Judges for Concerto/Aria Competition 2023-2024

Virginia Dupuy, 2022-23 recipient of SMU’s highest faculty honor, the Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Award, has earned a reputation as one of the finest recital and concert singers in the United States. She has championed American music in recordings of the Grammy-nominated Voces Americanas, and she premiered the role of Crone in Conrad Susa’s opera The Wise Women. Fanfare magazine hailed her recording of Dominick Argento’s Pulitzer Prize Winner From the Diary of Virginia Woolf as one of the top classical recordings of the year.

Dupuy made her Lincoln Center debut with the American Symphony Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall and has appeared with the orchestras of Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, Eugene and Honolulu. Professor of voice at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, she is a leading scholar and interpreter of music set to Emily Dickinson’s texts. Gasparo Records, Inc. released Dwell in Possibility, a CD of 24 Dickinson poems and one letter performed by Dupuy with Shields-Collins Bray of Voices of Change set to music by her esteemed friends, including Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Ricky Ian Gordon, Lee Hoiby, Dan Welcher, Richard Hundley, Simon Sargon and William Jordan. She continued her performances of contemporary composers with Voices of Change and the Cliburn Modern composers concerts with the composers Osvaldo Golijov, Richard Danielpour, Ricky Ian Gordon, Mark Adamo, Jennifer Higdon and William Bolcom present. She sang songs and duets, including texts of Sister Helen Prejean, with Heggie and pianist and producer Shields-Collins Bray at the Cliburn at the Modern in Fort Worth. She continues to perform Emily Dickinson in Song throughout the country.

A champion of creating musical theatre performances for SMU students, Dupuy began what has become a part of the curriculum each spring, open to any qualified student across campus. Her affection for SMU-in-Taos began as she offered the first musical theatre camps beginning in 2010. Her student, tenor Juan Jose de Leon, made his Metropolitan Opera debut in October 2013 and performs throughout the world. Other Dupuy students have recently won regional Metropolitan Opera auditions and are apprentices at the Santa Fe Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, Wolf Trap, Chautauqua, Des Moines, Opera North and the Los Angeles Opera. Dupuy is also the liaison and founder of the Emerging Artist Program, a partnership for SMU graduate students with the Dallas Opera. Dupuy is in demand throughout the United States as a teacher of master classes with a specialty in strategies for performing contemporary music. She produced a symposium prior to the opening of the opera Moby Dick by Heggie at the Winspear Opera House in partnership with the Dallas Opera, Meadows School of the Arts and the Texas Book Festival.

Dupuy is currently producing master classes for SMU with Lucas Meachem, Ian Derrer and Jessica Turner Waugh.

Dupuy performs regularly with Dallas-based Voices of Change. A champion of poetry, she has performed at Poetry at Round Top, a poetry festival in Texas; Shakespeare Club of Dallas; and has made numerous appearances in recital in Amherst, Massachusetts. Dupuy is a founder of the Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas (now Greater Dallas Choral Society for Children and Youth) and Conspirare and has created Fine Arts Chamber Music Scholarships for piano and voice students at Carter High School in Dallas. She volunteers with Project Transformation with her spouse, Bob, in literacy advocacy with children of Dallas. She serves on the Rogene Russell Music Scholarship committee and has been a member of the Texas Book Festival board. Currently, she is a member of the educational committee of the Dallas Opera.

Corey Robinson is a Wichita Falls, Texas based percussionist, educator, and composer. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Percussion and Associate Director of Bands at Midwestern State University. Previous appointments at the University of Texas at Tyler, Texas Woman’s University, the University of North Texas, Abilene Christian University (TX) Flower Mound High School (TX), Argyle High School (TX), and Coppell High School (TX) allowed Dr. Robinson the opportunity to work with hundreds of percussionists of all ages and ability levels.

Many of Dr. Robinson’s recent performances have been as part of a percussion/saxophone duo with his wife, Amy. They have premiered numerous commissions and a number of his own works at saxophone conferences around the world including the World Saxophone Conference and seven North American Saxophone Alliance Conferences. Dr. Robinson has also performed at three Percussive Arts Society International Conventions including a concert with the University of North Texas Percussion Ensemble at PASIC 2016. This performance included the world premiere of his large percussion ensemble work, Twisted Metal. His percussion methods textbook and video series, Methods for Teaching Percussion (Murphy Music Press) was published in the fall of 2022 and is currently being used in a number of university Percussion Methods classrooms.

Dr. Robinson received his Bachelor of Music Education from Slippery Rock University in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, his Master of Music in Percussion Performance from Indiana University, Bloomington, and his DMA at the University of North Texas. His percussion teachers include Mark Ford, Christopher Deane, Paul Rennick, Ed Soph, Poovalur Sriji, Stockton Helbing, José Aponte, Ed Smith, John Tafoya, Kevin Bobo, Michael Spiro, and Dr. David Glover. Dr. Robinson is currently an endorsing artist for Marimba One instruments, Innovative Percussion sticks and mallets and Remo drumheads. His compositions are available through Murphy Music Press and Musicon Publishing. He resides in Wichita Falls, Texas with his wife and two children, Noelle and Theo.

Dr. Fagner Magrinelli Rocha serves as Associate Professor of Music at Angelo State University where he teaches violin, viola and directs the ASU Symphony Orchestra. Before his appointment at Angelo State, Dr. Rocha served as Assistant Professor of Violin at the Universidade Federal de Alagoas in Maceió, Brazil. He currently serves as concertmaster for the Big Spring Symphony Orchestra, Ballet San Angelo and San Angelo Symphony Orchestra.

A versatile musician, Dr. Rocha has appeared as a performer, conductor and clinician in concerts and festivals through South and North America, as well as in Europe. As an ensemble musician, Dr. Rocha has performed with several orchestras in the United States and Brazil. Dr. Rocha is a constant guest in Texas public schools, having conducted multiple Honors, All-Region and Youth Orchestras around Texas. He has also published music and arrangements. His most recent project is the musical “The Pearl”, a collaboration with composer and writer Cynthia Jordan, which tells the story of San Angelo in the 1920s during the first West Texas oil boom. The musical was premiered in San Angelo in June 2023. Hi “Valse for Livy” was premiered by the ASU Symphony in November 2023. His doctoral research, entitled “An Analysis of Violin Sound Spectra with Different Shoulder Rests” was awarded 1st Prize at the 6th Annual Arts and Humanities Research Conference hosted by Texas Tech University.

Dr. Rocha holds a Bachelor of Music in Violin performance from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil) and a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Violin Performance from Texas Tech University. His major teachers include Dr. Fredi Gierling, Prof. Hella Frank, Dr. Kirsten Yon and Prof. Annie Chalex-Boyle.

Dr. Rocha performs on a modern 2011 Luiz Amorim violin and a 1970 Garner Wilson bow. He lives in San Angelo with his wife Emilee and daughter Olivia (both violinists).

During the Summer months, Dr. Rocha teaches at the Angelo State Music Camp and the Hill Country Youth Orchestra Camp. When not working with music, he enjoys reading, running, and doing home projects.