Diana DuMelle
Founder/Director
Diana Vassall-DuMelle (she/her) is the co-founder and director of Bodhi Tree Concerts, San Diego. For fourteen years, she has shepherded the company to critical and artistic acclaim.
She served as Gotham Chamber Opera’s Production Manager from their inception until 2008. In addition, she has served as production manager and stage manager for companies throughout the United States including New York City Opera, Caramoor Music Festival, Connecticut Opera, ArtPark, Bard Music Festival, San Diego Lyric, Connecticut Grand, Dicapo, Augusta Opera, Orlando Opera, Martina Arroyo Foundation, Regina Resnik Presents, and many more.. She also served as technical director and music director for San Diego Opera’s Outreach and Education Program, in addition to several years on the arts faculty of the La Jolla Country Day School. She graduated from UCLA with degrees in keyboard performance and music education, with additional studies at London’s Royal College of Music.
Bodhi Tree
Concerts
MISSION
Bodhi Tree Concerts performs intentional acts of kindness through music with a vision to offer music as a path towards enlightenment and understanding. Bodhi Tree Concerts' Core Values are featuring exclusively local artists, programming diverse artists and repertoire and supporting charitable organizations.
ABOUT
Bodhi Tree Concerts was founded on the principle that small, intentional acts of kindness can change the world. Using music as our vehicle, our grassroots organization over thirteen seasons, has hired hundreds of local artists and donated over $40,000 to charity. We seek to entertain and enlighten through the common language of music and bring the wonderfully diverse communities of San Diego together during a time of extraordinary divisiveness.
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From our foundation, our goal has been to engage and highlight the wealth of cultural diversity in San Diego. Collaborations are also key including with Opera de Tijuana, Sacra/Profana, San Diego Opera and New York City Opera, just to name a few. We are also dedicated to new music, having presented two world premieres and ten San Diego premieres.
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Arts education is also a priority. Bodhi Tree Concerts has presented two children’s operas: Brundibar by Hans Krasa, written during the Holocaust in a concentration camp, and The Little Sweep by Benjamin Britten. Year-round we offer free tickets, educational materials, book giveaway, arts and crafts, and masterclasses for the youth in our community. Our largest project to date is the commission of a new opera, PANCHO RABBIT AND THE COYOTE, featuring the youth in our community who live and learn close to the border, performing alongside professional artists. These young people will not only see themselves represented onstage, itself a rarity, but experience, participate in and enjoy music, art, dance, and design at the highest levels.
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Bodhi Tree Concerts is a small presenting organization with a clear mission and vision reaching large and ambitious goals. There is a long history of activism through art that proves small groups get things done. We defy expectations and have consistently achieved artistic excellence that intersects the arts with our local and global communities.
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Walter DuMelle
Founder/Director
Bass, WALTER DuMELLE (he/him), has been engaging audiences both here and abroad for over thirty-five years with his wide range of vocal styles and genres with such companies and festivals as Skylight, DiCapo, Des Moines Metro, Central City, Chautauqua, Natchez, Intermountain, Bronx, Connecticut Grand, Utah Festival, Ash Lawn, National Opera, and the Opera Theaters of Chicago, Rochester and Connecticut.
A well-versed concertizer, Du Melle’s oratorio repertoire includes Messiah and Acis and Galatea (Handel), L’Enfance du Christ and Roméo et Juliette (Berlioz), Requiem (Mozart, Duruflé, Fauré), The Soldier’s Tale, Oedipus Rex, Mass (Stravinsky), The Christmas Oratorio (Saint-Saëns) and several Bach cantatas. Combining a wide variety of music and performance styles he has presented “An American Odyssey” - an innovative all-American program of art song, aria, music-theater, spirituals, and the spoken word, with performances in San Diego, North Carolina and Aalborg, Denmark.
Equally at home on the operetta and musical theater stage, his Gilbert & Sullivan canon includes Mikado in Mikado (NY G&S Players; National Savoyards; BTC), Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore (Natchez Opera Festival; BTC), Sergeant of the Police in Pirates of Penzance (Lyric Opera SD; BTC) and the Usher in Trial by Jury (San Diego Comic Opera; BTC). Music theatre credits include Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well... (Chautauqua Opera), Benjamin Stone in Follies (Coronado Playhouse), Boatman/Redman in Sunday in the Park with George (ion theatre, SD), Man 2 in Closer than Ever (Eastman Theatre) and was lauded as the “comic highlight” with his portrayal of the First Gangster in Porter’s Kiss Me Kate (Ashlawn Opera Festival).
Currently hailing from San Diego, local engagements include performances with San Diego Opera (Baron in La traviata, Pinellino in Gianni Schicchi, Lillas Pastia in Carmen, Merchant in The Conquistador, All Is Calm, María de Buenos Aires), Lyric Opera SD (Sulpice-Daughter of the Regiment, Dr. Bartolo & Basilio-The Barber of Seville, Prince Joachim-The Waltz King, King-Rumpelstiltskin) , and Opera de Tijuana (Timur-Turandot, Bonze-Madama Butterfly, Sacristano-Tosca, Frère Laurent-Roméo et Juliette).
 
In 2012 he co-founded with his wife Diana DuMelle Bodhi Tree Concerts, with whom he has performed numerous roles and concerts. In 2017 he performed the title role in BTC’s production of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ 8 Songs for a Mad King, winning “Best in Fest” and “Best Actor in a Musical/Opera” at the San Diego International Fringe Festival.
 
DuMelle has had a long-time relationship with the works of Kurt Weill, singing in a production of Street Scene, under the baton of Kim Kowalke, Seven Deadly Sins/Mahagonny Songspiel with Liederkranz Opera, and reprised his role of Mother in Seven Deadly Sins for BTC, winning a “Best Ensemble” award at the International San Diego Fringe Festival.
This past year he made his New York City Opera debut as the Doctor in La traviata, followed by a reprise of All Is Calm.
  
He received his Master’s in Music from the Eastman School of Music.