Thomas Faracco

Associate Professor

• Email Address: tfaracco@rider.edu
• Phone: (609) 921-7100 x8257
• Office: Erdman Hall 16
• Mailing Address: 101 Walnut Lane, Princeton, NJ 08540

Born in New York City, Thomas Faracco holds degrees in organ, conducting and voice from Westminster Choir College. He continued vocal studies at Indiana University with the famed soprano and teacher Margaret Harshaw. 

 

A frequent oratorio and concert soloist, he has appeared with a number of orchestras throughout the country including the St. Louis, Minnesota and Vermont symphonies as well as the Cincinnati Opera and the Marlboro Music Festival.  Chamber music appearances include a world premiere of Four Cavalier Settings for tenor and guitar by Milton Babbitt at Merkin Hall in New York and the Ravel Chansons madécasses with the Lyrica Chamber Ensemble of Chatham, a performance which was hailed by the Newark Star-Ledger as the best chamber music performance of a single work during the season.

 

Since 1992, Mr. Faracco has been an artist and faculty member at the Sommer Musik Akademie in Pitten, Austria, where he participates in opera, lieder and oratorio performances and gives master classes in vocal technique and interpretation.

Television appearances and recordings include a Christmas special featuring music from the Victorian era filmed in the historic Ballantine House in Newark for New Jersey Public TV, tenor soloist for the Westminster recording of the complete Bach motets with Wilhelm Ehmann on Gothic Records, and most recently a recording of Giants in the Earth, a song cycle by fellow colleague Stefan Young on the Arabesque label.  His performances of Boris Godunov and Turandot with the St. Louis Symphony and Carlyle Floyd’s Susannah with the Cincinnati Opera have been broadcast on National Public Radio.  Active in the National Association of Teachers of Singing, he was the Eastern Region Governor and program chair for the 2000 National Convention in Philadelphia.

 

Former students have been accepted into prestigious graduate and apprentice programs such as Indiana University, Peabody Institute, McGill University, and the Santa Fe Opera, and are pursuing careers in performance and education across the country.   In the popular music and music theater worlds, former students have appeared on American Idol (runner up in the first season) and the national tour of Miss Saigon.  Russel Fischer, Westminster’s first music theater student to appear on Broadway (in Jersey Boys), studied with Mr. Faracco throughout his undergraduate studies.

Formerly on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mr. Faracco is an Associate Professor of Voice at Westminster and served as chair of the department from 2001 to 2008.