Praised for his “booming and room-filling bass” (Voce di Meche), basso profondo Edwin Jhamal Davis is an artist on the rise. Last season, he made his house débuts at The Metropolitan Opera as Garvey Preacher in X: The Life & Times of Malcolm X and at Seattle Opera as Bass 2, a role he also performed with Opera Omaha. Davis has also sung Colline in La bohème with First Coast Opera, Amelia Island Opera, Opera Montana, and Opera Memphis. Additionally, he recently made his Carnegie Hall debut in Mozart’s Requiem and performed the bass solo in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with the Mainly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center.
This season, Mr. Davis makes his New Orleans Opera debut as Angelotti in Tosca and returns to Seattle Opera as the Second Armored Man in Die Zauberflöte. Recently, he performed as the King in Aida with Opera Grand Rapids and as the bass soloist in Handel’s Messiah for the Danbury Symphony. Additionally, Davis appeared as Masetto in Don Giovanni during his time as a Glynn Studio Artist with The Atlanta Opera.
Mr. Davis was the National First Place Winner of the Marian Anderson Vocal Arts Scholarship, hosted by the National Association of Negro Musicians in its centennial celebration. Moreover, Davis was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Eastern Region and became one of the first African Americans to claim one of the top two prizes in Opera Columbus’s Cooper-Bing Vocal Competition. Davis is a proud native of Utica, MS, and an alumnus of Jackson State University and the Manhattan School of Music.