February 20, 2009
Singing Chef Cooks in Kitchen, On Stage
UNC chef Derek Rice poses for a photo as he belts out a song during a recent shift in Holmes Dining Hall.
Derek Rice loves to cook and loves to sing. As the chef at the University of Northern Colorado’s Holmes Dining Hall, he gets to do both at the same time.
Rice’s singing isn’t limited to the kitchen, however. Over the past few years he’s sung with the choir and performed two solos in a six-week-long run of an Opera Colorado production of “Porgy and Bess,” and been in numerous musical theater productions. He’s the vocalist in a local jazz combo, “Straight Up,” and on Feb. 28, he’ll perform a solo at “Pops and Pasta,” the Greeley Chorale’s annual fund-raising dinner show.
Although Rice started singing as a child and was in a variety of choirs throughout middle and high school, he drifted away from singing after graduation and didn’t sing for 17 years. He got back into singing when, after nine months of practice and preparation, he sang a love song to the woman he’d eventually marry.
“I guess I impressed her,” said Rice, who was born and raised in Denver. “She said she thought I had talent and encouraged me to take some voice lessons, plus she married me.”
Rice took three years of voice classes at a local community college and started performing, but not without stage fright that not even his chef’s training and numerous years of experience making food for the public in the privacy of a kitchen prepared him for.
“I thought I was going to throw up every time I got on stage,” Rice said, “Thankfully, after four or five years I got used to it.”
While his favorite music is jazz and blues, Rice, who’s worked at UNC for four years and as the Holmes Dining Hall chef since May, said that he sings to whatever’s playing on the radio in the kitchen.
“I don’t know if it’s to the chagrin of my employees or to their enjoyment, but they haven’t complained yet,” Rice said with a smile. “Not too loudly, anyway.”
Of Note:
Derek Rice is one of several UNC employees in the Greeley Chorale. Tickets are still available for the 1 p.m. performance of “Pops and Pasta on Saturday, Feb. 28, at St. Mary's Catholic Church Parish Center. Tickets are being sold through the Union Colony Civic Center box office: 701 10th Ave., 356-5000, http://www.greeleygov.com/UCCC/.