in Shostakovich’s The Nose with Chicago Opera Theater, and made an orchestral debut with Helena Symphony on Rachmaninoff: The Bells and a featured performance of Schubert: Der Winterreise for Opera Up Close, a concert series in Chicago. 

 

Bravos’ 2022-23 season featured company debuts with White Snake Projects in Boston Let’s Celebrate! Living Holiday Traditions in America, Opera Tampa (Silvio, I Pagliacci) and a return to Chicago Opera Theater for a premiere of Shawn Okpebholo: The Cook-Off as TV host, Kenny Kincaid.  On the concert stage, he received praise for an “elegantly sung” Carmina Burana with the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. 

 

In the 2021-22 season, Bravos performed the role of Hannah Before in Laura Kaminsky, Kimberly Reed and Mark Cambell’s groundbreaking As One with Opera Santa Barbara and Hawaii Performing Arts Festival. With Chicago Opera Theatre, he played El Dancaïro in Carmen alongside Jamie Barton and Stephanie Blythe, and “sang winningly” (Opera News) as Clay in the world premiere of Matthew Recio and Royce Vavrek’s opera The Puppy Episode. Other recent roles include Riff in West Side Story (New Philharmonic Opera); Maximilian in Candide (Ravinia Festival); (Hawaii Performing Arts Festival); Inman in Jennifer Higdon's Cold Mountain (Music Academy of the West); and Tom Joad in the Chicago premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath.

 

Other credits include San Diego Opera, Sarasota Opera, Central City Opera, Aspen Music Festival, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and Lyric Opera of Chicago. In concert, he has sung with the symphonies of Santa Fe, Milwaukee, Madison, and Colorado and as a Fellow at the Ravinia Festival Steans Music Institute. He has been featured soloist n art song initiatives such the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago and the Horto Music Festival in Pelion, Greece.