Public Musicology
Asking questions. Listening. Accessibility.
Hallmarks of bringing history and context to the public.
Justin Vickers has been privileged to moderate extensive public discussions with the world's leading artists, composers, artistic administrators, music directors, stage directors, and fellow musicologists.
His early career as an opera singer positions him to ask questions to which the public is keen to hear the answers. He is an active pre-performance lecturer, and loves the energy of the opera house and concert hall.
Justin Vickers speaks with composer Missy Mazzoli at the Lyric Opera of Chicago before a spring 2025 performance of Mazzoli's and Royce Vavrek's The Listeners.
Public Presentations
Justin Vickers has moderated discussions with administration, composers and librettists, and mainstage artists at the Lyric Opera Opera of Chicago. He has also facilitated conversations among musicologists centered around specific topics. Whatever the format, Vickers is comfortable diving in! Because he recognizes that audiences share the same questions and concerns that he has, and he welcomes the opportunity to pose these ideas and queries directly to his discussant.
Moderator
Justin Vickers, moderator for Opera Insights: Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, 2025-2026 Season Program [January 24, 2026]
Lectures
Justin Vickers, pre-performance lectures for Missy Mazzoli’s and Royce Vavrek’s The Listeners at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the Ardis Krainik Theatre, 2024-2025 Season Program [March–April 2025]
Moderator
Justin Vickers, moderator, post-performance panel with composer, librettist, and cast of Missy Mazzoli’s and Royce Vavrek’s The Listeners at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the Rice Grand Foyer, 2024-2025 Season Program [March 27, 2025]
Moderator
Justin Vickers, moderator, pre-performance discussion with composer Missy Mazzoli before Mazzoli’s The Listeners at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the Ardis Krainik Theatre, 2024-2025 Season Program [April 2, 2025]
Moderator
Justin Vickers, moderator, facilitated an hourlong public discussion at the 2025 RED NOTE New Music Festival with British composer Colin Matthews about his illustrious career as a composer (and as Benjamin Britten’s last music assistant). [March 26, 2025]
Lecture
Rey M. Longyear Distinguished Musicology Lecture at the University of Kentucky [April 2025]
Distinguished Professor Lecture
Distinguished Professor Lecture — “Benjamin Britten and the Night” — on March 19th in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center on the campus of Illinois State University, focused on the prevalence of the nighttime across Britten’s compositional career.
Vickers’s Distinguished Professor Lecture was given during the second year of his Distinguished Professorship.
Moderator
Justin Vickers, moderator for Inaugural Panel of Opera Insights: Navigating Complex Themes and Works — Richard Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the Ardis Krainik Theatre. 2023-2024 Season Program (Conceived by Afton Battle and the Lyric Opera of Chicago); Vickers facilitated discussion with General Director Anthony Freud and Music Director Enrique Mazzola, as well as five of the leading cast members: Tomasz Konieczny (Holländer), Tamara Wilson (Senta), Mika Kares (Daland), Robert Watson (Erik), and Melody Wilson (Mary)
Podcast
From The Red House, season 2, episode 4 [September 25, 2020]
“Justin Vickers: Talking About Britten in America, 2”
Justin Vickers and Lucy Walker, Head of Public Engagement for Britten Pears Arts, engage in a wide-ranging discussion about the trajectory of his early exposure to Britten’s music, his longstanding association with The Red House and Snape Maltings, the varied projects he undertakes related to midcentury British music, how he maintains his focus on British research as an American scholar, his anticipated project to write a history of the English Opera Group, and his summertime pandemic recording project in the Concert Hall of Illinois State University engaged with multiple song cycles of Britten, Priaulx Rainier, Peter Pears’s English language translation of Britten’s The Poet’s Echo, and new cycles by Colin Matthews, Thomas Schuttenhelm, John David Earnest, and Tony Solitro
† Published on the Britten Pears Arts website at:
https://from-the-red-house.simplecast.com/episodes/talking-about-britten-in-america-2
Podcast
Interview: “This Will Be Our Response: Voices of COVID-19” Series — This series of interviews seeks to capture the lived experiences of the vocal performing arts during the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020 [Tuesday, September 29, 2020]
“Justin Vickers: A Door Just Opened”
† Justin Vickers with Tim Bostwick for his weekly series for the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), following Vickers’s return from the United Kingdom and again at the end of the summer: [March 23, 2020 (Addendum, September 27, 2020)]
† Published on the National Association of Teachers of Singing website at:
https://www.nats.org/Voices_of_COVID-19_-_Justin_Vickers.html
