Associate Professor
Director of Opera/Music Theater
Contact Information
Cogswell Hall 318
Courses Taught
Musical and Opera Productions
Applied Voice
Music Theater Workshop
Degrees
DMA, Eastman School of Music
MM, Eastman School of Music
AD, The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
HD, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Biography
Oliver Lo has sung a diverse concert repertoire spanning from the tenor solo in Bach's cantata "Wir danken dir" and Handel's Judas Maccabaeus to Mendelssohn's Elijah and Orff's Carmina Burana. Some of his operatic roles include Basilio and Curzio in Le nozze di Figaro, Jacquino in Fidelio, Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore, Romo in Romo et Juliet, Fenton in Falstaff, and Sam in Susannah. He was selected as one of the 13 national finalists for the 1999 Rehfuss Singing Actor Awards at Orlando Opera.
He has been stage/music director and pit conductor for operas and musicals. Selected credits include Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury and The Pirates of Penzance, Puccini's La bohème and Gianni Schicchi, Strauss' Die Fledermaus, Menotti's Medium, Frank Loesser's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida, and Mark Hollmann's Urinetown.
He is an active member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) and is serving his second term as treasurer for Tri-State NATS Chapter. He is a proud alumnus of the 2001 NATS intern program and is forever grateful for this life-changing experience. Lo is a firm believer in cross-training, and his voice students are often placed in both classical and musical theater voices in NATS auditions.
After quitting his day job as a mechanical engineer, he started his music journey by attending the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts and graduated with distinction. He then received a full scholarship and teaching assistantship and earned his doctor of musical arts degree in vocal performance (minor in directing) at the Eastman School of Music. Lo was tenured associate professor and director of opera theatre at East Tennessee State University, and, for 10 years, was a full-time music faculty member at the Division of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where his course Music, Drama, and Theatre received the inaugural Common Core Course Excellence Award in 2012. His principal teachers include the late Michael Rippon, the late Gordon Kember, the late Joyce Lowe, the late Dale Moore, John Greer, Russell Miller, and Steven Daigle.
Lo is currently serving as the director of Opera/Music Theater and associate professor in Voice at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.