Aggie wins at Utah State Fair
Utah State University’s music department is losing an award-winning vocal performer this spring.
Tamara Mumford, a senior in vocal performance, recently took first place in the senior voice category at the Utah State Fair Classical Music Competition in Salt Lake City. There were 274 entrants in this year’s competition who ranged from elementary to college students. The Senior Voice category included those 20 to 23 years old.
“I think competition is a really fun part of being a singer. Performing and competing are exciting and fill you with adrenaline,” Mumford said.
She said at the state fair she sang a “sad and dramatic” aria from the opera Werther by Massenet, and contrasted it by also singing an upbeat Spanish drinking song. She said she gets the music from her USU vocal instructor, Cindy Dewey, who has “an incredible repertoire.”
“The music program is what you make of it. There are a lot of resources if students are willing to work for it,” she said.
Including the three years Mumford spent in the music program at USU, she studied vocal performance for more than five years, starting while she was in high school at Jordan High in Sandy, Utah. She said she was always singing at home because her family, which consists of 14 people, has always been musical. She played the viola in elementary school, but eventually chose vocal training as her hobby.
Since she began vocal training, Mumford said she has competed several times, including the National Association of Teachers of Singing and McAllister competitions, where she has placed first or second every time. The awards are often monetary and can also qualify the winner for other competitions, as was the case in the McAllister competition. She said in the summer of 2001 she competed in the Utah finals and qualified for the national McAllister competition where she sang with four others on the PBS television station.
Mumford, who recently married, said she plans to graduate this spring and continue her music education in graduate school before moving with her husband while he attends dental school.
She said she is applying to Yale, the New England Conservatory in Boston and Boston University for a two-year master’s degree in vocal performance. As for long-term plans, she said she and her husband are just going to “play it by ear.”
“I want to always perform, but I’m not willing to just move to the next gig. I want to try to balance a normal life, not just an opera singer’s life,” she said.
The first, second and third place winners of the state fair competition can be seen in a performance at the state fair Friday at 7 and 8 p.m. The first place winners will also perform in a free concert on Saturday, Sept. 21 at 7:30 p.m. in the Assembly Hall in Salt Lake City’s Temple Square.
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