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Owensboro Native, Elizabethtown Resident Continues Making Waves in Opera World

Anthony Clark Evans

The rise to prominence in the opera world continues for an Owensboro native.

Last week, Anthony Clark Evans was named a winner of the Sarah Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music foundation. Evans is one of only five young opera singers nationwide to win the $5,000 award this year. The audition for the grant was by invitation only.

“What it really means to me, is that I’m able to maybe make a few extra trips here and there and audition for more people because I’ll have a little bit of extra cash just sitting in the bank,” said Evans.  “I’ll be able to maybe take a flight out to New York again to sing for somebody that’s important out there.”

The  28-year-old baritone now resides in Elizabethtown but is currently studying at the Ryan Center of Lyric Opera in Chicago. He says he comes from a long line of singers.

“It really comes from my father. He was a trained singer and his father was a trained singer. I think it goes back four or five generations,” said Evans.

He studied voice at Murray State, but left school twice to save up more money to continue his education. The second time away, he got married and the couple settled in Elizabethtown where he took a job at a car dealership. 
“They let me go to all these musical things after work and I didn’t have to stay after a whole lot.  What I did was go to a lot of barbershop singing groups like Kentucky Vocal Union,” said Evans. “I was able to keep myself vocally in shape and things like that during that time while I was not studying.”

His big break came in 2012 when he won the Met’s 2012 National Council Auditions. Evans says it was the first vocal contest he’d ever won.