Distinguished Professor Justin Vickers will present “‘When Dreams Do Show Thee Me’: Benjamin Britten and the Night” at 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 19, in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center at Illinois State University.

The event is free and open to the public.

After joining Illinois State University in 2012 Dr. Vickers was awarded early promotion and tenure in 2017 and named full professor in 2021. He has been awarded numerous teaching and research awards at the school and college level including the University Research Initiative Award in 2015, both the Teaching Initiative Award and Service Initiative Awards in the College of Fine Arts in 2016, as well as multiple Impact Awards for work with first-year students. Vickers received the Outstanding University Researcher Award in 2022.

Vickers was named a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom (2020–21), was awarded a Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar (2022–2023) by the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, and he was a Visiting Fellow at New College, University of Oxford (Trinity Term 2024). Vickers was the director of Benjamin Britten at 100: An American Centenary Symposium (October 2013,24–27) on the campus of Illinois State University, where he has also hosted conferences for the North American British Music Studies Association (2020, online; 2022, in-person).

Vickers is currently writing The Aldeburgh Festival: A History of the Britten and Pears Era, 1948–1986 (The Boydell Press), the first history of Britten’s entrepreneurial endeavor. Vickers just submitted the manuscript for Elizabeth Maconchy in Context to Cambridge University Press for publication in 2026, which he co-edited with Lucy Walker. He is also editing Childhood in the Operatic Imaginary since 1900 for Oxford University Press with Joy Calico, also for publication in 2026. Vickers has edited Benjamin Britten in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on An Inexplicit Art (The Boydell Press, 2017), both with Vicki Stroeher.

Vickers’ career as a classically trained performing artist in opera, concert, and recital informs his work in the classroom at Illinois State. In the School of Music, Vickers is artist teacher of voice and teaches applied voice to undergraduate and graduate performance, music education, music therapy, and music business majors. Vickers is also responsible for the opera workshop at Illinois State, in which he has produced complete evening-length operas, one-act operas, and extended opera scenes programs. Britten’s song cycles are central to Vickers’s repertoire alongside world premiere song cycles commissioned by and composed for his voice.

Among his most recent commercial recordings are The Poet’s Echo: Songs of Benjamin Britten, John David Earnest, and Colin Matthews (Albany Records, 2023) and Caledonian Scenes: Songs of Judith Weir, Benjamin Britten, and Hamish MacCunn (Albany Records, 2020); the tenor has four other discs of opera and classical song with the Parma and Albany Records labels. Passionate about repertoire for the recital hall, Vickers teaches Art Song Genres for undergraduate and graduate students, focused on the history of song and song cycles across four centuries in eight different languages.

Collaboration is a cornerstone of the School of Music, and Vickers is always proud to sing as tenor soloist in large works with the Illinois State University Choirs and Orchestra. His favorite performances include Britten’s War Requiem, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, and most recently, the Mozart Requiem.

Those with questions or need accommodations to attend the lecture can email Provost@IllinoisState.edu.