Hear the full "AAPI Classical Musicians of Interlochen" podcast feature by clicking or tapping "Listen" above.
This May, Classical IPR celebrates Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month on Classical IPR by featuring just some of the many AAPI artists of Interlochen who play significant roles in the classical music world.
Nicholas Phan is a Grammy Award-winning American tenor who attended Interlochen Arts Camp in the 1990s. He started musical journey as a violinist, but it was at Interlochen Arts Camp where he pivoted from instrumental music to musical theater and decided to become a classical singer.
Since then, he has appeared with opera companies globally and collaborates with world-class musicians in chamber music. In 2010 he co-founded Art Song Chicago to promote art song and vocal chamber music, where he serves as artistic director.
One of his most salient performances is the song cycle titled "Stranger" by the American contemporary composer Nico Muhly. Each song's text is derived from sources about the history of immigration in the U.S., including an interview with an Italian woman who immigrated through Ellis Island, an 1879 letter from a Chinese American man about the racism he's faced and an 1885 text protesting the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
"Stranger" implores us to ask ourselves: how do we understand the American past if we only have fragments of it? What if the fragments we are missing are from the very immigrants who make this country what it is now?
In 2023, "Stranger" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album — an award for which Nicholas Phan was the first singer of Asian descent to be nominated in the history of that category.
As the son of a Greek-American mother and a Chinese-Indonesian immigrant father, Nicholas Phan imbues his performance with a unique perspective on identity, immigration, and assimilation.
