A central figure in the Washington-area classical music scene, The Washington National Opera has featured him in numerous roles totaling more than 250 performances. He has also sung ten roles with the Washington Concert Opera.
Recent career highlights include the role of Ishmael in the world premiere of Peter Westergaard’s Moby Dick at Princeton University (recorded for Albany Records), his Metropolitan Opera debut in Prokfiev's War and Peace, which he also recorded during The Spoleto Festival’s production, released on the Chandos label.
With the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin, Mr. Baker was soloist on the 1996 Grammy Award-Winning recording Of Rage and Rembrance by John Corigliano (BMI: 1996) and last season sang Triquet in the NSO’s presentation of Eugene Onegin.
This season Mr. Baker has been seen in Peter Grimes and Turandot with the Washington National Opera, Carmina Burana with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Handel’s Messiah with the Apollo Chorus in Chicago. He also has premiered over 15 major works in his career, and is a frequent collaborator with DC composer Douglas Boyce.
Mr. Baker is proud to have sung with all the major choral organizations in Washington, DC, starting with the Paul Hill Chorale in 1979, and continuing with Norman Scribner, Reilly Lewis, Robert Shafer, Donald McCullough, Gisele Becker and Tom Beveridge.
The Director of Performance Studies at The George Washington University, Mr. Baker and his wife live in Washington, DC with their daughter, Madeline, a member of the Children’s Chorus of Washington.
Come and enjoy! Bring a friend!
A central figure in the Washington-area classical music scene, The Washington National Opera has featured him in numerous roles totaling more than 250 performances. He has also sung ten roles with the Washington Concert Opera. 
Jodi Kanter is a theater artist whose work focuses on strengthening communities through performance. To this end, she has created theater in a wide variety of settings, including professional theaters, hospices, prisons, cultural centers, libraries, galleries, schools and other public spaces. She is an associate professor of theater at George Washington University, where she teaches acting and directing. Her book, Performing Loss: Rebuilding Community Through Theatre and Writing (Southern Illinois University Press, 2007) explores how communities can use performance to respond to shared experiences of grief. Jodi’s next directing project is “From Prison to Stage,” an evening of plays written by prisoners across the country to be performed at The Kennedy Center on September 5. 
The Girl Who Waters the Basil is the deceptively quaint tale of a poor shoemaker's daughter and a lovesick inquisitive prince. Hints of the author’s dark history peek through the rollicking tone of this little play; Federico Garcia Lorca, lover of the famous painter, Salvador Dali, was murdered by the Nationalist militia at the start of the Spanish Civil War and thrown into an unmarked grave. But this comic tale is (almost) all spring and love and marriage, with penniless fathers, dimwitted royalty and elegant, if vain, little maidens.
