The baritone, originally from Paducah, Kentucky, was a Grand Finals winner in the 2020 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. A 2018 alumnus of Houston Grand Opera’s Young Artist Vocal Academy, Denson is in his second season as a Houston Grand Opera Studio artist. During HGO’s 2021/2022 season, he will portray Moralès/Carmen (while covering Escamillo), Daddy and Time/The Snowy Day (alternate cast performances), the Jailer/Dialogues of the Carmelites, and Gregorio/Romeo and Juliet. During the 2020/2021 HGO Digital season he appeared in Giving Voice, as Peter/Hansel and Gretel, and in Suite Española: Explorando Iberia. In the summer of 2019 Denson was a member of the Wolf Trap Opera Studio program, where he returned for the 2020 summer season. Although unable to appear onstage in Eugene Onegin at Wolf Trap due to the coronavirus pandemic, Denson did perform scenes recorded on video from that work, as well as from La bohème and The Crucible. Denson is an alumnus of the University of Kentucky School of Music and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. At the start of the 2019/2020 season, Denson returned to Rice University, where he completed his final year in the master’s program at the Shepherd School of Music. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Performance from the University of Kentucky.