Each week we will be sharing some fun stories and facts about our 2024 Schwab Vocal Rising Stars! Starting on March 11th, they will be rehearsing and living at Caramoor up until their performance on March 17th. We hope you will join us!
This week we are introduced to baritone Michael Hawk!
The very first time Michael Hawk auditioned for a prestigious American opera house, he almost passed out. Fortunately, the audition panel was kind enough to let him sit down for ten minutes to regroup, eat a protein-powered granola bar, and re-start his aria. He can look back now and laugh at that experience, knowing that his destiny to become a singer was sealed no matter the stress of any single audition.
In an alternate universe, he believes that your morning news broadcast would include him advising you to pack your umbrella or sunscreen. If not a meteorologist, then he might have become a public-school math teacher (though his trigonometry students would not have been as forgiving as those audition panelists).
If you’re as dedicated to physical fitness as Michael is, then you might catch him at the gym EVERY … SINGLE … DAY. (“Y’all should check out my trainer, Chase Schaap with Incremental Gains!“) While his daily workout regimen sounds grueling, he lightens it up on performance days with some easier treadmill work alongside stretching and mobility exercises, all in favor of energetic concertizing.
To carb up for the next day’s workout, he can often be found at the nearest Italian restaurant enjoying his favorite meal, pasta carbonara with casarecce. If he brought a book with him for company, it’s probably a volume from the Harry Potter series, which he is now consuming — in Italian — in its entirety. (That’s almost as ambitious as the daily gym workouts!)
While “Hawk” might invoke images of a fearless flyer with a wide wingspan, the surname stems from his paternal great grandfather, Henry A.W. Kozlowski, a professional sign painter who abbreviated his name on his work to H.A.W.K. Perhaps this was a sign from Henry that his descendent would become a singer whose baritone voice and career would really soar.
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