Photo: Jacquelyn Culpepper ’79 as the First Lady in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.”
For internationally acclaimed lyrical soprano Jacquelyn Culpepper ’79, a recent performance at Lake Junaluska was more than just another concert stop in a storied career that taken her to recital halls across the globe. It also was a homecoming for a professional vocalist who got her start in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
Culpepper, featured guest artist at the Breckenridge Music Festival in Colorado for the past 13 years, took center stage at Lake Junaluska’s Stuart Auditorium in August. Former artist-inresidence at Haywood Community College, she now is a member of the music faculty at Davidson College. But it was at Western where her career took off. “One morning in the early 1970s, my mom took me to the home of Dr. Joyce Farwell in Cullowhee and said, ‘I don’t know if she has any talent, but she will sing on a park bench,’” Culpepper said. “Years later, I’m still singing, and have found park benches all over the world.”
Richard Trevarthan, who taught music theory at Western, said he recognized Culpepper’s talent early on. “I conducted, she sang and, oh heavens, she did a beautiful job,” said Trevarthan. “Of course, that was small potatoes compared to what she has done since, but she was already a star when she was in college.”
Culpepper earned her master’s degree in musical performance and literature at Baylor University, then moved to New York to begin a career that has included national PBS broadcasts of “An Evening with Cole Porter” and “Salute to Masterpiece Theatre.” She has performed solo concert tours worldwide and 85 roles in opera and oratorio during her quarter-of-a-century career. Highlights include a recital in Belgium to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Europe and performances in such prestigious venues as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Atlanta’s Symphony Hall.
Culpepper said she is often asked during her travels what led to a career in lyrical performance for a young woman hailing from a rural place that many folks might suspect would lead not to the opera, but to the Grand Ole Opry. She considers it merely a matter of graduation of form. “The mountains are full of culture, and the people in the mountains appreciate and are proud of their land, their way of life and their art. My grandparents sang by shaped notes, and my parents were in a gospel quartet. There was always music in our home, our church and our schools,” she said. “To let that music graduate to more complex forms such as opera and classical music felt very natural.”
After her concert at Lake Junaluska, Culpepper continued her world-traveling ways, appearing again at the Breckenridge Music Festival before journeying to Taipei in Taiwan to perform, teach and direct in the American Performing Arts Academy.