Mark Billy, baritone

Mark Billy is the leading Indigenous baritone of this generation. Mark enjoys a multi-faceted career as a soloist in opera, recitals with piano, concerts with orchestra, and Indigenous musical education. He is a Verdi baritone, clarinetist, and cedar flutist of Indigenous (Choctaw) ancestry from Finley, Oklahoma. 

 

Mark recently made his debut with Painted Sky Opera in the role of Giorgio Germont in La Traviata by Verdi.  This season he will be soloist in Fauré’s Requiem with the OKC Philharmonic and the East Oregon Symphony.  Mark has been engaged to perform with the Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Rochester Symphony, Lubbock Symphony, Bach Society of Minnesota, Duluth Superior Symphony, Mesabi Symphony, and members of the Grand Rapids Symphony as well as Hawaii Opera Theater, Opera Montana, Madison Opera, Fargo Moorhead Opera, and Painted Sky Opera. 

 

A 2025 winner of the McKnight Fellowship for Musicians and First Peoples’ Fund Native American Performing arts fellowship, Mark is leading the musical movement that combines the sacred languages and musical traditions of Indigenous peoples and the classical concert stage. 

 

Mark is sought after as an expert in singing Indigenous languages and is an author for NPR on the subject of Indigenous classical music. Mark is a founding creator of Opera Montana's Wheels of Harmony Tour that brings opera and Indigenous classical music to school age children. Mark is the lead vocal instructor for the intermediate level students at the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy. With his partner Kiegan Ryan, Cherokee classical composer and cellist they are at the forefront of creating a new genre of classical music that focuses on the use of Indigenous musical instruments and languages, including a new concerto for cedar flute and string orchestra premiered in 2025 by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and three sacred Cherokee songs performed by Mark as soloist and concert curator. In the spring of 2026 Mark performed as solo cedar flutist and hand drum player in CTG’s reading of WEST a new Broadway musical by Seminole citizen Tara Moses in NYC.

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Mark is the recipient of numerous awards and performance grants including the Music in Action Grant from the Wagner Society of the Upper Midwest, Opera Reading Project’s IDEA Fellowship, first prize in the St. Croix Valley Opera Competition and first prize in the Schubert Club Competition.

 

Mark has been a young artist with Hawaii Opera Theatre and with Fargo Moorhead Opera. Mark was a national finalist in the Ryan Opera Center auditions at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.  Mark’s major teachers have been George Smith, Richard Anderson, Carol Vaness, Marilyn Horne, and David Etheridge (clarinet). 

 

Please follow Mark on Instagram @markwobilly