Angela Brown

Angela Brown (b. Indianapolis, December 1, 1964 - ) – Operatic soprano. Born and raised in Indianapolis, Brown grew up singing gospel music in a Baptist church. Following high school, she had vocational training to become a secretary and worked as an aide at a hospital. After the loss of brother Aaron, she converted to Seventh Day Adventism and matriculated at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, in hopes of becoming a singing evangelist. It was there that she was persuaded to consider a career in classical music. Following the completion of her bachelor’s degree, she studied voice from 1992 to 1997 at Indiana University, where Virginia Zeani shaped her into a Verdi soprano. In her fourth attempt, she won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1997, the same year that she moved to New York. In the subsequent year, she won a Verdi competition in Italy and started working as an understudy at the MET in the 2000-2001 season. In 2003 and 2004, she starred in three Verdi operas with the Opera Company of Philadelphia and performed the role of Aida with the MET in 2004. Since her MET debut, Brown has been very busy performing major Verdi roles internationally. Brown has also sung with many professional orchestras internationally. Starting in 2008, she joined forces with IPS educator and poet Tasha Jones in the “Hello Beautiful” movement, which Jones started during the 2005-2006 school year. In 2015, she appeared with Opera Philadelphia in the world premiere of Charlie Parker's Yardbird by Daniel Schynder. Angela was one of the featured vocalist on the Ask Your Mama album, a multi-media setting of a Langston Hughes poem by composer Laura Karpman; the album won two Grammy awards in 2016. Since becoming a professional vocalist, she has made numerous appearances in Indianapolis, including performances with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Indianapolis Children's Choir.