Soprano Brennan Blankenship is the 2017 and 2019 Young Texas Artists (YTA) gold medalist in Voice.
In March 2026, Blankenship was the special guest performer at the YTA Finalists’ Concert & Awards program, performing at the concert and at YTA’s after-party.
One month later, she sat down for an interview with YTA to discuss the nonprofit’s impact on her career and what she has been up to since earning her gold medals.
How have your experiences competing with Young Texas artists impacted you?
They impacted me in many ways. As a person who won more than once, it was incredibly helpful financially. It helped me pay for all my voice lessons and all the costs that go into being an opera singer. That’s something that’s always at the forefront of my mind as a singer and as a child of a financial planner. I’m always thinking, “OK, how am I paying for this?” So that was something that I was always grateful for.
And then, to have people in Houston and in Texas care about young artists who are in Texas or from Texas — and limiting the competition to them — was really meaningful to me as a native Texan who left for school and came back home.
A lot of people were dubious about me returning to my hometown and working in Houston. I don’t normally quote the Bible that often, but there’s that whole story about when Jesus goes back to Galilee, and nobody believes He is who He says He is. It’s nice to be believed by people from your own area, to have people say, “You do opera? That is cool, and we support you, especially here at home.”
To have the opportunity to compete and win, and then to be asked back to perform with the organization, further solidified that I didn’t make the wrong decision by not going to New York, that I can do what I want to do where I want to live. It’s also nice that my mom gets to come hear me sing, and she doesn’t have to buy a plane ticket.
What have been some of the more memorable moments of your music career so far?
I’ve had a lot of memorable moments. Most recently, I had the opportunity to work with the composer and writer of “Wicked,” Stephen Schwartz. He comes from such a lineage of great American composers like Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. He was here in Houston last summer working with Lone Star Lyric to remount his opera, “Séance on a Wet Afternoon,” with new instrumentation. I was lucky enough to be part of that cast and to work with someone who wrote music that was incredibly important to me as a high school student. And everybody knows “Wicked.” It’s a great American music moment.
To be able to work with a living composer is always lovely. But to be able to work with a living composer who’s also famous was wild as an opera singer. You work with “opera famous” people like Jake Heggie, who is a great composer. I also had the opportunity to perform in a world premiere by him and his librettist, Gene Scheer, in 2019 with the Merola Opera Program.
To get to work with someone who’s alive means you can ask them, “Hey, why did you write this line ‘breathing out and in’ instead of ‘breathing in and out?’” The answer, by the way, was because he thought it sounded better and no other reason.
To ask Stephen Schwartz, who wrote “Defying Gravity” and “Popular,” why he wrote something a certain way, and to get an honest answer, was incredible.
And honestly, to have someone like that tell me that I am good… You always like validation as an artist. You don’t want to want it, but you do. When someone you admire tells you that they admire you back, you just think, “Wow, this is incredible.” Those are always my most memorable moments: getting to work with composers who are alive and helping bring their vision to life in a way they couldn’t even imagine.
What are some of your goals going forward?
Well, as a 35-year-old soprano, I’ve decided to take my career a little more into my own hands. One of my best friends, (mezzo-soprano) Megan Berti, asked me sometime around 2023 if I thought it would be a good idea to stage opera in breweries. And I thought it’d be a great idea.
Months later, she asked me if I wanted to help her start an opera company that would do free concerts and operas in breweries. We were coming out of COVID, and opportunities for opera singers were slim because most companies, if they had survived COVID, were still trying to fulfill contracts from 2020 and 2021. That meant that for singers whose careers were just starting to take off, like mine and hers, things probably weren’t going to move forward for another couple of years. Companies were still working through commitments they’d already made.
So, I thought, “Yeah, let’s start an opera company. Let’s do the shows that we want to do. We’ll rewrite them because nobody cares if we change Mozart.” People care if Houston Grand Opera changes Mozart. But nobody cares if we do. We perform in breweries.
So my goals for my professional career have shifted a lot. I’m happy to sing for other people and other companies, of course. I still love opera and want to sing around the country and around the world. That’s not something I’m giving up, per se.
But my main goal is to build this opera company, HOPERA, that I think has a real shot in Houston, doing the operas that everybody tells me I should be singing. If we think something is a good fit for a brewery, we do it. And I sing it. If that means I get hired more in Houston, which seems to be happening, that’s also great.
Instead of trying to scour the earth for someone who wants to hire me, I’ll create my own opportunities. That’s really my goal right now: creating the life that I want on my own terms and not
waiting for someone else to open the door for me.
Would you say your taste in music has changed over the years? And if it has, how?
Like any other thing, you get older, and you get exposed to more stuff. I’m definitely still a radio listener. When I’m listening to music, I rarely seek out something specific. I’m usually looking for just a genre, and I kind of hang out in it.
But when I was in college, I was doing a lot of active research, like, “What is prog rock?” When I was working a summer job in a law office, making copies or whatever, I was bored to death for obvious reasons. I went to Pandora and just made a whole station based on Queen, and then I would read about all the different prog rock bands. And now I know about ‘70s prog rock. I knew Bohemian Rhapsody in high school, but I didn’t really know a lot of Queen until I went down that rabbit hole.
I’ve always had an eclectic taste in music, and I would say it’s just expanded as I’ve gotten older, especially as my technique got better and I could sing along with more different genres. I learned how to belt in 2020 because it was COVID, and I was bored. I asked one of my old teachers who specialized in musical theater, belting, and rock to teach me how to belt over Zoom. I thought, “Yeah, let’s learn how to belt. Why not? I’m trapped in this house, right?”
Ever since I learned how to belt, I feel like my curiosity has really taken hold of all these different genres that I didn’t necessarily listen to because I couldn’t sing along with them. And that’s my whole thing: I like music that I can sing along to. So as long as there’s singing, I will typically like it. If I can’t sing along to it, it’s harder because, at the end of the day, I’m a singer. So the better I learn other genres of singing, the more I will likely listen to that genre.
I learned how to yodel for the last performance I did with Young Texas Artists at the after-concert dance party. I’ve always wanted to learn how to yodel, so I taught myself. I just looked up some YouTube videos and hoped that with my knowledge of vocal technique and a can-do attitude, I could do it justice for at least one song.
And recently, one of my students asked me if I could teach him how to metal scream for a role that he’s doing at TUTS (Houston’s Theatre Under the Stars). I was like, I can’t do that, but let’s see what YouTube has. And we looked it up and found a technique that worked for him. So now, who knows? Maybe I’ll like heavy metal once I figure out how to scream sing.
I guess the short answer to your question is, yes, the better I’ve gotten at singing, and the more I’ve figured out how to sing, the more genres I’ve been exposed to. As long as they sing, I’m interested.
What do you enjoy doing for fun or to relax? Do you have hobbies?
Well, I will tell you, starting a nonprofit has taken over my life. It’s no easy feat to start an opera company. That’s my main hobby right now. But when I have time, I really love reading. I listen to a lot of audiobooks so that I can combine exercise with a book, because I also exercise quite often. It’s a big priority for me, especially because my body is my instrument. And so, the better shape my body is in, the better in shape my instrument is, and vice versa.
I also like to do art when I have time. And I’ve taken a lot of that creativity and used it for my nonprofit. I do some video editing. I wouldn’t say I’m at a professional level for that at all, but I learned how to use a green screen the other day, and that was exciting. I also paint every once in a while when I have a blank space on the wall to fill. I like to dabble in sewing when I have time, and I’m really into the Renaissance fair. So if I can carve out a weekend, I like to get into costume and go pretend to be in a fantasy world for a bit. I used to cook, but, again, the nonprofit’s taken over. But I was into spices for a while, and I know more than a normal person, apparently, about spices now. So that’s fun. And I like animals. I have three cats.
I try to carve out time for my hobbies. I’m not good at it right now. Like I said, starting an opera company from scratch is a lot of work, so I’m learning a lot about spreadsheets and board bylaws and all those really fun things that go into creating a company.
But it’s worth it. Did you know our opera company, HOPERA, was on “CBS Mornings”? Somehow, the Instagram algorithm blessed us and showed one of our videos to a producer for “CBS Mornings,” and they contacted us last June. Her story went up, I think, at the end of January this year. So, it’s taken over my life, but it’s going well. We’re getting people in to see opera who have never seen opera before, and a lot of them are coming back. We’re giving opportunities to local artists. Hopefully, we can just keep doing this grassroots opera movement of not only supporting local artists and local venues, but also convincing people, “Hey, opera is for you, too. It’s not just this stuffy thing that’s only for one kind of person. If you like musicals, you can like opera, too. They’re not mutually exclusive.
What’s your advice to classical musicians who are trying to launch their professional careers?
Some general advice would be to assemble your team of advisors and mentors who support your dream, who will tell you like it is, and who have a good track record themselves. Sometimes you put people on your team who actually aren’t good advisors, and it’s hard to tell who is when you’re really young because you just don’t have enough life experience yet.
So do your best. Find the professors who guide you, the teachers who believe in you, and the people who think you really can do what you’re trying to do. And if you need to change those people out, change them out. Don’t be afraid to recognize when you’ve grown past an advisor.
Remember that nobody’s going to do it for you. Nobody’s going to do the research you need to do. Nobody’s going to practice for you. Nobody’s going to make sure you’re doing everything you need to do. At the end of the day, it’s you. You have to have the discipline, the courage, and the determination to go after whatever you’re pursuing. Don’t wait for someone to hand it to you. Go get it.
And at some point, if the thing you’re pursuing isn’t working, if you’re doing everything people are telling you to do and trying the same approach over and over again, pivot. Try a different way. Try something else. Try a different goal. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind, and there’s nothing wrong with pivoting if you’ve given the other thing everything you’ve got.