Omar Najmi and Brendon Shapiro live on 05.02.25 at 7:30 pm in the Parish House.

First Friday Jazz/Classical Concerts Sponsored by Dedham School of Music and First Church presents its eighth concert of the 2024-2025 season featuring the Omar Najmi and Brendon Shapiro at First Church and Parish in Dedham 670 High Street, Dedham on Friday, May 2, 2025 at 7:30 pm in the Meetinghouse. (There will be refreshments for purchase).  Tickets are $20 and are available online at https://www.dedhamuu.org/live-music and at the door.  Doors open at 7:00 pm.

Boston-based artist Omar Najmi splits his time between composition and performance, maintaining a busy schedule as an operatic tenor. Praised as "a world class voice in every respect," Najmi recently made his international debut creating the title role in Joseph Summer’s operatic adaptation of Hamlet with Bulgaria’s State Opera Rousse. Najmi made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2018 as the tenor soloist in Mark Hayes’ Gloria. He has since returned as the soloist in Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living, and as a soloist in Talents of the World Inc.’s Caruso Tribute Concert. Najmi began his composition career with the production of his first opera, En la ardiente oscuridad, in 2019. After a run of sold-out performances, he was invited to serve as the first ever Emerging Composer in residence with Boston Lyric Opera, where he worked with Boston Youth Poet Laureate Alondra Bobadilla in the creation of the song cycle my name is Alondra. In 2022, Najmi and his husband Brendon Shapiro co-founded Catalyst New Music - an organization dedicated to fostering, developing, and producing new works. Catalyst’s first project - presented with the support of The Boston Foundation’s Live Arts Boston grant - was a concert performance of Najmi’s new opera This Is Not That Dawn, a drama set during and after the Partition of India. 

Pianist, vocal coach, and conductor, Brendon Shapiro, is quickly garnering a reputation from coast to coast as a champion of new music and opera of the 20th and 21st centuries. He is a recent alumnus of LA Opera's Young Artist Program where he worked with such artists as Renée Fleming and Susan Graham and played a key role in the musical preparation for the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin's Eurydice, along with productions of La Traviata, El gato montés, La Clemenza di Tito, The Light in the Piazza, and Satyagraha. In New England, Brendon has been on faculty at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, UMass Amherst, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, served as conductor and pianist for MassOpera, Boston Opera Collaborative, as well as pianist/coach for Juventas New Music Ensemble, and NEMPAC (North End Music & Performing Arts Center). 
   
First Church and Parish Dedham Unitarian Universalist was gathered in 1638 and is located in Dedham Center at 670 High Street. Its lively music program includes choir at Sunday services, the Parish Players theater troupe, Friday Folk Coffeehouse, as well as our First Friday Jazz & Classical Concerts in conjunction with Dedham School of Music founded in 2008 providing an environment for people of all ages, abilities, and means to learn, play, and enjoy music.