Jennifer Blades has been hailed as having a “juicy” and “colorful” tone as well as a “flair for comic mugging” by The Baltimore Sun. Opera credits include Arminda (Mozart’s La finta giardiniera), the Mother (Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors), Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Bianca (Britten's The Rape of Lucretia), the Sorceress (Dido and Aeneas), and Narciso (Handel’s Agrippina) for Opera Vivente; Second Nursemaid (Kurt Weill’s Street Scene) for Wolf Trap Opera; and Dinah (Trouble in Tahiti), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni) and Valencienne (The Merry Widow) as a guest artist for Opera AACC. Ms. Blades has also performed both Tessa in The Gondoliers and Mad Margaret in Ruddigore with the Young Victorian Theatre. She spent the summer of 2003 as a member of the Young Artist Ensemble at Bel Canto at Caramoor under the direction of Maestro Will Crutchfield. An avid cabaret singer, Ms. Blades has also spent time in New York working with cabaret singer Helen Baldassare and has performed in the club Don’t Tell Mama. This summer, Ms. Blades will reprise the role of Dinah in Trouble in Tahiti for Baltimore’s Artscape with Opera Vivente. In April 2008, she will return to Opera Vivente to take on the role of Public Opinion in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld.
    Ms. Blades has been a featured soloist with the Handel Choir of Baltimore, the Harford Choral Society, the Bach Concert Series, Anne Arundel Community College’s Chorus and Orchestra, and Howard Community College’s Chorus and Orchestra. Credits include the Bach Magnificat, Handel’s Messiah, Vivaldi’s Gloria, the Duruflé Requiem, the Kodály Missa Brevis, and several Bach Cantatas. Recital appearances include The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA; First Trinity Lutheran Church Concert Series in Washington, DC; Edenwald Towers, Roland Park Place, Charlestown's Our Lady of the Angels Chapel, Emmanuel Episcopal Church, and the Noonday Series at Old St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore.
    In June 2004, Ms. Blades presented a recital program of American song with baritone Will Heim and pianists JoAnn Kulesza and Jonathan Moyer entitled The Nature of Song…and Love at An die Musik in Baltimore. The program featured Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles as well as songs by Jake Heggie and Paul Bowles. In December 2005 she returned to An die Musik in a solo cabaret show entitled Desire, Despair, Deceit and Delight: A Holiday Cabaret and recently performed a new show entitled A Promised Kiss: Songs of Spring in April.
    Ms. Blades received a Masters of Music and Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Conservatory where she has been a member of the Opera Department as a stage director since 1999. She directs the Outreach Program's touring productions of Papageno, Hansel & Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood and directed three of the Faces of Myth for the 2001 Opera Etudes and three of the Facets of Freedom for the 2006 Opera Etudes. Other directing credits include Orpheus in the Underworld for Opera AACC.
    In addition to her solo and directing work, Ms. Blades runs the Chamber Jazz Society of Baltimore, an organization that presents jazz concerts at the Baltimore Museum of Art, sings with the Baltimore Opera, and is manager and member of the Mt. Vernon Voices.