With assured musicality and the varied tonal palette of a lieder specialist, Canadian lyric Colin Balzer’s North American engagements to date include recitals at New York’s Frick Collection and on the Philadelphia Chamber Music series; concerts with the Portland, New Jersey, Utah, Victoria, Ann Arbor, Québec, Atlanta and Indianapolis Symphonies; Early Music Vancouver; Toronto’s Tafelmusik and Toronto Mendelssohn Choir; Les Violons du Roy; the National and Calgary Philharmonics; Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra; Musica Sacra and the Oratorio Society of New York (both under Kent Tritle) at New York’s Carnegie Hall. In addition he is regularly featured in opera productions at the Boston Early Music Festival, including Steffani’s Niobe, Händel’s Almira, Lully’s Psyche and Mattheson’s Boris Goudenow.
Guest soloist appearances abroad include Collegium Vocale Gent/ Philippe Herreweghe, Fundacao OSESP Orchestra/Louis Langrée, Les Musiciens du Louvre/Marc Minkowski, Rotterdam Philharmonic/Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Akademie für alte Musik/Marcus Creed, as well as with the RIAS Kammerchor, Het Brabants Orkest, Luxembourg Symphony, Leipzig Baroque Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Museumsorchester Salzburg, Radio Kamer Filharmonie (Amsterdam Concertgebouw), Philharmonischer Chor Berlin, Estonian Chamber Choir, Camerata Salzburg and Musik Podium Stuttgart. Operatic forays include Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Bolshoi and in Aix-en-Provence and Mozart’s La finta giardiniera in Aix and Luxembourg.
Particularly esteemed as a recitalist, he has been welcomed at London’s Wigmore Hall (accompanied by Graham Johnson), the Britten Festival in Aldeburgh, the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival, the Wratislavia Cantans in Poland, and at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden. Recordings to date include Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch and Eisler and Henze song anthologies. A prizewinner of Holland’s ‘s-Hertogenbosch Competition, the U.K.’s Wigmore Hall Song Competition, Stuttgart, Germany’s Hugo Wolf Competition, and Munich's 55th International ARD Competition, Mr. Balzer also holds the rare distinction of earning the Gold Medal at the Robert Schumann Competition in Zwickau with the highest score in 25 years. Born in British Columbia, he received his formal musical training at the University of British Columbia with David Meek and with Edith Wiens at the Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg/Augsburg.