Soprano Madeline Bender ’93 to headline Homecoming concert 

There’s a saying about the weather in New Zealand that Madeline Bender ’93 delightfully recites.

“If you don’t like it, just wait five minutes and it will change,” quotes the acclaimed soprano, whose husband hails from Kiwiland.

It’s a tongue-in-cheek adage applied to any region that sees variable weather, but Bender says it can also be used to describe her upcoming musical extravaganza: “If you don’t like what’s happening, wait five minutes and it’ll be a completely different experience,” she says. 

The operatic superstar is performing, directing and producing the Music Celebration Concert: An Evening with Madeline Bender on Friday. She promises everything from jazz and Great American Songbook standards to “very serious” French and German pieces, beloved opera arias and even some musical sketch comedy.

“It’s going to be a zany night of a lot of different kinds of things,” she says. “It’ll be like a tasting menu, except with music and theater.”

The Eastern Mennonite University Chamber Singers will feature at the event, as will the drama department, jazz ensemble and local actors and performers of all ages, resulting in what Bender calls “a cast of thousands.”

“I think people need to expect the unexpected,” she says. “There are so many people involved in this concert.”

“My favorite part of music-making is collaborating, and I would rather make it a party,” she adds. “The more, the merrier.”

The concert, held at Lehman Auditorium at 8 p.m. on Friday, Oct.13, helps kick off EMU Homecoming and Family Weekend 2023. 

Tickets to the show are $10 in advance, $15 at the door and free for EMU students with ID or for children 12 and younger. They can be purchased online at https://fundraise.givesmart.com/f/47me/n?vid=119uol.

Email alumni@emu.edu for instructions on how to access a free Facebook livestream of the event.

A complete list of events and activities is on the Homecoming and Family Weekend website.

Bender is an accomplished opera singer, arts entrepreneur and educator. She is the founder of Creative Stage, which teaches children across Manhattan programs in music, theater, dance and filmmaking. She is also the founder and director of Creative Stage Collective, a not-for-profit theater company that develops musical sketch comedy based on the imaginative ideas of children.

She has been praised by The New York Times for her “charimatic stage presence,” “voluptuous soprano” and “theatrical flair.”

Finding her voice at EMU

Bender, who lives in New York City with her husband Paul Whelan, a baritone and bass-baritone singer, and their 14-year-old son, may have been destined to attend EMU.

Her parents, former educators Jon Scott ’62 and Nancy Shank Bender ’64, were EMU alums, as well as many of her friends and neighbors around Harrisonburg, and later, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

The choice to attend EMU may have been an easy one for her to make, but the decision to major in music was not quite as simple.

Bender arrived at EMU intent on graduating with a health professions degree. At the time, she says, a career in the performing arts felt like it wouldn’t help others. 

But her involvement in the Chamber Singers under then-Professor Kenneth J. Nafziger — as well as nearly every other ensemble on campus — provided her a supportive environment that helped her realize she could also serve others with her voice.

Back in the early ’90s, EMU may not have had an opera program or a diction coach or “all the bells and whistles,” she says. But it taught her to be resourceful. 

“I put on two opera programs, I learned to produce, I learned how to cast and direct a show, and now, that’s my job,” she says. 

After graduating from EMU, Bender earned her master’s degree from the prestigious Manhattan School of Music.

And although she hasn’t performed professionally for about a decade, she says she’s thoroughly enjoyed practicing for Friday’s big event.

“The engine is back and running again.”