Gail Whitmore

March 2nd, 2009 at Globe Cafe as part of the Alchemy Prague Readings and Performance Series.

Lyric mezzo-soprano Gail Whitmore has been performing classical music either on her own or with various musical groups for over fifteen years.

Educated at the F.H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, the Mannes College of Music Prep and Extension Divisions, the Juilliard School Evening Division and the University of Michigan, Gail began performing with the All-City High School Chorus which introduced the fifteen-year-old to places like Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall.

She also sang with the New York Grand Opera Company for seven years at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and Central Park SummerStage performing every opera ever written by Verdi in chronological order, placing the series in the Guiness Book of World Records.

Her solo work has consisted of a concert series at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, concerts for the Wagner Discussion Group of New York, Palazzo Te and the Soroptimist Society, both in Mantua, Italy and benefit concerts for the Association of Dominican Classical Artists, Inc. and Prague Flood Relief 2002.

Gail has performed the roles of Alisa in Lucia di Lammermoor with the Manhattan Lyric Opera, Dido in Dido and Aeneas with Cultice Summer Opera, Maestra delle Novizie in Suor Angelica for Intermezzo Opera and Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro for Opera Viva. She made appearances on WABC radio on The James and Joel Show and The Sean Hannity Show, was a finalist in the Classical Productions Junior Level Competition and won an Honorable Mention in the 2nd International Yrjö Kilpinen Art Song Competition.

Since moving to the Czech Republic five years ago she has generated acclaim both as a performer and as a moderator. Beginning as the co-host 3E Expres Evenings in English on Expres Radio she went on to host the 2004 Prague Writers’ Festival, interviewing many distinguished poets and authors. She also performs as a voiceover artist in commercials and ad campaigns for companies such as T-Mobile and Budvar.

Gail also hosts various tourist and corporate performances where she leads the show in English, Italian, Spanish, German and Czech and is frequently interrupted mid-show to be confronted with such statements as "Where's the terlet?" and "Why don't you speak Turkish?"

In 2004 her singing won her the title of the Czech Republic’s first karaoke champion and she went on to Finland to compete in the World Championships – representing the Czech Republic.

Performances since then include a classical concert in the 2004 Mladá Praha Festival and performing with the Dave Murphy Band for Chuck Berry’s Prague tour.

This, her Human Jukebox show, where she sings unaccompanied and from memory any song requested from a list of 1,000, premiered Off Off Broadway in New York in January of 2006. She was on pause for the remainder of the year to give birth to her son Atreyu.

More about Gail Whitmore's The Human Jukebox show here.