Homegrown opera star booked for East Texas return

MARSHALL, Texas – Beverly Jane Peatross, who took her middle name with her when she left Texas for California, is coming home to sing with the Marshall Symphony Orchestra beginning at 7 p.m. April 13 at the East Texas Baptist University Rogers Spiritual Life Center. Tickets are $30 on line at marshallsymphony.com, $35 at the door.

Beverly Jane enjoys telling West Coast friends of growing up with three brothers on a Texas cattle ranch just south of town where her parents, Dr. James and Beverly Harris, still live.
An honor student who earned a place in and sang with the Texas All State Choir multiple years before graduating Marshall High in 1997, she earned her bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from Southern Methodist University.
“I grew up singing in the Methodist Church most Sundays and soaking up my mother’s love of classical music and hymns,” she said. She was influenced by her father’s preference for Joan Baez, Roy Orbison and Elvis and subject to the work of brothers tuning the radio to classic rock and country.
Beverly Jane’s a classic soprano, say her bookings.

She, husband Christopher and four children live near San Francisco where she’s performed with Bay Area companies including West Bay Opera, Festival Opera, Golden Gate Opera, Martinez Opera and the San Jose Lyric Theater as well as the San Francisco Choral Society and East Bay Symphony.
She is regularly heard singing in the yoga classes she leads at Big Magic Village, a yoga and creative living company she founded in 2012 and through which she also leads yoga retreats and creative arts workshops from her family’s California Yoga Barn.
“More than anything I enjoy singing, eyes closed, harmonizing and improvising with other singers and dancing as the music moves me, all of which I learned around the piano with my family in our green living room,” she said.