Aggressive in character.... Complex and nuanced, but not heavy. ... Rich and deep with a lovely finesse....

Although they sound like wine reviews, these are the words Heidi Vas ‘02 uses to describe the songs on her debut CD, Reflections. The classically trained soprano teamed with composer and fellow USC Thornton School alum Ludek Drizhal ‘02 to record a crossover album in the style of super-singers Josh Groban, Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. Not only do listeners get a variety of song styles – Chilean folk songs, Handel arias and patriotic American ballads – they also get a “Wine & Song Pairing Menu” that suggests which chardonnays and cabernets should be sipped with each album track.

“We were listening to the CD with some friends while drinking wine one night,” she recalls, “and someone said: ‘This is the perfect music for relaxing and drinking wine. They ought to play this in wine bars.’ “

Thus was the complementary menu born: an Argentinian Malbec to go with “Tango,” a mulled Zinfandel to accompany “Christmas Promise,” a bright brut rosé for the popular radio favorite “When the Sun Comes Up.” “It’s a great idea for a cocktail party,” Vas says.

Indeed, but isn’t a a sauvignon-swilling soiree the last place you’d expect to hear a pristine-piped, award-winning, conservatory-trained opera singer?

“In many ways, it’s much more appropriate to me,” says Vas, with a laugh. “I was actually a bartender coming up through college.”

Having earned her undergraduate degree at Westminster Choir College, Vas came to USC on a full scholarship to study opera. After college, she performed oratorio, which is unstaged opera, and sang Baroque music concerts, but was discouraged by dwindling public interest in those forms of music.

“The audiences were not there,” she said – and neither was her heart. “This wasn’t who I was as an artist. It was who I was trained to be, and I had a proclivity for it, but it really wasn’t my pedigree. To be honest, we didn’t even listen to classical music growing up in my house!”

Vas – whose stage name, Valencia, means “strength” – credits her mom for teaching her that “you don’t have to stay on the path people tell you is the right one.”

Although she loves all kinds of music, from Perry Como to Norah Jones to A Tribe Called Quest, she had no desire to be a run-of-the-mill pop singer.

“There’s no technique behind it,” says Vas, who sang the National Anthem at a Lakers game in 2006. “I wanted to do something totally different while still paying homage to all those years of vocal training.”

So she contacted composer Drizhal, a former USC classmate whose film-scoring work impressed her. “I wanted gorgeous melodies with symphonic music, and I knew he would give me that,” she says. Coincidentally, when the pair traveled to Budapest to record the album with the Budapest Radio Orchestra, they discovered the group’s director was Robert Gulya ‘01 – another classmate from the Thornton School.

“When you graduate from Thornton, you have at your fingertips a Rolodex of expertly trained professionals,” she says. “You feel very comfortable working with the people you know from there because if they got in, they’re amazing. And when they come out, they’re going to be that much more amazing.”

You might even call them bold and well-balanced, with a strong finish.

– Starshine Roshell