Biographical Information

                    In a career as opera and concert singer, Bachlund has been a resident of southern California, and, for twenty years, Berlin. He was guest artist at Frankfurt Oper (in Frankfurt and on tour to Israel), Oper Köln (in both Köln and also on tour in Japan), Oper Braunschweig, Pfalztheater, Staatstheater Kassel, Teatro Filharmonico (Arena di Verona), Teatro Regio, Oper Graz and principal guest artist the Metropolitan Opera, since his Carnegie Hall debut in 1986, as well as with Los Angeles Opera, Florentine Opera, Tulsa Opera, Minnesota Opera, Dallas Opera, Arizona Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Hawaii Opera Theater, Washington Opera, Royal Opera (de la Monnaie), Royal Opera (Antwerpen), Royal Opera de Wallonie (Liège), Opera de Paris (Bastille), Opera de Nancy et de Lorraine, Opera de Montpellier, Teatro Real (Madrid), and Teatro Municipal (Santiago), Welsh National Opera, Scottish National Opera, Edmonton Opera, L'Opera de Montreal, and Opera New Zealand.

 

  

 

                    Roles included the title roles of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Tannhäuser, and Parsifal, as well as Siegmund (Die Walküre), Erik (Der fliegende Holländer), Loge and Froh (Das Rheingold); Strauss' Bacchus (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Aegisth (Elektra); Florestan (Fidelio), the title role in Der König Kandaules, Don José (Carmen), Enée (Les Troyens), Jimmy (Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny), Dimitrij (Boris Godunow in the original edition), Le Chevalier de la Force (Dialogues of the Carmelites), Agrippa (The Fiery Angel), Rudolph Valentino (The Dream of Valentino), and Enzo (La Gioconda).

 

     

 

                    He performed with conductors James Levine, James Conlon, Sir Charles Mackerras, Edo de Waart, Bernhard Kontarsky, Kent Nagano, John Mauceri, Joseph Silverstein, Lawrence Foster, Sylvan Cambreling, Friedrich Pleyer, Christoph Perick, John Cage, Ivan Törzs, Anton Guadagno, Joseph Resigno, Anton Nanut, Marcus Bosch, Enoch zu Gutenberg, Gustav Meier, Lior Shambadal, Zoltan Kocsis, Roberto Paternostro, Carol Crawford, Dean Byron, and Stefan Minde, as well as pops concerts with John Green, Harry Rabinowitz and Lucas Richman. Noted stage directors with whom he worked include Werner Herzog, Michael Hampe, Herbert Wernicke, Jean-Claude Berutti, Birgitte Fassbaender, Jonathon Miller, Götz Friedrich, Michael Leinert, Ulrich Peters, Wolfram Mehring, Juha Hemànus, Rudolf Nolte, Lutz Selig, John Cage, Graham Vick, Giles Havergal, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Peter Mussbach and Henry Akina.

 

         

 

                    He appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Hollywood Bowl, the American Symphony at Carnegie Hall, Minnesota Orchestra, Utah Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Opera Orchestre de Lyon, Festival de Radio France, Orchestre de la Monnaie, Tokyo Symphony, Osaka Philharmonic, VARA Radio Symphony at the Concertgebouw, Frankfurt Oper Orchester at the Jerusalem Festival, Kölner Philharmonie, Orchester Stadttheater Aachen, Chorgemeinschaft Neubeuern, Capella Istropolitana, Budapest Spring Festival, Cincinnati May Festival, Monterey Symphony, Carmel Bach Festival, Los Angeles County Art Museum Series (with Leonard Stein), and Orchestre Métropolitain de Montreal.

 

     

 

                    His vocal study was with Dorothy Fries at Immaculate Heart College (BA, 1968). Coaching with Jack Metz, Martial Singher (Music Academy of the West) and Walter Taussig (Metropolitan Opera). Vocal awards have included the Debut Award and First Prize from the Young Musicians Foundation, and the Frank Sinatra Auditions First Prize as classical vocalist.

 

     

 

                    A native of Los Angeles and currently resident of Berlin, Germany, Bachlund also studied composition, theory, aesthetics and music education in parallel with his performing career, served for some years as composer-in-residence at All Saints Church, Pasadena, and created many choral works, almost all with ecumenical themes drawn from biblical sources; he has written liturgical music for the synagogue as well, also serving several synagogues as Cantor.

 

 

      

 

                    In the midst of a career as singer travelling internationally, he earned his Masters Degree (1991) and Ph.D. (1993) in composition from the University of California, Los Angeles, composing both poetic texts and the musical setting for an ecumenical Requiem for the Victims of AIDS (1991) which has been performed from Los Angeles to New York, and a large scale organ symphony titled The Jerusalem Windows (1993) on Jewish and art themes found in Marc Chagall's stained glass of the same name (the stained glass may be seen in the Hadassah Synagogue in Jerusalem). These works were debuted at All Saints Church by Timothy Howard and James Walker, as well as a double Concerto grosso in B major  for harpsichord, organ and chamber orchestra (1997) which was debuted by them jointly for the American Guild of Organists and is dedicated to them both and counts many fine performers among his friends and advisors over the years. The organ work, Soli Deo gloria (2010) is in honor of organ builder Manuel Rosales, a friend for decades,

 

    

 

                    He has written over 1,400 art songs as well as other choral and chamber works.  He studied theory and composition privately in Los Angeles with Eugene Zador, as well as with Dorrance Stalvey at Immaculate Heart College and at UCLA with Roger Bourland, Roy Travis, Ian Krouse, and Elaine Barkin, and music education and aesthetics with Abraham Schwadron and Maurice Gerow. Additionally he studied choral conducting with Roger Wagner and orchestral conducting with Mehli Mehta. He has taught at the Musical Theater Workshop of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera and the American Center for Musical Theater in Los Angeles, as well as master classes as guest faculty internationally.  For some reviews, click Press Quotes .

 

                    Before his work as an opera and concert singer, he has served congregations throughout southern California in several capacities, was in sales and marketing for Hewlett-Packard for almost ten years, was a member of Screen Actors Guild and did recordings for television, was a retail buyer and soldier in the United States Army and California National Guard.

 

[ 1 ]  Over 500 of my scores have been posted to IMSLP, but as of a last attempt to post about forty additional scores, the admin has informed me that I may no longer post there without making scores available through Creative Commons licenses. The first message about this from them was: "Yes we have had a organization change with how were treating licensing now and we have upped our enforcement of making sure users have proof they are a part of a Performance Rights Group. If you are no longer under a PRO group, then you will need to change the licensing on your uploads (including the ones you submitted recently) to a more free-er license (c or CC BY or CC Zero). We do not support restrictive CC licensing either (NonCommericial or NoDerivs as well for new uploads)." Posted at 16:12, 8 December 2025 [ administrator ]. Thereafter the administrator clarified: "We can keep those files the same license if you want because at the time we didn't have any internal structure for verifying Performance Rights groups users were apart of. Now if you make any new uploads under such a license, you will need to verify if you are apart of a PRO group. So you need to make a choice if you want to have your uploads changed to a more free-er license or we will have to delete them."  Posted at 17:47, 8 December 2025 [ administrator ]. The "a more free-er license" as required by the administrator were for licenses allowing "for commercial use," or a license that allows creators to "waive all their copyright rights and dedicate their works to the public domain, enabling anyone to use, modify, and distribute the work without restrictions."   IMSLP Deleted Files   Neither of these options was agreed to, and therefore the administrator deleted about forty additional works from the Petrucci Library. All 554 scores still hosted there remain not for commercial use unless agreed to by me as publisher, and not available "enabling anyone to use, modify, and distribute the work without restrictions."   The site's philosophy, verbatim, is "We at the IMSLP believe that music should be something that is easily accessible for everyone. To this end, we have created the IMSLP in order to provide music scores free of charge to anyone who has internet access. IMSLP will always be freely accessible." This site also allows music scores "free of charge," so the change in stance by Petrucci's administrator seems to interfere with commercial performance and derivatives issues, not free scores.   I add that many have contacted me with requests to use my work, and I have to date and over many years granted use without royalty. It is a matter of who "owns" a copyrighted work, and who defines such.