Photo by Bob Rowen

My voice studio is in Greenwich Village near Washington Square Park, where I teach singing for New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. I have been singing professionally for more than thirty years, and have taught for more than fifteen years. The struggle to understand technique and improve my own singing has led me to want to share that knowledge. I respect great singing of all styles. The goal of my work is to help singers find more freedom, agility, and expressivity by releasing physical constraints, and developing the full resonant capability of the voice. I constantly study vocal science and teaching techniques to help me improve my own teaching.

Greenwich Village Studio 212-475-2702 jack.eppler@nyu.edu

Photo:Joanne Collier.

I wanted to start a chorus because I was frustrated with hearing so many people say that they couldn’t sing. In 1994, I asked the Church of the Holy Apostles in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood if I could help them form a community chorus. The church hosts the largest soup kitchen in New York City, and they were very interested in establishing a musical outreach to the neighborhood. From the beginning, the mission of the Holy Apostles Community Chorus has been to restore singing to the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, to make a place for anyone who wants to sing, and to heal the community through singing. Our only requirement for joining is to show up. There are no restrictions for membership—by talent, training, age, race, religion, or income. We encourage a sense of accomplishment in our singers by working on interesting and challenging music. We balance the repertory between relatively easy pieces and more difficult ones, and the choristers find equal delight in making a big impact with a dynamic piece of folk music in two parts, as they do in learning a complex multi-part choral masterwork. To bring cultures together, we include music that reflects the ethnic diversity of the chorus and the neighborhood. We have sung music in Arabic, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Twee (from Ghana), Yiddish, and Mandarin. We also try to program music that crosses generational barriers. One recent concert included hits from Broadway musicals from all the decades, beginning with George M. Cohan’s 1904 “Give My Regards to Broadway,” and ending with a rock anthem from “Rent,”  At the same concert we segued from a Russian Orthodox hymn, to Detroit gospel, to a Hebrew psalm.

See the Holy Apostles Community Chorus website at www.hacc-ny.org 

One of the first things that audiences say about my singing is how well they can understand me. For me singing has always been primarily about communicating the text. My
favorite repertory is art songs, and I choose my songs based as much on the text as I do on the music. My recent concerts have included songs of the English composer Gerald Finzi to poems of Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy, the handful of songs written for bass by Francis Poulenc (to words of Jean Racine and Louise de Vilmorin), and Ned Rorem’s bass cycle “Flight for Heaven” on poems of Robert Herrick. I am an enthusiastic oratorio singer, especially of the music of J.S. Bach. I have performed numerous cantatas of Bach, as well as the “Magnificat,” and the “Christmas Oratorio.” The Brahms “Deutsches Requiem” is another favorite piece. My operatic experience includes solo work with small and innovative companies in the New York area, as well as chorus with the New York City Opera. Some of my favorite roles are Guglielmo in Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte,” Bob in Menotti’s “The Old Maid and the Thief,” and the title role in Domenick Argento’s “The Boor” (pictured at the left). I have been lucky to work on the premieres of numerous pieces written for me by contemporary composers, and I have worked with several avant-garde composers in mixed media. I toured Israel and Japan in “Dolmen Music” by Meredith Monk, and have performed in premieres by composer Tan Dun and choreographer Jerry Pearson. I am hoping to create a video based on songs of Debussy, for which I’ve completed the screenplay.

JACK EPPLER, Bass-Baritone
AGMA, AEA
(212) 475-2702

REPRESENTATIVE ORATORIO SOLO PERFORMANCES

OTHER ORATORIOS IN REPERTORY
BACH: B Minor Mass, St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion

REPRESENTATIVE OPERA PERFORMANCES

AVANT GARDE MUSIC THEATRE

Dolmen Music (Meredith Monk), tours of Israel and Japan
Book of Days (Meredith Monk), Carnegie Hall (and sound track for PBS movie)
Bloomsday: Impressions of James Joyce's Ulysses, Jerry Pearson Dance Company, Joyce Theatre, New York
Nine Songs (Tan Dun), world premiere, New York

NEW YORK RECITALS

TRAINING

Vocal technique:  Eduardo Valdés, Oren Brown, Larry Chelsi, Jeannette Lovetri, Dan Marek
Vocal interpretation:  Martina Arroyo, Frank Daykin, Robert Marks
Acting:  Michael Howard
Bachelor of Music Education, Southern Nazarene University (Oklahoma)
Opera workshop, Mannes College, under Paul Berl