7 STORY BY Matt Elliott A LOT OF REALLY TALENTED PEOPLE GIVE UP, AND THERE ARE A LOT OF AVERAGE SINGERS MAKING A GREAT LIVING BECAUSE THEY STUCK IT OUT. In addition, she can add that, as Bajazet’s daughter Asteria, she shared the stage with Spanish tenor Placido Domingo during a 2009 production of Tamerlano with the Los Angeles Opera. She soared as a soloist in Handel’s Messiah with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and in the title role of the Cincinnati Opera’s production of Lucia de Lammermoor. And those are just a few snapshots of a year that took her from Cardiff, Wales, to Los Angeles, Calif. By the way, The Huffington Post called her “stunning” and “stellar.” The Cincinnati Enquirer, “breathtaking.” “Luminous,” states the Financial Times. Juilliard or not, Coburn’s young career is taking off. “It’s a great school, absolutely,” she says, in an interview from her home in Greenwich, Conn. “But, no, you do not have to go to Juilliard. Save your money and stay home. I would’ve been lost in the crowd and totally intimidated at Juilliard in New York City.” Coburn grew up in Muskogee, a small manufacturing town in northeast Oklahoma. Her father, 1970 OSU alumnus and Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, is a physician there. She spent her childhood growing up around family in the close-knit community and attending OSU football games with her parents. She came to OSU in 1995 because of its music education program and her family connections to the university that include grandparents, great uncle, cousins and a sister. Her mother, 1970 alumna, Carolyn Denton Coburn, is a former Miss OSU. Coburn says she always wanted to be a Kappa Alpha Theta sorority member at OSU like her mother, sister and aunts. So naturally, her whole family, packed with talented musicians, was ecstatic about her decision to study music education at OSU. “I think OSU has a fantastic music school,” says Coburn, who graduated in 1999. “When I was there, the faculty challenged me, and I thought the curriculum was academic and competitive. It could hold up against any conservatory out there.” She praises her OSU professors, including her voice and chorale instructors, Julie McCoy, now at Texas Wesleyan, and Julie’s husband, Jerry McCoy, now at the University of North Texas. The two inspired her to love what she sang and exposed her to new repertoires. “She has, and did from the beginning, a truly beautiful voice — just one of those voices that really comes along very rarely,” says Julie McCoy, who also notes Coburn has an innate understanding of music that makes her a good musician as well. “That kind of a combination in a singer is rare.” The life of an opera singer can be hectic. Sometimes Coburn has to memorize 250 pages of music in a few days. The OSU program’s theory and analysis courses help her during crunch time, as does what she learned from other instructors, including Tom Lanners, Brant Adams and Gerry Frank. “I’ve seen many, many of my friends who’ve gone to very reputable conservatories but have less knowledge of musical basics,” she says. An OSU background “helps your enjoyment of an art form when you understand the way it’s constructed. You can enjoy it regardless of performance.” CONTINUES Talent and Resolve Rejected by Juilliard. Sarah Coburn, an OSU alumna and operatic soprano with a stage voice like liquid gold, can put it on her résumé. Stacy Boge PHOTOGRAPHY
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