The HBCU Legacy
Join us for Giving Voice 2025 at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston's historic Third Ward! The concert takes place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, February 28. More info at HGO.org/GivingVoice
Issachah Savage, one of the leading heldentenors in the world, has a vivid memory of the moment he began to consider opera as a career. He was a student at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, and his choral director, David King, asked him to stay after school one day. King pointed to a tape recorder and said, go over to this machine and press play. Out came a voice that Savage would later learn was Jussi Björling singing the climactic phrase of the “Ingemisco” from Verdi’s Requiem. King instructed Savage to copy what he heard, and Savage, feeling embarrassed, turned away. But he started to sing.
“And when I turned back to David King, as if to say, okay is that what you wanted?, I saw that he was quite emotional,” Savage remembers. “Now, this is the David King, who typically is like a giant. We don’t see emotions other than him looking for perfection and excellence. But he was quite moved. And he said, you see? You have the kind of voice that you can do anything you want with it. Even opera.”
Savage started taking private lessons, in addition to singing with his church and local choral groups and entering local competitions. He began to haunt Philadelphia’s Tower Records, listening to all the opera he could get his hands on. And when it was time to go to college, he decided to pursue a degree in vocal performance at what he refers to as “my beloved Morgan State University,” an HBCU in Baltimore, under acclaimed choir director Nathan Carter.
During our conversation ahead of his appearance in Houston at Giving Voice—his first performance with HGO since he made his acclaimed company debut as Radamès in Aida in 2013—Savage shared more about his time at Morgan State and how it has shaped his life and career.
Tell us about your experience performing with Dr. Carter.
At Morgan State, anyone who took voice got to sing in the university choir. But there was a small group of singers called The Morgan Singers that were handpicked by Dr. Carter. And it was a rigorous kind of trial-by-fire audition where you were being auditioned and didn’t even know it. Dr. Carter did everything unconventionally. He auditioned us in real time. He wanted to see what you were going to do in front of an audience, under pressure.
And so we were at this university gig, and it was a song called “God and God Alone.” Old, old song by Daryl Coley. And Dr. Carter called me out. Mind you, he didn’t really know whether I knew it or not.
And I think it comes out of the Black church—the whole idea of spontaneity and being driven or led by the Spirit or one’s intuition, if you will. Dr. Carter was a son of a preacher, brother of a preacher, so the church was very much in him. And so he called me out to sing the lead for “God and God Alone,” and I did. And that was my audition for being in this hand-picked group called The Morgan Singers that went all over the world.
That must have been an incredible experience.
Yes. We traveled all over the world, singing at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the White House, overseas in Prague, Paris, Russia, Japan, Africa, and beyond. We got to sing with the likes of Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Barbara Smith Conrad—really, really consummate professionals and great singers. Simon Estes, Bobby McFerrin, Stevie Wonder, Diane Schuur—I mean, a wide range of people. So we had that hands-on training from Morgan State University. And I think it’s part of what really shaped so many of us—Leah Hawkins, Jasmine Barnes, Soloman Howard, Jason Max Ferdinand, Darin Atwater, Kevin Short—a long list of classical voices, conductors, teachers, preachers, composers, and instrumentalists has come out of Morgan State University. It’s because we were able to see it and be a part of it and just see ourselves in those spaces.
How did your time in college shape you as a performer?
This is a big part of why I think aspiring singers should consider HBCUs. It was so well-rounded, in that we were encouraged to sing literally everything. Jazz had to sound like jazz. R&B had to sound like R&B. Gospel had to sound like gospel. And you could not mix it all together, where somehow you’re singing “Caro mio ben,” and it sounds like gospel. You would get stopped immediately. Dr. Carter was a stickler for us being well-rounded musicians. And he would always use elements from the Black church and the Black community, which I think gives the HBCU its uniqueness about how to train a voice. The sounds that come out of the Black community open the throat and allow flexibility in ways that other genres don’t.
My time at Morgan taught me to be on stage, how to command the stage. Also, being nimble, flexible. Just because you sang the solo last week, doesn’t mean you’re going to do it this week. Dr. Carter didn’t have to tell us to warm up our voices before choir rehearsal. We knew we better come warmed up, because we didn’t know what he was going to do. That kind of environment that he created encouraged us to be ready musicians.
That must have been great preparation for life as an opera star.
Oh, absolutely. Being able to be a quick study, being able to hear something in your ear even if you can’t get the music—that kind of readiness was so instrumental when I first started out in my career because I didn’t often know what the conductor was going to do on these contracts. If it’s something off the beaten path and not in traditional rep, you have to learn it. Well, how do you learn it? Getting someone to play it out for you and getting it in your ear, and then you go and be the musician and conduct yourself through it. When I went to my master’s program, I was able to learn the role of Martin in Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land literally in two weeks. If I didn’t have that Morgan experience, I would never have been able to learn some of the demanding roles that I’ve learned in my career.
How has the network you built at Morgan State supported you in your life and career?
It’s built such a profound network of musicians, teachers, preachers, people who have gone on to start their own churches and things like that, principals of schools. And I get to still collaborate with a lot of them. Most recently, I was doing a gig, and their mezzo couldn’t perform. I was able to get on the phone and call one of my former colleagues from school and say, Hey, you’re choral-directing now. Do you have a mezzo that would fill this particular criteria? And she was hired immediately.
And furthermore, it’s provided work for me in some instances. For example, a colleague of mine is working on a project, and he has to present it at the Kennedy Center, and he says, Hey, Issachah, would you do this workshop for me? And I’ll go sing for the workshop, but it also ends up leading me to doing the professional performance. So just a large network of camaraderie and professional engagements have come out of it, but perhaps what I most value is the wealth of knowledge shared within and across the artistic disciplines.
Why would you recommend your alma mater, or another HBCU, to an aspiring singer?
It was important for me to attend Morgan State, because you literally got to see yourself. And I think this is the heartbeat of what education is, particularly in African American communities. We need to see ourselves do it. We need to see ourselves a part of it. I would also recommend an HBCU for the exposure and proper education of how to sing African-American literature, which is in abundance.
The gem of being at an HBCU is that you literally get to see yourself in places and spaces of excellence. And I think Morgan State was pivotal for me in that way, because they made sure we not only sang with professional artists, but that we sang with Black professional artists. We didn’t just see Marilyn Horne, with whom we did sing, but we also saw Florence Quivar, Leona Mitchell, Martina Arroyo. It was important that the university showed us, us.