Dear Robert (for Rita) by Nathan Granner v., Marco Pascolini g., Sam Platt d.

About the artist

Nathan Granner
Growing up in Kansas City, Nathan Granner attended Kansas State University, Johnson County Community College and finally University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory of Music, graduating with a vocal performance degree and lots of credits.
His professional career began at Utah Festival Opera singing chorus and drinking many beers. His early career was the standard for world talent as he sang premiere, lead and title roles at Wolf Trap Opera, Opera Theater St. Louis, Lyric Opera of Kansas City and Pittsburgh Opera Center. He made Semi-Finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, sang with the National Symphony Orchestra, Handel and Haydn Society and the Baltimore Symphony.

He has toured internationally as one of the Sony/BMG Masterworks recording trio, The American Tenors. Their album broke top five in the Billboard Classical Crossover Charts and was a top grossing show for PBS with their production at the Kodak Center in Los Angeles.

Throughout his career Granner has developed long-lasting friendships and partnerships. He continues to work wirh guitarist - Beau Bledsoe, having released two classical albums as well as having toured some of the world with him. Granner has collaborated many times with Brad Cox premiering a number of Cox’s original compositions. He has also worked extensively with award winning dancer/choreographer Jennifer Owen, with Civic Artist, Barnaby Evans' WaterFire - performing and helping coordinate their first large scale performance on the Country Club Plaza.

A producer for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and independently taking on numerous projects, Mr. Granner has been a force in the recent outstanding growth of the arts in Kansas City.

With his successful singing career, Nathan saw an opportunity to develop outside the realm of a performing artist. Citing Placido Domingo and James Brown as his idols (truly) in the music business world, he set out to learn the ropes in the administration world. He became the Artistic Director of Musical Theater Heritage (a small theater and media organization) For two years Nathan developed performances that fit within MTH's complex multi-tiered mission, namely, as an internationally syndicated radio production and as a theatrical producer.

His next endeavor was to start The Super Group, LLC, an entertainment development company whose mission is to develop artistic ideas and translate them into organizations that work both as art and as business.

This line of work has empowered Nathan and his colleagues to pursue many of their generative ideas turning them into something that can sustain their rent and mortgages as well as sustaining their souls.

The recent and tragic crisis in the print media industry led Nathan and his friend and business partner, Marcy Chiasson to open up KCMETROPOLIS.org, Kansas City's online journal of the Performing Arts. Utilizing new technology and the new paradigm in the publishing sector, KCMETROPOLIS.org (a 501(c)(3) organization) publishes weekly columns, reviews and previews covering Classical, New Classical (New Deco), Dance, Theatre, Independent Film and Jazz.

Mr. Granner keeps a rigorous national performance schedule.