Hailed as having a "juicy" and "colorful" tone as well as a "flair for comic mugging," mezzo-soprano Jennifer Blades has been active in the Baltimore area for over a decade as a performer in opera and cabaret, classical singer, teacher, and stage director. This season audiences will see Ms. Blades as Alisa (Lucia di Lammermoor) for Opera Vivente, at the Cabaret at Germano's with Desire, Despair, Deceit, & Delight: A Holiday Cabaret, with the Bach Concert Series in Cantata No. 170, with the Harford Choral Society in Mozart's Requiem, and with Club OV's holiday cabaret in December. Additionally, she will direct The Mikado for Opera AACC and Remember the Fifties: Trouble in Tahiti and This Is the Rill Speaking for Peabody Chamber Opera.
        Opera credits include Second Lady, (The Magic Flute), Mrs. Herring (Albert Herring), Public Opinion (Orpheus in the Underworld), Arminda (Mozart's La finta giardiniera), the Mother (Amahl and the Night Visitors), Dorabella (Cosi fan tutte), Bianca (Britten's The Rape of Lucretia), the Sorceress (Dido and Aeneas), Narciso (Handel's Agrippina), Second Nursemaid (Kurt Weill's Street Scene), Dinah (Trouble in Tahiti), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni) and Valencienne (The Merry Widow) for companies such as Opera Vivente, Wolf Trap Opera, Baltimore's Artscape, and Opera AACC. Ms. Blades has also performed Ruth in Pirates of Penzance, Tessa in The Gondoliers and Mad Margaret in Ruddigore with the Young Victorian Theatre.  
        An avid cabaret singer, Ms. Blades recently debuted her show My Funny Valentine at Don't Tell Mama in New York with Rick Jensen on piano and Lina Koutrakos as director. She has performed several shows at An die Musik and the Cabaret at Germano's in Baltimore: Desire, Despair, Deceit and Delight: A Holiday Cabaret; A Promised Kiss: Songs of Spring; My Funny Valentine, and Life, Love & Laughter. Additionally, Ms. Blades has performed at the Atlas in Washington, DC and the Julie Harris Theatre in Steamboat Springs, CO, both while attending professional cabaret workshops.
        At home on stage whether singing or acting, Ms. Blades was featured in the Pantolites' first production of the British-style pantomime tradition, Puss in Boots, as the Good Fairy Proverbia, as well as its revival the following year. Of her performance, The Baltimore Sun stated, "Much of the magic in this show is spread by the Good Fairy narrator, Proverbia, who is embodied with storybook charm by Jennifer Blades." The online publication Broadway World wrote that Ms. Blades "play[ed] her role with all of the requisite charm and goody-ness, but with a sly wink to being a modern woman."
        Ms. Blades has been a featured soloist with the Handel Choir of Baltimore, the Harford Choral Society, the Bach Concert Series, Anne Arundel Community College's Chorus and Orchestra, and Howard Community College's Chorus and Orchestra. Oratorio credits include Mozart's Grand Mass in C and Requiem, the Bach Magnificat, Handel's Messiah, Vivaldi's Gloria, the Durufle Requiem, the Kodaly Missa Brevis, Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass, Handel's Hospital Foundling Anthem, and several Bach Cantatas.      
        Ms. Blades received a Masters of Music and Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Conservatory where she is a faculty member and stage director with the Opera Department. She teaches Cabaret Styles and Acting for Opera, and directs the Outreach Program's touring productions of Papageno, Hansel & Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood.  For the Peabody Opera she has directed Ravel's L'enfant et les sortileges and Conrad Susa's Transformations, as well as several of the Opera Etudes productions including Faces of Myth, Facets of Freedom, and Epiphanies. Other directing credits include Orpheus in the Underworld and a double bill of The Telephone and The Medium for Opera AACC.
        Ms. Blades is also artist-manager of the Mt. Vernon Voices, a holiday caroling quartet. In addition to being on the faculty at the Peabody Conservatory, Ms. Blades enjoys being on the voice faculty at Anne Arundel Community College.