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Arnaldo Cohen, piano performing July 1st |
Janet Sung, violin performing July 5th |
| Julian Schwarz, cello performing July 5th |
Stefan Jackiw, violin performing July 9th |
| Jeffery Gilliam, piano performing July 10th |
Jeremy Denk, piano performing July 13th |
| Richard Clement, tenor performing July 13th and July 17th |
Clayton Brainerd, baritone performing July 17th |
| Katie Bolding, soprano performing July 17th |
W. Dwight Coleman, baritone performing July 17th |
| Mary Jane Johnson, soprano performing July 17th |
Jeffrey Springer, tenor performing July 17th |
| Gary Jankowski, bass performing July 17th |
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Arnold Cohen |
Arnaldo Cohen, piano
performing July 1st
Brazilian-born pianist Arnaldo Cohen has a reputation for astonishing his audiences with the musical authority and blistering virtuosity of his performances. His graceful and unaffected platform manner belies playing of white-hot intensity, intellectual probity, and glittering bravura technique bordering on sheer wizardry. He has performed with the Royal Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Santa Cecilia Orchestra of Rome under such leading conductors as Kurt Masur, Yehudi Menuhin and Wolfgang Sawallish.
Long in demand internationally, Mr. Cohen has in the past few years entered a rarefied echelon among performers in America as well. His recent performances have spanned the United States from Oregon to Florida and from Texas to Wisconsin. Highlights include engagements with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In the 2009-10 season, Mr. Cohen performed all of the Beethoven Concerti and the Triple Concerto with Carlos Kalmar and the Oregon Symphony and returned to the Seattle Symphony performing Rachmaninoff’s 4th Concerto. He performed Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Concerto with the Jacksonville Symphony and returned to London for performances of the Liszt 2nd with the London Philharmonic. Summer festival appearances in 2010 included Blossom, where he performed Tchaikovsky’s 1st concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra and Jahja Ling.
Cohen’s enthusiastically heralded interpretations of Beethoven’s concerti continue in the 2010-11 season with performances of the 4th concerto with the St. Louis Symphony, of the 5th concerto (Emperor) with the Des Moines Symphony, and all five concerti with Carl St. Clair and the Pacific Symphony. Cohen’s demand as a recitalist is evidenced by many performances in North American including a critically acclaimed concert at New York’s Town Hall, as well as those in San Francisco and Philadelphia, and last season in Toronto, Richmond, and Denver. The highlight of Cohen’s 2010-11 season will be his debut at Chicago’s Symphony Center as a part of the Chicago Symphony’s recital series. Also in the 2010-11 season, Cohen will perform in duo recitals with Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Quebec, and at Duke University. International engagements in the 2010-11 season include performances in Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and visits to the U.K. and Canada.
Arnaldo Cohen came to prominence after winning First Prize at the 1972 Busoni International Piano Competition and making his debut at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. For five years, he was a member of the acclaimed Amadeus Trio and has performed with many string quartets, including the Lindsay and Chillingirian Quartets. He began his musical studies at the age of five, graduating from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro with an honors degree in both piano and violin, while also studying for an engineering degree. He went on to become a professional violinist in the Rio de Janeiro Opera House Orchestra to earn his livelihood while continuing piano studies with Jacques Klein, a disciple of the legendary American pianist William Kapell. Cohen pursued further training in Vienna with Bruno Seidlhofer and Dieter Weber.
He is a frequent recording artist, with recent discs including a 2007 rendering of the two Liszt Piano Concerti and the “Totentanz” with the Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra for BIS Records. His other two critically acclaimed CDs on the same label are an all-Liszt solo disc, and his pioneering CD, “Three Centuries of Brazilian Music.” In 2009, he recorded Rachmaninoff’s 4th Concerto with the Sao Paulo State Symphony with Yan Pascal Tortelier conducting as a part of the complete cycle of the Rachmaninoff Concerti.
Cohen is the recipient of an honorary fellowship awarded by the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and until recently held a professorship at the Royal Academy of Music in London. After living in London for 23 years, he relocated in 2004 to the United States, where he holds a full professorship at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.
Critical Acclaim:
"He's a big pianist, a large man with a roaring, muscular tone, digital precision and individual interpretations. He is debonair at the keyboard, and he is wise."
--Pierre Ruhe, Atlanta Constitution
"Aficionadas of superior pianism knew where to be Tuesday evening-in Herbst Theatre, where Brazilian-born, London artist Arnaldo Cohen made an often-stunning return to the city that barely took note of his debut in 1995. In the interim, an underground swell of admiration(if not quite a cult) has developed around this dapper musician, and this San Francisco Performances recital--a banquet of Schoenberg, Bach, Prokofiev and Chopin--made a first-timer understand why. This is a fabulous talent."
--Allan Ulrich, San Francisco Chronicle
"He is a big pianist. His sound is splendid and full, and never clattery, even in scuh barnstroming passages as the coda to this Liszt work(Fantaisie Dramatique sur les Huguenots de Meyerbeer)."
--Paul Griffiths, New York Times
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Janet Sung, violin |
Janet Sung, violin
performing July 5th
Violinist Janet Sung enjoys an acclaimed international career as a virtuoso soloist, praised for her lustrous tone and impassioned, bravura performances.
Janet Sung has been guest soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Chamber Symphony and Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, as well as the orchestras of Adrian, Boise, Bozeman, Corpus Christi, Delaware, Dubuque, Fargo-Moorhead, Hartford, Owensboro, Richmond (IN), Springfield (Massachusetts & Ohio), Traverse City, Wheeling and Wyoming. Abroad, she has been heard with South Korea’s Pusan Philharmonic Orchestra, Germany’s Stelzen Festival Orchestra and Russia’s Omsk Philharmonic Orchestra and National Symphonic Orchestra of Bashkortostan. Her solo performances have frequently been aired on radio and television, nationally and internationally, including multiple broadcasts of her performance of Korngold’s Violin Concerto on NPR’s “Performance Today.” Acclaimed for her compelling performances of traditional works from Bach to Berg, she also reveals her repertoire’s diversity by presenting the works of the 20th and 21st century and regularly touring with fiddler Mark O’Connor’s American String Celebration. In 2009, Ms. Sung presented the world premiere of Kenneth Fuchs’ American Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra.
In recital, Janet Sung has been presented in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Louisville, New York City and Pittsburgh, as well as in Odense, Denmark, Lausanne, Switzerland and Queenstown, New Zealand. She is also a frequently heard artist at distinguished music festivals, including: Aspen Music Festival, Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, Hot Springs Music Festival, Sewanee Summer Music Festival and Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival. Ms. Sung is also a frequent guest at numerous festivals and with the American Chamber Players, touring nationally.
Janet Sung was chosen by Leonard Slatkin as the recipient of the Passamaneck Award, for which she performed at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Music Hall for the Y Music Society Concert Series. A winner of the Aspen Music Festival’s Nakamichi Violin Competition, she has also been awarded other top prizes and grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, National Federation of Music Clubs Competition and Cho Chang Tsung Foundation.
(SUNG-bio-2)
A native of New York City, Janet Sung began violin studies at the age of seven, making her public debut the following year. At age nine, she made her orchestral debut, performing with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The following year, she began a decade of private studies with the renowned violinist, Josef Gingold, a period that overlapped with her attendance
at Harvard University, from which she graduated with honors with a double degree in anthropology and music. Subsequently, Ms. Sung was invited to study on full scholarship with the esteemed teacher, Dorothy DeLay, at The Juilliard School. She also studied extensively with Masao Kawasaki, David Cerone, Eugene Phillips and the Juilliard String Quartet.
Highly sought after as an artist-teacher, Janet Sung has conducted masterclasses throughout the country, including The Hartt School of the University of Hartford, Harvard University, The Juilliard School and Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She has also served as faculty at The Juilliard School (initially as the Starling/DeLay Institute Fellow), State University of New York at Fredonia and the Mark O’Connor Fiddle Camp. During the 2003-2004 season, she returned to Harvard University as the Clifton Visiting Artist for the “Learning from Performers” program, whose previous guests included Isaac Stern, James Galway, Mark Morris and Quincy Jones. In 2010, Ms. Sung was appointed Associate Professor of Violin at the DePaul University School of Music in Chicago.
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Julian Schwarz , cello |
Julian Schwarz, cello
Performing July 5th
Born in Seattle into a musical family, nineteen year old cellist Julian Schwarz is already being recognized as a young musician with great talent and even greater potential.
Mr. Schwarz made his orchestral debut at the age of 11 playing the Saint-Saens Concerto No. 1 with the Seattle Symphony with his father, Music Director Gerard Schwarz, on the podium. Since then he has appeared as soloist with many of the Seattle area orchestras including the Bellevue Philharmonic, Philharmonia Northwest and the Port Angeles and Sammamish symphonies as well as with the Syracuse, Memphis and Greensboro (NC) symphonies. In the winter of 2010 he was one of the featured soloists on an extensive US tour with the Moscow State Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing 13 concerts on the East and West coasts.
Julian Schwarz has performed as a chamber musician at the Aspen, Interlochen, Eastern, California Summer and Encore music festivals. In summer 2009 he was the “Featured Young Artist” at both the Seattle Chamber Music Festival and the Cape Cod Music Festival and attended and performed at the prestigious Verbier Festival in Switzerland. He returns to the Verbier, Eastern Music and Cape Cod festivals in summer 2010 for chamber music performances.
In both 2007 and 2008 Mr. Schwarz won the highly regarded Northwest Sinfonietta Youth Concerto Competition. The resulting performances as soloist with Music Director Christophe Chagnard led to his appointment as assistant conductor under Chagnard with Seattle’s Lake Union Civic Orchestra, with which he has conducted Borodin’s Second Symphony and Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice at Seattle’s Town Hall.
Mr. Schwarz was recently profiled in the cover story in Teen Strings and has been featured on the acclaimed NPR radio program “From the Top.” He has also recorded “In Memoriam” by Gerard Schwarz for the Music of Remembrance series on the Naxos label.
Julian Schwarz started piano lessons at the age of five and began his cello studies the following year with the late David Tonkonogui; subsequent teachers have included Toby Saks and Lynn Harrell. He attends The Colburn School in Los Angeles where he studies with Ronald Leonard.
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photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco Stefan Jackiw, Violin |
Stefan Jackiw, violin
performing July 9th
Violinist Stefan Jackiw is recognized as one of the most significant artists of his generation, capturing audiences with his poetry and purity, combined with an impeccable technique. In the U.S. Mr. Jackiw has performed with the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the orchestras of Baltimore, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Nashville, Oregon, Rochester, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Luke’s, and Utah, among many other ensembles.
In 2000 Mr. Jackiw made his European debut in London to great critical acclaim, playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Benjamin Zander. Abroad, Mr. Jackiw has also performed with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Ulster Orchestra of Ireland, the Seoul Philharmonic, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Invited by Yuri Temirkanov, Mr. Jackiw performed the Barber Violin Concerto as part of the Winter Arts Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In 2002 Mr. Jackiw made his debut with the Baltimore Symphony under Temirkanov, followed by a tour of Japan with the orchestra that featured his Tokyo debut at Suntory Hall. Later that season, he made debuts with the Boston Symphony and the Chicago Symphony, both conducted by Roberto Abbado. His performance with the Boston Symphony was selected by the Boston Globe as one of the top two solo appearances of the year. In the 2004-2005 season, Mr. Jackiw made his debut with the Seattle Symphony, conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Both the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer selected this performance as the best debut of the year.
In July 2007, Mr. Jackiw made his debut with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Ludovic Morlot in the Concerts in the Parks series. The following month, he appeared with the Boston Symphony and Morlot at Tanglewood and was immediately reengaged for the following summer under Hans Graf. In 2008, Mr. Jackiw made his debut with the Cleveland Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis and the San Francisco Symphony under James Gaffigan.
| “One of the miracles and mysteries of music is how the exceptionally gifted young performer can renew the art by making you hear unexpected things in music you've known longer than they've been alive, by making you feel the music as freshly and intensely as you did when you were first discovering it. Violinist Stefan Jackiw can do this.” Boston Globe |
Mr. Jackiw is also an active recitalist and chamber musician. He has appeared on numerous important series, including at the Ravinia Festival and the Caramoor Festival, the Boston Celebrity Series, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre Recital Series in Paris, and at the Mostly Mozart Festival. He is also a regular participant at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival. At the opening night of Zankel Hall in New York, Mr. Jackiw was the only young artist invited to perform, alongside Emanuel Ax, Renée Fleming, Evgeny Kissin, and James Levine.
Born to physicist parents in 1985, Mr. Jackiw began playing the violin at the age of 4. His teachers have included Zinaida Gilels, Michèle Auclair, and Donald Weilerstein. Mr. Jackiw holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, as well as an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory. In 2002, he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Mr. Jackiw makes his home in New York City.
Listen to Stefan Jackiw on YouTube
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor Op.64 I. Allegro molto appassionato part 1
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Jeffrey Gilliam, pianist
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Jeffrey Gilliam, piano
performing July 10th
Jeffrey Gilliam has taught piano and piano accompanying at Western Washington University in Bellingham since 1992. He has performed throughout the Pacific Northwest as solo recitalist and as concerto soloist with local orchestras. In addition, Mr. Gilliam’s extended association with the late Lord Yehudi Menuhin has led to his collaboration with superb instrumentalists, with whom he has performed at London’s Wigmore Hall, The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City; in numerous concert tours across the U.S. and Canada, and in distinguished European, Asian, and South American festivals.
Originally from Akron, Ohio, Jeffrey Gilliam studied piano with Cécile Genhart at the Eastman School of Music and with Theodore Lettvin at the University of Michigan. A Fulbright Scholarship enabled him to continue his studies with Günter Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, where he made his European recital debut in 1982. He studied piano accompanying with Martin Katz and with Margo Garrett.
Prior to coming to Western, Jeffrey Gilliam taught accompanying at The Juilliard School, and for three years he taught piano and accompanying at the University of Michigan School of Music. He taught on the faculty of the International Menuhin Music Academy in Gstaad/Blonay, Switzerland for fourteen years, and has recorded with violinists Yehudi Menuhin, Ruggerio Ricci, and Alberto Lysy, for EMI, Opus 111, and Dinemec Classics, respectively.
In recent years he has taught on the faculties of The Marrowstone Music Festival; The Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at The New England Conservatory in Boston; at The University of Pretoria, South Africa and at Silpakorn Fine Arts University in Bangkok, Thailand.
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photo by J Henry Fair Jeremy Denk, Piano |
Jeremy Denk, Piano
performing July 13th
In 1998 Jeremy Denk won both the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and received a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Over the past decade the pianist's career has flourished. The New York Times described his playing as "bracing, effortlessly virtuosic and utterly joyous," and he has garnered comparable critical acclaim for his engagements with leading orchestras and presenters nationwide. He has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and many others.
The versatile American pianist's repertoire ranges from the standard works of the 18th and 19th centuries to twentieth-century masters such as Ives, Ligeti, Lutoslawski and Messiaen, and further to new works by leading composers of today. Mr. Denk has participated in many world premieres, including Leon Kirchner's Duo No. 2 (with violinist Ida Levin) at the Marlboro Music School and Festival in the summer of 2002; Ned Rorem's The Unquestioned Answer in the summer of 2003; Jake Heggie's Cut Time in 2001 with the Eos Orchestra; Alternating Current, a work written for him by Kevin Puts, on a Kennedy Center recital program; Mark O'Connor's Fiddle Sonata (with the composer on fiddle) at the Library of Congress; and also Edgar Meyer's Sonata for Violin and Piano with Joshua Bell.
Mr. Denk made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in April 1997 as the winner of the Juilliard Piano Debut Award. Writing of the performance, The New York Times described him as "a pianist with a searching mind." Recent solo appearances include all-Beethoven and all-Bach recitals in Philadelphia, two programs at the Mostly Mozart Festival at New York's Lincoln Center, as well as recitals in Boston and Washington DC.
An avid chamber musician, Jeremy Denk has collaborated with the Borromeo, Brentano, Mirò, St. Lawrence, Shanghai and Vermeer string quartets. Mr. Denk first performed with violinist Joshua Bell at the 2004 Spoleto Festival. Since then, they have toured throughout the United States in and Europe with almost eighty performances to date. The Philadelphia reviewer noted their "equal partnership, with no upstaging." He has appeared with the Detroit Chamber Music Society, at the Seattle and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festivals and the Spoleto Festivals in Italy and Charleston. The pianist spent several summers at Marlboro in Vermont and has been part of "Musicians from Marlboro" national tours. He also attended the Ravinia Festival's prestigious Steans Institute.
Jeremy Denk has an extensive discography which includes the Tobias Picker Second Piano Concerto with the Moscow Philarmonic; works of Schubert, Bartok, and Strauss with violinist Soovin Kim; the Kirchner Duo with violinist Ida Levin (commemorating Marlboro's 50th anniversary); and many others. He looks forward to the release of his first solo disc featuring Bach Partitas. Additionally, Joshua Bell and he will record the Corigliano Violin Sonata in June 2007.
Mr. Denk is a member of the faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. He received a double degree in Chemistry and Piano Performance from the Oberlin College and Conservatory, often infuriating his teacher Joseph Schwartz. He earned a master's degree in music from Indiana University as a pupil of György Sebök, and a doctorate in piano performance from the Juilliard School, where he worked with Herbert Stessin. He makes his home in New York City.
Critical Acclaim
"Mr. Denk increasingly seems one of the most essential American pianists of the current generation."
--Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, Feb. 13, 2011
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Richard Clement |
Richard Clement, tenor
performing July 13th and 17th
Richard Clement studied voice at Georgia State University and at the Cincinnati Conservatory. He was a Tanglewood Music Festival Fellow in 1990 and 1991, a member of the Houston Grand Opera Studio in the 1991–92 season, and the winner of a 1994 Richard Tucker Music Foundation Jacobson Study Grant. He made his New York City Opera debut as Tamino in The Magic Flute during the 1997–98 season, and his other engagements have included the Vancouver Opera and the Boston Lyric Opera, as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Fenton in Falstaff, Little Bat McLean in Susannah, and Nanki-Poo in The Mikado. In concert in North America, he has sung Mao Tse-tung in John Adams’s Nixon in China (with the Brooklyn Philharmonic conducted by Robert Spano) and Pedrillo in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (with the New York Philharmonic under Sir Colin Davis). He has also appeared with premier orchestras throughout the United States under such conductors as Charles Dutoit, Christopher Hogwood, Neeme Järvi, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Robert Shaw, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Hugh Wolff. Abroad he has sung in Bach’s Mass in B minor with Seiji Ozawa at Japan’s Saito Kinen Festival, and in Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht and Symphony no. 2 (Lobgesang) with Kurt Masur and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
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Clayton Brainerd, Baritone |
Clayton Brainerd, baritone
performing July 17th
This Portland, Oregon born, award-winning baritone has amassed a wonderful list of accolades and successes in the last decade singing leading roles with the major orchestras and opera companies of the world under the baton of conductors including Seiji Ozawa, Micheal Tilson Thomas, Charles Dutoit, Robert Shaw, Gerard Schwarz, Jeffery Tate, Jesus Lopez-Cobos and Christophe von Dohnanyi. His imposing stage presence and magnificent voice have electrified audiences in Europe, New Zealand, Canada, North and South America, Korea and Japan.
Highlights of the past few seasons include the Mahler 8th Symphony, Missa Solemnis, Mozart Requiem, and Beethoven Ninth Symphony with the Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz conducting; Les Troyens at Tanglewood with James Levine, Oedipus Rex with the Boston Symphony under the direction of von Dohnanyi, Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg at the Metropolitan Opera, and the American Premier of the opera Sophie's Choice by Nicholas Maw at the Washington Opera.
Other notable engagements include performances with Seattle Symphony and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has sung Elijah with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the War Requiem in Anchorage, Alaska, and Messiah with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. Additionally, Mr. Brainerd sang Wotan in Siegfried with New Orleans Opera, and covered Wotan in five complete Ring Cycles with Scottish Opera. In the spring and summer of 2005, he performed the role of Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with Berkeley Opera. Of these performances, San Francisco Classical Voice wrote, “His baritone is beautiful, firm, resonant, well-controlled at all dynamic levels, smoothly-produced and expressive, as is his stage manner. He brought out all of Sachs’s nobility, wisdom and experience in his scenes with the guild and Walther. He was touching and vulnerable with Eva and sly as he trapped Beckmesser.”
In the 2003-2004 season, Mr. Brainerd sang the role of Amonasro with the Scottish Opera, and covered all performances of Gunther in Götterdämmerung at the Met. During the 2001/2002-season Mr. Brainerd sang Wotan in Die Walküre at the Scottish Opera’s second installment of their internationally acclaimed Ring Cycle where was awarded the coveted “Herald Angel Award” from the Edinburgh Festival, naming him as one of the most outstanding performers at the festival. “Clayton Brainerd joined the cast during the run to take over as Wotan. He was magnificent. Mr. Brainerd, with his soft vocal textures, strong but gentle demeanor and expressive intelligence, sang of wisdom being gained through uncertainty and defeat.” (The New York Times,September 4, 2001.)
In the fall of 2002, he resumed work on the Ring in Scotland with Siegfried, which culminated in a complete Ring Cycle in the summer of 2003. In June 2001, Mr. Brainerd made his debut at the Paris Opera (Bastille) singing performances of La Damnation de Faust with Seiji Ozawa on the podium. In October 2001 in Madrid, Mr. Brainerd sang the title role in performances of a newly discovered opera Merlin by Isaac Albéniz. The season ended with another production of Die Walküre with the New Orleans Opera and performances of Messiah at Carnegie Hall.
Mr. Brainerd's versatility encompasses not only the Wagnerian repertoire of Wotan, The Wanderer, and Gunther in The Ringand the title role of Flying Dutchman, but also many roles in the Italian and French operatic repertoire, including Scarpia in Tosca, Villains in Hoffman, Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande and Mephistopheles in The Damnation of Faust. Mr. Brainerd is also in great demand as a concert artist throughout the world singing a vast repertoire from the Baroque to Modern.
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Katie Bolding, Soprano |
Katie Bolding, soprano
performing July 17th
Katie began her career as a blues and rock singer. For five years she was lead singer and rhythm guitarist for a midwestern blues-rock band. The experience of being center-stage for three hours every night helped her prepare for a career in the opera world.
In 2004, at the urging of her former voice teacher, soprano Mary Jane Johnson, Katie made the switch to opera and pursued a graduate degree in opera performance at New York’s SUNY-Purchase Conservatory, where she studied with Bonnie Hamilton.
In 2007, Katie moved to Dallas, TX, and began singing with the Dallas Opera Chorus. This year, she was accepted into The Metropolitan Opera chorus, where she will sing her first production in 2010. She makes her professional debut in 2011 with The Dallas Opera in the world-renowned Winspear Opera House. She will sing the role of Countess Ceprano in Verdi’s Rigoletto. Additional upcoming performances include Beethoven’s Fidelio (Marzelline) with the Bellingham Festival of Music in Washington and a concert version of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (Euridice) with Cantus Caelestis in Dallas. Katie returns to Taos, NM this spring to participate in a Taos Opera Institute concert along- side her mentor and former teacher Mary Jane Johnson. This summer Katie will spend three weeks in intensive study in Virginia as part of the International Vocal Arts Institute, under the direction of Ms. Joan Dornemann.
She has appeared as Madame Goldentrill in Mozart’s Impresario, Susanna in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, Natalie in Lehar's The Merry Widow, Drusilla in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, and Filia in a staged version of Carissimi's oratorio Jephte. Additional solo performances include Faure’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Handel’s Chandos Anthems, and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. She is a member of the Dallas Opera Chorus and the Metropolitan Opera Chorus, and has performed as a soloist with the Dallas Symphony and the Northeast Orchestra. Katie has been a finalist in various vocal competitions, including the Jenny Lind, Shreveport Opera Singer of the Year, Joy in Singing – NYC, Coeur d’Alene Symphony, Young Texas Artists, NATS, The Wednesday Morning Music Club of Austin, Texas, and The Dallas Opera Guild, where she won the “Audience Choice” award in 2010. Katie has performed at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts with the Joy in Singing foundation and recently traveled to New Mexico with the Taos Opera Institute where she sang 10 concerts as a member of the TOI Cantos Quartet.
Katie has performed as a concert soloist in Italy, Germany and Austria with Operafestival di Roma, the Neil Semer Vocal Institute, and as part of a small touring choir. In Dallas, she studies with Nancy Elledge and works frequently with coaches Martha Gerhart and Alexander Rom. Along with New York-based contralto Heather Petrie, she is co-founder of the vocal duo Cantus Caelestis, which performs sacred music concerts in church venues in Dallas, Connecticut and New York.
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W. Dwight Coleman, Baritone |
W. Dwight Coleman, baritone
performing July 17th
W. Dwight Coleman is currently director of the School of Music at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He is the general/stage director of the nationally recognized Harrower Summer Opera Workshop and resident stage director of the La Musica Lirica Summer Opera Festival in Italy. He has degrees from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Northwestern University.
Maintaining an active performing career in opera, recital and oratorio, Mr. Coleman has performed leading and secondary baritone roles with the Atlanta Opera, Pensacola Opera, New Orleans Opera, Teatro di Verdi in Busseto, Italy, Skylite Opera, Shreveport Opera, Mississippi Opera, North Carolina Symphony and Milwaukee Symphony. His roles include: Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Dr. Falke in Die Fledermaus, Silvio in I Pagliacci, Valentin in Faust, Germont in La traviata, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, Ping in Turandot, Peter in Hansel and Gretel, Ford in Falstaff and others. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1992 in Ein Deutches Requiem by Brahms and in 1994 he was featured at Avery Fischer Hall in Lincoln Center as baritone soloist in Five Mystical Songs by Vaughan Williams. Other performances include Chanson Madecasses by Ravel with the Musica da Camera in Atlanta; Eight Songs on text by Walt Whitman by Ned Rorem and "I remember long ago" from The Great Gatbsy by John Harbison, with the composers in attendance; Elijah with the Pensacola Symphony and Choral Society; premier performances of Waltzing Through the Endtime with the Atlanta Chamber Players, acclaimed as one of the top three classical performances in Atlanta 2005, and Beethoven's Ninth with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra. In 2008 he premiered First Rain by Nick Demos with the Aris Piano Quartet at the Dimitira International Festival in Thessaloniki, Greece.
His awards include: Regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in Chicago; Shreveport Opera Singer of the Year; Finalist in the Bel Canto Foundation competition in Italian Opera; winner of the National Opera Association's Opera Production Competition for his production of The Saint of Bleecker Street; winner of the Pro Mozart Society competition to study at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria with Grace Bumbry and Kerstin Meyer; and a Bel Canto grant to study in Busseto, Italy with Carlo Bergonzi and Renata Tebaldi. At Georgia State University, he received the 2000 Torch of Peace Award for promotion of racial harmony; the 2005 Sparks Award, for dedication to service; and the 2007 College of Arts and Science Outstanding Teacher Award. He received a Loridan's Arts Medal in 2009 for his contributions to the arts in Atlanta.
As a recitalist, Derrick Henry, former critic for the Atlanta Journal Constitution stated: "He grabbed one's attention immediately with his imposing, resonate voice and his theatrical manner. What made his recital special was the ability to make a listener identify with the texts' protagonists, to feel their joys and sorrows."
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Mary Jane Johnson |
Mary Jane Johnson, soprano
performing July 17th
Mary Jane Johnson is a regular guest of the world’s most important opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Paris Opéra Bastille, Teatro alla Scala, the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, the San Francisco, Netherlands, Washington, Pittsburgh and Montreal Operas as well as the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Houston Grand Opera, and the Vancouver Opera. Roles for which she has earned acclaim include Emilia Marty in Janacek’s The Makropoulos Case, Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s Macbeth, Katarina Ismailova in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and the title roles in Strauss’ Salome and Elektra, title roles in Turandot and Tosca, and Minnie in La Fanciulla del West, the last of which she has performed at the Teatro Comunale, the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, on tour in Japan with La Scala and with the Santa Fe Opera Festival.
Mary Jane Johnson first achieved international recognition in 1986 as the first winner of the annual “Pavarotti Competition” which led to televised performances with the great tenor in Puccini’s La Bohème with the Opera Company of Philadelphia.
Notable recent engagements include performances with The Atlanta Opera as Senta and The Dallas Opera as the Witch in Hansel und Gretel, Dallas Opera as Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Die Walküre with the Deutsche Opera am Rhein, Turandot and La Fanciulla del West for the Arizona Opera; Emilia Marty in The Makropoulos Case in Prague; Minnie in La Fanciulla del West in Palm Beach, title role in Strauss’ Elektra with the New Israeli Opera and the Santa Fe Opera, Schönberg’s one-woman expressionist opera, Erwartung and Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer for Vancouver Opera, and La Fanciulla del West in Arizona. On the concert stage, Ms. Johnson has appeared as Leonore in Fidelio with the Pittsburgh Symphony under Lorin Maazel, both in Pittsburgh and at Carnegie Hall, and Freia in Das Rheingold with the Chicago Symphony orchestra under the baton of Sir George Solti. Other distinguished orchestral appearances include concerts in Naples with the RAI Orchestra and in San Francisco with the San Francisco Symphony, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in St. Pölten, Austria, Honolulu Symphony, and with the Amarillo Symphony in Texas.
A charismatic personality, Ms. Johnson has appeared in the nationally televised Pavarotti Plus Gala, Live from Lincoln Center and was featured on CBS Sunday Morning. She lives in Amarillo, Texas, with her husband and two children.
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Jeffery Springer, Tenor |
Jeffrey Springer, tenor
performing July 17th
Dramatic tenor Jeffrey Springer has performed to popular acclaim across Europe and North America in theaters such as the Chicago Lyric Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Michigan Opera Theater, Cincinnati Opera, Arizona Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Manitoba Opera, as well as the German National Theater in Mannheim, Krefeld, Mönchengladbach, and Magdeburg in Germany, National Touring Opera of the Netherlands, Opéra de Nantes in France, and Spain's Teatro de Navarra, among many others.
On the concert stage, Mr. Springer has appeared with leading orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Flagstaff Symphony, The Grand Teton's Music Festival, Kentucky Symphony, Tulsa Philharmonic, Philharmonia Hungaria and Romanian State Symphony. Most recently he performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Japan with the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn, Germany, and in the United States with the Milwaukee, Nashville, Indianapolis, and Green Bay Symphony Orchestras. He has also performed the Verdi Requiem with West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and the Florida Orchestra and a solo concert of Wagner Arias with the Houston Symphony and Chorus.
Operatic engagements over the past two seasons included Tristan in Tristan und Isolde at Lyric Opera of Chicago under Sir Andrew Davis, the title role of Samson in Samson & Dalila with the Dublin International Opera Festival and at Bob Jones University, Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana with the former Orlando Opera, Max in Der Freischutz with Des Moines Metro Opera, Macduff in Macbeth at Opera Santa Barbara and the Fresno Grand Opera, Manrico in Il Trovatore at Opera Naples and in concert with the Westfield Symphony, and Calaf in Turandot in concert with South Dakota Symphony.
In the 2009-2010 season, he performs Calaf in Turandot at Opera Lyra Ottawa, Florestan in Fidelio in concert with the Dayton Opera, Don Jose in Carmen at Opera Naples, Radames in a concert performance Aida with the Bridgeport Symphony, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at the Roanoke Symphony, and takes part in Dayton Philharmonic’s “Classical Connections” concert.
Mr. Springer was honored as being one of this generation’s Emerging Wagner Artists by the famous duo, Thomas Stewart and Evelyn Lear, and the Washington DC Wagner Society. In addition, he is the winner of the Concours International de Chant de Festival Atlantique in Nantes, France, the José Carreras Prize in Pamplona, Spain, and the Third Prize in the Concours International de Chant in Toulouse, France. He is also a grant recipient from the New York City Wagner Society and from the prestigious Gerda Lissner Foundation in New York.
Mr. Springer has recorded Jerre Tanner's Naupaka Floret with the Moravian Philharmonic, (Jiri Mikula, Cond.) for the Music from Six Continents Series, Vienna Modern Masters. A graduate of Indiana University, Jeffrey Springer moved into the tenor repertoire under the instruction of the legendary heldentenor, James King.
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Gary Jankowski, Bass |
Gary Jankowski, bass
performing July 17th
Bass Gary Jankowski, a native of Seattle, studied Voice at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington before entering the graduate program in Voice at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. In the USA, he has appeared in the opera houses of Chicago, Milwaukee, Orlando, Indianapolis, San José and Cincinnati, as Sarastro, Osmin, the Commendatore, and as Colline in La Bohème. In 1995, he moved to Germany, and engagements in Nuremberg, Schwerin, Rostock, Halle/Saale and Freiburg followed, with festival appearances at the Händel-Festspiele Halle, the Festival Castell de Peralada and in Donostia/San Sebastian, among others, in addition to guest appearances in Leipzig, Bremen, Kiel, Görlitz and Lübeck. His most important roles in Europe have been Hagen in Götterdämmerung, König Marke in Tristan und Isolde, Baron Ochs von Lerchenau in Der Rosenkavalier, Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra, Osmin in Entführung aus dem Serail, and Freiherr von Mordax in the award-winning world premiere production of Detlev Glanert's Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung, while working with such notable conductors as Jacques Delacôte, Miltiades Caridis, Michail Jurowski, Klaus Weise, Eckehard Stier, Fabrice Bollon, Joseph Rescigno, Bryan Balkwill, Gerhard Markson, Stefan Malzew, Roman Brogli-Sacher, and Rolf Reuter. Most recently he has appeared as Hagen in productions of Götterdämmerung in Lübeck and Freiburg. Future appearances include Fafner in Siegfried with Den Nye Opera Bergen, Fafner in Das Rheingold with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, Heinrich der Vogler in Lohengrin in Freiburg, as well as both Fafners, Hunding and Hagen in the Freiburg Ring des Nibelungen.
As a concert singer, he has appeared with, among others, the Chautauqua and Cedar Rapids symphony orchestras, the Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg, the Neubrandenburger Philharmonie, the Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle, and the Crue Consort. Of particular note was a program of baroque solo cantatas with organ under the sponsorship of the German Consulate San Francisco.
Among the highpoints of his activity as a recitalist was his collaboration with pianist Gabriel Dobner in Schubert's Die Winterreise presented at numerous venues in the USA und Europe. Other interests include cinema, reading and travel.