Blair Boone

Blair Boone-Migura (born James Adam Blair Boone) a writer, professor and specialist of art song repertoire, arts administrator and musician, has written for such publications as MetroSource Magazine and NYC Resident interviewing artists like Grammy-Award winning American-Haitian singer Wyclef Jean, Grammy-nominated pianist Fred Hersch, and prominent American club DJ Junior Vasquez. He is best known for appearing in two episodes of the hit show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Boone-Migura was hired as the show's culture vulture based on his qualifications in art, music and languages, but producers felt he was not outgoing enough (a charge that Boone-Migura disputed), and so they decided to recast him with a professional performer. Actor/singer Jai Rodriguez was hired to replace him.

Although the two episodes in which Boone-Migura appeared were the first two shot, they aired as episodes 1.2 and 1.3, with Boone-Migura given a 'Guest Culture Expert' credit (although the opening titles of both feature Jai Rodriguez).

Boone-Migura sued the production company for breach of contract, based on the fact he had only been paid for the two episodes he had shot (at $3,000 per episode), claiming he deserved to be paid for the entire season he had originally been contracted to shoot, as he had given up his position at MetroSource to accept the role. The case was settled before it went to court.

He has also appeared as a guest on The Howard Stern Show, performed as a gymnast and dancer with The Kinesis Project, and was featured as a gymnast in a Panasonic commercial promoting the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Boone-Migura trained as gymnast under the United States Gymnastics Federation Men’s program and later went on to compete on the men’s gymnastics team at Syracuse University.

Boone-Migura began his study of voice and piano in Houston before moving to pursue his Bachelor’s in Voice Performance (honors) and Master’s in French Language, Literature and Culture at Syracuse University. During his academic tenure he received the university’s most prestigious Remembrance Scholar Award (named for the 35 students killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 Dec. 21, 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland), and The SU Graduate Teaching Fellowship in French. He also studied voice and piano at the Strasbourg Conservatory of Music in Strasbourg, France. After graduating and moving to New York City, Boone-Migura began teaching French and coaching singers in French diction and the French Mélodie. He also holds a second Master's degree in Vocal Pedagogy from Westminster Choir College in Princeton where he graduated with honors and distinction. In addition to coaching singer's privately in the French vocal repertoire, Boone-Migura has taught as a part-time adjunct French language faculty member at The New School and Hunter College in New York. Boone-Migura is currently a guest lecturer in the music department at The University of Hawai'i where he teaches art song literature course in French Mélodie and German Lied and vocal pedagogy.

After accumulating over ten years of project management and client relationship management experience, Boone also managed to transition into an executive role serving as the director of client relationship management at the world’s largest document processing services firm CIBT, Inc in NYC. He managed a number of strategic relationships at major firms, publishing and advertising companies, including Yahoo!, MetroSource Publishing and CIBT, Inc.

In 2009, Boone-Migura founded The Art Song Preservation Society of NY, a nonprofit arts organization devoted to preserving and revitalizing the art song while simultaneously promoting the art song recital. Boone-Migura also co-hosted an internet-radio show called "A Toast To Song" sponsored by The Art Song Preservation Society of New York (ASPS) where he serves as Executive Director. ASPS’s credo is "where music speaks, and words sing!" Blair founded ASPS because of his concern and deep interest in promoting this declining area of vocal literature and in honor of his mentor of twenty-two years, master French and German song specialist, Mary Trueman (1915-2008). Boone-Migura studied voice with Mary Trueman who taught at Rice University and later went on to sponsor a bi-annual art song vocal competition in her name. Current winners of this vocal competition are Michael Weyandt, Virginie Verrez, and Sandra Hamaoui. Boone-Migura also studied voice with JoElyn Walkefied-Wright at Syracuse University, Elisabeth Schroeder at The Strasbourg Conservatory of Music in France, and Elem Eley at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, and has sung in master classes with Oren Brown at The Juilliard School, Phyllis Curtain at Yale and Boston University, and Norma Newton at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. Boone-Migura coached privately with Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Barbara Smith Conrad and internationally acclaimed specialist of the French vocal repertoire, Thomas Grubb of The Juilliard School and author of Singing in French: A Manual of French Diction & French Vocal Repertoire. Boone-Migura also studied piano accompaniment with Mary Trueman of Rice University, Steve Heyman of Syracuse University and continues to study piano privately with Edward Nemirovsky in NYC.

In May 2013, Boone-Migura also had the honor of assisting the legendary piano collaborator Dalton Baldwin, along with two of French song's most accomplished sopranos Elly Ameling and Rosemarie Landry, and several other highly notable adjudicators of distinction in the development and execution of the Positively Poulenc Vocal Competition and Recital under the sponsorship of Joy In Singing at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. In April and May 2014, Boone collaborated with the French American Cultural Exchange and the Artistic Department of the French Cultural Services and aided in the execution of two arts festivals: ART2, A French-American Platform on Contemporary Art, and DANSE, A French-American Festival of Performance & Ideas.

In July 2014, the New York Times announced that Blair Boone and Dr. Anthony Migura, a pulmonary critical-care physician at Advanced ICU Care and a partner at Critical Care Medical Management Associates, were married aboard the Aqua Azul yacht on the Hudson River in NYC. The officiant was John E. Long, a friend of the couple who became a Universal Life minister for the occasion. Boone then changed his surname to Boone-Migura.

In September 2014, Boone-Migura joined The International Vocal Arts Institute (IVAI) as the Arts Administrative Director in New York where he joined co-founders, Joan Dornemann and Paul Nadler of the Metropolitan Opera, in realizing IVAI’s core mission of finding and training the most talented young opera singers around the world - "passing the torch from one generation of to the next".

In September 2016, Boone-Migura joined Gary Hickling as a co-host on "Singing & Other Sins" a radio show that Hickling created that airs on Hawai`i Public Radio KHPR 88.1-FM. On the show, Boone-Migura presents on-air and online content on art song performers and musicians like soprano Jessye Norman, composer Henri Duparc, and has interviewed artists like American composer, Ned Rorem, and American pianist and French vocal coach, Thomas Grubb. Program archives can be found: http://lottelehmannleague.org/singing-sins-archive/

Boone-Migura is a specialist in the art song composer Henri Duparc and has authored several theses on the French composer. As a performer, Boone-Migura has given art song recitals representing such composers as Berlioz, Brahms, Debussy, Duke, Duparc, Fauré, Hahn, Mahler, Poulenc, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, and Tchaikowsky.

Boone-Migura is the son of Raven Blair Glover of Los Angeles and the late James E. Boone, who lived in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother is the executive producer and host of Women Power Talk Radio, an Internet talk show produced in Los Angeles where she lives with her husband Khaliq Glover. Boone-Migura has one sister, Jamie Nichole Boone Nicholson who lives in Houston, Texas with her son Christian Morrissey Blair Williams. Boone-Migura and his husband, Dr. Anthony Migura divide their time between their homes in New York and Hawai’i.