Garrick Comeaux

Instructor

After 25 years of life in Europe, Comeaux now resides closer to family in the United States. Bass-baritone, born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1958, he began his musical formation at an early age by banging on the back door steps while listening to gospel music. As a preacher’s kid, his family transferred to Minnesota for his junior and senior years of high school, where he seriously began to study both instrumental and vocal music.

Comeaux attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn. and sang under the direction of Paul J. Christensen. He later dedicated his energies in vocal studies at Indiana University Music School-Bloomington. He moved to Rome where his studies in voice and repertory continued at the Music Conservatories of Santa Cecilia Rome and at F. Morlacchi Perugia.

Taking residence in Munich Germany, Comeaux participated in the Bayerischer Rundfunk Chor under the direction of Sir Colin Davis and sang in concerts and recordings conducted by directors such as Sawalish, Solti, Maazel, Sinopoli, Barenboim, and Bernstein. Once again in Italy, Comeaux became a member of the Cappella Sistina (Domenico Bartolucci) and Cantor in Vatican City. He completed his master’s and doctorate in sacramental theology at Sant’Anselmo University.

Comeaux has worked extensively over the years with various early music groups in Italy and elsewhere on the European continent and has collaborated with numerous ensembles and directors as Il Complesso Barocco (Alan Curtis), Coro della Radiotelevisione Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, (Diego Fasolis), de labytintho Vicenza (W. Testolin), and uncountable Monteverdi Vespers with Andrew Lawrence King.

In 1996, he founded in Rome his Consortium Carissimi in which early Baroque music of the Roman school forms the basis of concert, master-class, recording, and publication activities. A state-side ensemble of Consortium has been established which continues to explore the larger works of the early baroque for concerts, master classes, recordings, and publications. (www.consortiumcarissimi.org)

As a studio artist and instructor at Augsburg College, Comeaux has taught individual voice instruction, directed the Cedar Singers, the Chamber Vocal Ensemble, and taught an elective course to Music and the Fine Arts.

He says, “I love to teach Introduction to Music and the Fine Arts. It is a semester course in which a brief history of mostly western music is the subject. The class covers how music has developed over the centuries as an art form, its relationship to other art forms such as painting, architecture, sculpture and literature, and how these art forms are means of human expression of a particular time and culture in western history. Various concepts emerge from such slant on music, consequently the concepts of sacred and secular, seasons of different cultures and philosophical-theological thought, and the concept of history itself, biases and change.

Education

• Doctoral Dissertation in progress in Dogmatic Sacramental Studies; Pontifical University for Liturgical Studies Sant’ Anselmo – Rome, Italy.
• Master’s degree (Licenza) in Dogmatic Sacramental Studies; Pontifical University for Liturgical Studies Sant’ Anselmo - Rome, Italy; (Thesis: The Sacramental Rite and Musical Art in different interpretations [Karl Rahner & Card. Joseph Ratzinger] of Sacrosanctum Concilium 112-121)
• Bachelor’s degree in Theology (Magna cum laude); Pontifical University Saint John the Lateran - Rome, Italy
• Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy (Magna cum laude); Pontifical University Saint John the Lateran - Rome, Italy
• Diploma in Vocal (canto) Studies; Conservatorio di Musica - Santa Cecili - Rome, Italy
• Vocal Performance Studies; Indiana University, School of Music - Bloomington, IN
• Music Major Studies; Concordia College – Moorhead, MN Member of Concordia Concert Choir under Paul. J. Christiansen