Biography

Tracks from album Sure On This Shining Night, recorded with composer Morten Lauridsen & Voce (available on Apple Music, Amazon & YouTube):

Hailed by The Hartford Courant as “a real find” with “vocal quality at once youthful, virile, impassioned and seductive,” baritone Paul Laurence Fletcher was chosen by National Medal of Arts recipient Morten Lauridsen to record the CD premiere of the composer’s dramatic solo setting of A.E. Housman's Be Still, My Soul, Be Still as well as the solo version of Lauridsen’s popular O Magnum Mysterium on Voce's critically praised collaboration with the composer, Sure On This Shining Night. American Record Guide deemed these solo performances to be "superb," finding the recording as a whole to be "absolutely stunning."

Fletcher's singing has been further described as being “vocally alluring” (Farmington Valley Herald), "with great power" (Stamford Advocate), "beautiful and clear" (Danbury News-Times), and "earnest, convincing and rich" (Greenwich News). He has appeared as a featured guest soloist with such ensembles as Orchestra New England, The American Classical Orchestra, and the Hartford, New Haven and Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestras, among many other leading southern New England and New York performing organizations in a diversified repertoire encompassing oratorio, opera, recital, chamber music, concert and musical theater.

Mr. Fletcher was one of six baritones/basses from across the United States selected from auditions in late 2011 to form the bass section of a new professional ensemble, the Yale Choral Artists, conducted by Jeffrey Douma, whose inaugural program of music by Handel was presented to critical acclaim in Carnegie Hall’s 2012 Zankel Hall series under the direction of internationally renowned baroque specialist William Christie. Fletcher’s broad and extensive experience as a professional ensemble singer in concert, on tour, and in the recording studio also includes performing as a featured soloist on two European tours with Pro Arte Singers, and multiple Anglican Cathedral residencies in England and Scotland with Christ Church Cathedral Choir (Hartford) and Calvary RSCM Choir (Stonington).

A member of Actors’ Equity Association, Fletcher has performed leading and supporting roles in productions at Lamb's Theatre (Times Square), Theatre 315 (New York City), Hartford Stage, Downtown Cabaret Theatre, Theatre on the Green, Shubert Opera, Opera Theatre of Connecticut, Ivoryton Playhouse and others. Among his professional credits are the roles of Tony (West Side Story), Macheath (Threepenny Opera), Lancelot (Camelot), Emile de Becque (South Pacific), Joe Hardy (Damn Yankees), Nico (Zorba) and Don Quixote (Man of La Mancha).

Other solo credits include the Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem on the Three Choirs Festival with Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Messiah with New Haven Symphony Orchestra and Voce, the Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music with Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Brahms' Ein Deutches Requiem and the Saint-Saens Christmas Oratorio with Cappella Cantorum, Elijah with Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Stonington Choral Society, Kurt Weill's Walt Whitman Songs with Wesleyan Orchestra, Howells' By the Waters of Babylon with the Ripka/Fleming Trio on the Somers Congregational Concert Series, Durufle’s Requiem and Missa cum jubilo, and Faure’s Requiem with Christ Church Cathedral Choir (Hartford), Vaughan Williams' Five Mystical Songs with Willimantic Philharmonic Orchestra and the Concert Choir of Northeastern Connecticut, Bach’s Cantata No. 106 with the American Classical Orchestra, Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate in D with Oklahoma City University’s Ensemble for Early Music, and solo recitals on the music series at Immanuel Church, Hartford and Christ Church, Rye, New York.

Mr. Fletcher is an honors graduate of Abilene Christian University (BME, with prizes for composition and operatic performance) and won a full scholarship/graduate assistantship to the Hartt School at the University of Hartford (MM in Voice, with distinction), where he took first prizes for operatic performance as well as in the La Voix Poetique art song competition, and was featured in master classes with Bidu Sayao and Marlena Malas. He is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and teaches privately in Oklahoma City and online.