University Of Missouri-St. Louis: Love Of Music Brings Mark Briguglio Back To College, Almost 50 Years After He Started, To Earn Degree

Press release from the University of Missouri-St. Louis:

August 17, 2021

It wasn’t as though 68-year-old Mark Briguglio had an easy time blending in among the mostly 20-something students who comprise University Singers, the 45-voice auditioned concert choir training and performing at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

But Briguglio hadn’t necessarily stood out either, regardless of the gray hair and beard on his head and the wrinkles under his eyes.

“The nature of choir is that everybody is up on the risers singing together,” said Jim Henry, an associate professor of music and UMSL’s director of choral studies. “We rarely get to hear everybody sing just by themselves.”

Henry likes to hold what he calls “Talent Show Friday,” where he asks individual students to take a turn showing off some of their skills as a way of letting other students get to know them.

Early in the spring semester of 2020, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Henry called on Briguglio to sing a solo, and his classmates in the Whitaker Room at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center weren’t expecting what came next.

“They had no idea that this huge operatic tenor voice was in this guy, and the moment he opened his mouth to sing, their jaws fell on the floor,” Henry said. “There was this resounding applause when he got finished.”

Briguglio’s voice has been capturing the attention of and delighting audiences for more than 50 years, and in 1972, it won him a scholarship to study at the St. Louis Institute of Music, which at the time, was housed at Maryville University. Back then, he had dreams of becoming a professional singer, as two of his sisters both did, only life got in the way.

Almost five decades later, Briguglio is back pursuing the college degree he never really gave up wanting. He’s on track to graduate this December with a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies, focusing on music and also psychology.

“I’ve always wanted to go back to school,” he said. “I thought I would go back here and become a great singer.”

He’s become more clear-eyed about his professional prospects, but he would like to share his love of song while providing music therapy to military veterans through the VA St. Louis Health Care System.

“Music is inside of me,” Briguglio said. “It’s always been there. It’s important to get it out and share it.”

Briguglio can’t exactly remember when he started singing.

“I guess about 3 or 4 months before I was born,” he said.

He was 15 when he was invited to sing the national anthem at the governor’s inaugural ball in Oklahoma, a performance his uncle, then an executive at Texaco, helped arrange.

Briguglio enthusiastically accepted that scholarship offer to the St. Louis Institute of Music three years later, believing it could lead him to a career as a singer. But a year after he enrolled in college, he dropped out to join the United States Marine Corps amid an unpopular war in Vietnam.

He has vivid memories of that turbulent time, with the negative reactions that followed him whenever he and the other members of his unit were seen with their uniforms on in public.

Briguglio wasn’t sent overseas but rather to California, near La Casa Pacifica, President Richard Nixon’s “Western White House” in San Clemente. He and his unit accompanied Nixon’s motorcade whenever the president traveled in the area.

To keep busy the rest of the time, Briguglio would often get called to sing the national anthem at government events nearby.

This press release was produced by the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The views expressed here are the author’s own.