Friday, December 1, 2017

Arkansas Times: Mezzo Soprano Nisheedah Golden to perform in William Grant Still's "Troubled Island" at Pulaski Technical College May 4 & 6, 2018

William Grant Still (1895-1978)

Nisheedah Golden
(By Joshua Asante)


By Alex Flanders


Opera in the Rock, a local nonprofit arts organization, is home to some of Little Rock's leading theatrical and classically trained voices. One voice that stands out in particular is that of Nisheedah Golden, a vocal powerhouse who, by the way, isn't shy when it comes to singing a perfectly crisp, vibrating note while sitting down at a buzzing coffee shop on a Wednesday night.

She hadn't planned on it, but she's been singing opera ever since her days at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, when her vocal teacher — Dr. Robert Holden, an opera singer himself — had an inkling and assigned her Donizetti's "O Mio Fernando." Golden describes her first time singing with a full orchestra as a rush she'd never felt before, one that clearly struck a chord with her — an operatic one.

Golden, a native of North Carolina, has been singing since age 5. She's traveled around plenty, but said in an interview that Arkansas is somewhat of a prime locale for budding singers to thrive, especially the youngest songsters. Golden has been teaching drama and vocal lessons for several years, mentoring blooming performers at Murrell Taylor Elementary School and Bearden Productions Performing Arts Studio. 

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Catch Golden at Murry's Dinner Playhouse in the 50-year-old dinner theater's production of "Menopause: The Musical," which runs May 29-July 7, 2018, and at Pulaski Technical College's Center for the Humanities and Arts in Opera in the Rock's production of William Grant Still's "Troubled Island," Friday, May 4, and Sunday, May 6, 2018.

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