It seems like Almost Yesterday that Ms. Christine Brewer appeared on the stage of Shryock Auditorium in Carbondale as a featured artist in the Southern Illinois Music Festival of 2008. For Ms. Brewer this was very much a homecoming.
Born and raised in Grand Tower, Illinois, Ms. Brewer graduated from Shawnee Community High School near Wolf Lake, Illinois and graduated from McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois. Following her college graduation she taught school in Marissa, Illinois and continues to make her home in Lebanon. She was recently described as “a great down-home Southern Illinois woman.”
She is also recognized as possessing one of the leading soprano voices in the world. From 2002 when she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera to the summer of 2010, this native of Grand Tower has performed before some of the great operatic audiences in the world: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe, London, and Paris.
Ms. Brewer continues to be recognized by music critics around the world, and was recently named by the BBC as one of the top twenty soprano voices of the twentieth century.
Her great success has regularly come from powerful performances of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss, Mahler, Verdi, and Wagner.
But no matter how far her fame carries her, Grand Tower and Marissa, Illinois remain as special places for her. She regularly returns to sing in her church, and to teach students in the classroom in which she once taught in Marissa.
From her first performance at age three, Ms. Christine Brewer continues to bless us all with her grand voice.