Today we’d like to introduce you to Cass Panuska.
Hi Cass, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
The Pinnacle Simgers started in the most miraculous way! I run a voice studio in DeLand, FL and Giles Howe found my website and sent me an email. He said, “It looks like we’re neighbors and that we have a whole lot in common. We should meet!” It just so happened that I was hosting one of our Concerts on the Porch (a concert series I produce) that weekend, so I invited him. From there, we decided to get together again for a kayak trip, and in that time we discussed creating a performing group, a place where we could bring our talents together and share them with our community. The Pinnacle Singers was born! Our first gigs were monthly performances at The Artisan in Deland. From there – over the past two years – we have broadened our audience to eastern Volusia County, most recently performing our A Night on Broadway show at The Atlantic Center for the Arts, hosted by Positively Florida. We also performed Giles’ reimagining of Puccini’s Turandot in various venues in the area, which was a season highlight for us this past spring.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I would say it’s been overall fairly smooth. We have a lot of respect for each other, so even though we sometimes have differing artistic ideas, we’re generally able to compromise, and what we wind up generating is often even better than we expected, and better that it might be if it were only influenced by one musical or vocal genre.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I have been a professional operatic soprano for about 22 years, and I’ve taught voice for about 17 years. In addition to co-founding The Pinnacle Singers about two years ago with Giles Howe and my husband, baritone Torlef Borsting, I’ve recently made my role debut in composer Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle (an epic story comprised of four long operas in a row, loosely based on the same mythology as The Lord of the Rings) with TUNDI Productions in Brattleboro, VT, and have sung locally with Opera Orlando and First Coast Opera. These have been career highlights for me. I also run a private voice studio here in Deland, and am an adjunct professor of voice at Stetson University, where I love my students and colleagues. I really enjoy bringing opera and music theatre (and sometimes “genre-bending” combinations of these) to unusual places in unusual ways, which is one of my favorite things about The Pinnacle Singers. We all share this passion, creating community around vocal music and bringing our talents together to deliver something different for our patrons.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Risk-taking has been essential to my personal and artistic growth, and some of my greatest collaborations and creations have come out of a certain amount of risk. Part of risk and risk assessment for me has been asking myself, “For whom does this truly feel risky, and is that based in truth?” As I dig to answer that, it’s usually this: “Someone else, and NO.” Artists in our individualistic capitalist society are constantly warned that following creative spark – especially professionally – is risky, and even in some cases irresponsible. There have been many, many occasions over the course of my personal life and career when I’ve decided to take what most would consider the riskier path, and it’s by and large paid off. Specifically and recently, The Pinnacle Singers produced Giles’ reimagined English language version of the famous opera, Turandot. There are many reasons that this could have felt like a risk to us; however, we all truly believed in the project and in each other, and we enjoyed a successful run of performances. Perhaps we each individually felt like we were taking our biggest leap of faith yet as a group, I’m not sure, but I know for me, there were huge rewards in doing something unusual and creatively satisfying in a genre that can feel so steeped in tradition and convention that it can sometimes be hard to find myself as an artist. That felt great for me, letting go of some of those traditional “shoulds,” and really solidified our energy as a group.
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Kelly Canova
Mark Bowles
