Biography

Gary Jankowski's performances are characterized by great musical sensitivity, a strong, clear, mellifluous voice, and an imposing presence that he brings to a growing number of international stages, concert halls, and radio broadcasts.

The 2013 Wagner anniversary gave Gary Jankowski many opportunities to prove his particular suitedness for the German repertoire. Among others, he performed Daland in October 2013 at the Opera de Belles Artes, Mexico City, and appeared as Fafner in the Teatro Colón-Ring in Buenos Aires in December 2012. In 2013 he was rehearsal cover for Hagen and sang Fafner in the dress rehearsal in the Paris Ring at the Opéra Bastille. In the autumn of 2011, he sang Fafner in Siegfried in an NRK live radio broadcast from Bergen, conducted by Kent Nagano, and in the summer of the same year, he traveled to Auckland, New Zealand, to sing Fafner in a concertante production of Das Rheingold. He is also featured as Fafner and Hagen in the 2012 ECHO Klassik prize-winning Musicaphon DVD production of the Lübeck Ring, and as Fafner in the C Major/Deutsche Welle DVD production of the Colón Ring.

After studying at Indiana University and learning his craft in the regional theaters of the USA (for example as Sarastro, Osmin, and Il Commendatore), Seattle-born Gary Jankowski moved to Germany in the mid-1990s. He had engagements as an ensemble member in Nuremberg, Halle/Saale, Freiburg, Rostock, and Schwerin, and guested, among others, in Leipzig, Donostia/San Sebastian, Peralada, Dorset, Lübeck, and Kiel. König Marke, Fiesco, Landgraf, again Osmin and Il Commendatore, as well as Ochs von Lerchenau have become his most important roles. He also created Freiherr von Mordax in the world premiere, which won the Bavarian Theater Prize, of Detlev Glanert's Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung, and Herodes in the German premiere of Antoine Mariotte's Salome.

Gary Jankowski has worked together with conductors such as Kent Nagano, Philippe Jordan, Jacques Delacôte, Miltiades Caridis, Roberto Paternostro, Stefan Malzew, Michail Jurowski, and Niksa Bareza, and with directors like Valentina Carrasco, Fred Berndt, Arturo Gama, Anthony Pilavachi, Frank Hilbrich, Uwe Scholz, Werner Saladin, and Axel Köhler.