BORN TO SING
INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED OPERATIC TENOR JESÚS GARCIA FOUND INSPIRATION IN HIS HOMETOWN MENTORS.
League City native Jesús Garcia fit among his likeminded comrades in academic arts programs throughout his youth. From singing in the preschool choir at age 2 to studying drama in junior high, his path seemed predetermined in the realm of the performing arts, and with a zealous spirit, he just kept walking the road ahead.
His work ethic was strong and his natural talent evident, more so to his teachers than himself at first. His mind strayed slightly in junior high, tempted to leave his voice behind for one of the shiny, new instruments in the band. But when his choir teacher got wind of his thoughts, she flatly refused.
“You are staying in choir, and that’s all there is to it,” he recalled her saying.
Validating the positive attention from his instructors, Garcia gained reinforcement elsewhere, winning competitions, receiving letters from interested universities and later earning a college scholarship to study vocal performance at the University of North Texas.
Then, in 2003, the elder of two children from a working, middle-class family landed a leading role on Broadway — Rodolfo in Puccini’s “La Bohème” — and quickly became an internationally acclaimed, award-winning operatic tenor.
This weekend, Garcia will make a homecoming appearance with the Bay Area Chorus of Greater Houston, one of the city’s oldest nonprofit choral groups, in “Strictly A Cappella,” featuring arrangements of “My God Is Real” and “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” alongside two classical Russian pieces, for which Garcia hired a language coach to assist with pronunciation.
“As opera singers, we’re trained to sing in Italian, French, German,” said Garcia, who recently moved to Philadelphia after living in Germany the past three years. “I’ve sung in Czech. I’ve sung in Spanish. There are a lot of operas in Russian, but it’s on the next level as far as difficulty is concerned.”
The Bay Area Chorus, comprising over 90 volunteer singers, is led by artistic director Milton Pullen, whom Garcia considers the “most important mentor of my life.” As an extracurricular, Garcia would sing with the chorus in high school, and he recalls Pullen, his former music teacher at Clear Creek High, picking him up at his home to take him to rehearsals.
“He really took me under his wing,” he said. “Mr. Pullen was key in my musicianship, my love for the arts, my work ethic. It’s through him that I learned to love what you’re doing enough to give it your everything.”
Janette Chase, his high school voice teacher who has long been involved in the Bay Area Chorus, was similarly influential, providing him with the technique that he continues to sing with today.
Despite the support from his teachers throughout his adolescence, there was one relationship that was lacking — the support from his late father Jesús Garcia, who relocated from the Rio Grande Valley.
Neither parent had a background in the arts, much less in music. Still, Garcia received unwavering support from his mother, Rosalva Garcia, who still resides in Houston and who was his rock during the turbulent times with his namesake.
“In a way, now being older, I can understand where the fear and doubt came from,” Garcia said of his father’s resistance. “I can only imagine what it must have been like for him to try to understand a son who wanted to be in the performing arts, what it’s like to see your kid going down a path that you know nothing about, and there’s no real security in. I was just the absolute opposite thing of maybe what he had expected or what he was raised to think guys should do. In a way, it fueled my ambition to show him that I could make something of myself doing it.”
And prove himself, he did.
Even if his father never fully understood his passion for the arts or his reasoning for pursuing such a profession, he eventually came to appreciate it, attending concerts and even traveling to New York City to see his debut on Broadway.
“Success, especially in the entertainment industry, they say it’s about 20 percent talent and 80 percent tenacity and hard work,” Garcia said. Despite his success, the Tonyaward winning tenor still tries to approach his career with awe. “Sometimes I do have to just pinch myself and remind myself how lucky I am.”