By STEVEN JUPITER
PITTSFORD—Nick Tocci didn’t set out to be an opera singer. Instead, his first instrument was the trumpet. Tall and broad-chested, he had the lung power to keep the brass ringing, but somehow he knew his musical journey would lead him somewhere else.
“I didn’t feel passionate about the trumpet,” he said in a recent conversation. “I was passionate about music—I took all the music classes I could—but I knew the trumpet wouldn’t be my instrument in the long run.”
It was at his grandfather’s 75th birthday celebration, when Nick was 17, that he began to realize that his future lay not in the horn section of a jazz band but instead in his own physical instrument: his voice.
“I sang ‘My Way’ and my grandfather started blubbering,” he laughed. “That was really the first time I’d sung in front of other people.
A native of Nashua, New Hampshire, Tocci went to Keene State to study trumpet and music education. It was at Keene that professionals first heard his rich baritone and changed the course of his life.
“I had a voice teacher named Carroll Lehman who said, ‘Nick, I don’t know if you want to hear this, but you should drop the trumpet and switch to voice because you have a one-in-a-million gift.’”
That recognition rejiggered his professional perspective.
“I finally knew what that itch in the back of my mind was,” he said. “I finally knew where I was supposed to be going in music.”
Lehman became a mentor to the young singer, helping him to fine-tune his natural instrument.
“Carroll was great at telling me what NOT to do,” he laughed.
He was in the second semester of his sophomore year, already a bit behind the other voice students at Keene. He had to make up a lot of ground, but he took to it like a duck to water. He also began singing with the Keene State Chamber Singers, directed by Sandy Howard, who became another mentor.
“The technique came pretty quickly,” he said. He learned how to sing in the major operatic languages: Italian, German, and French. He learned proper breath support and placement. He knew this was going to be his career.
Tocci graduated from Keene in 2015—he skipped his own graduation ceremony to appear in a production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”—and immediately entered a master’s program in vocal performance at the New England Conservatory (NEC) in Boston, one of the country’s premier music schools.
It was another NEC grad, Josh Collier, who eventually brought Tocci to Vermont. The two met while working on a production of “La Bohème” with the Southern Vermont Lyric Theater, run by Ken and Julie Olsson.
Collier, a tenor, had dreams of creating his own opera company and left Boston to move to Brandon with his wife, Hilary.
“I came up to Brandon to celebrate with them when they bought their first house there,” said Tocci.
Collier ended up meeting Stephen and Edna Sutton, who owned what was then Brandon Music (across from the Neshobe Golf Club) and the Compass Center (at the former Brandon Training School campus). The seeds of BARN Opera were planted in those early performances at Brandon Music, which was a small theater in a converted barn.
In 2018, Collier founded BARN Opera in another converted barn on Pearl Street, just beyond the Sanderson Covered Bridge. Tocci was part of the crew that helped build BARN Opera, both literally and figuratively, as they worked to outfit the barn as a theater and develop a musical program. As Associate Director, Tocci “did a little bit of everything,” including directing one staged production himself.
“BARN was the change I wanted to see happen in the classical music world,” said Tocci. It was a community-based theater organized and run by musicians looking for artistic freedom.
“As a New Englander, I really loved the mission of bringing my musical passion to a New England community,” he added.
Tocci and his husband, Chris Szczerba, bought a house in Pittsford. Szczerba, an administrator in the healthcare industry, was on the Board of BARN Opera as well.
Tocci and Szczerba stayed with BARN through the pandemic but left the organization in 2023.
“It was just my time to move on,” said Tocci. “I contributed what I could to bring the company to the level it’s gotten to. Josh is a great musician and got me on the path I needed to be on. He taught me a lot about the industry. I thank him for lifting me up the way he did. I was on the precipice of leaving the industry when I met Josh.”
Tocci is now building a career for himself as an independent artist. In addition to teaching voice at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., he’s booking concerts and recitals on his own.
In fact, one of his first performances as an independent artist will be on Saturday, July 19, at 7:30 at the Salisbury Congregational Church, as part of the 2025 Otter Creek Music Festival, accompanied by Claire Black, who was BARN’s principal pianist. It will be a program of “art songs,” which are classical vocal compositions meant to stand alone. The program will feature Ralph Vaughn Williams and Aaron Copland, among others.
“Copland makes people weep,” Tocci said. “And Williams really expresses the range of human life. That’s what I love about art songs: they give me an opportunity to flesh out my own being. And they’re beautiful melodies. You’ll leave whistling something.”
The program is also an opportunity for the local community to hear Tocci on his own, and to appreciate the velvety beauty of a baritone voice, which sits in a lower range than the high-flying tenors who often steal the spotlight.
“I’m excited to bring the baritone repertoire to more people. It’s definitely part of my journey,” he added. “When you’re passionate about something, you need to share it with the people around you.”
Tickets for Saturday’s performance can be purchased at the door or at ottercreekmusicfestival.com.
