“POETS, PROPHETS AND QUEENS”
AN EVENING OF AMERICAN SONG
PRESENTED BY THE NEW YORK SINGING TEACHERS ASSOCIATION
AND
THE LOTTE LEHMANN FOUNDATION
Friday, April 20, 2007, 7:30 pm
Yamaha Showroom
689 Fifth Avenue, NYC
An outstanding quartet of young singers will perform a program entitled Poets Prophets and Queens, on Friday, April 20 at the Yamaha Showroom, located at 689 Fifth Avenue. The evening features recent American songs by acclaimed composers John Corigliano, Daron Hagen, Lee Hoiby, and Libby Larsen and emerging composers Scott Gendel, Mark Buntag and Michael Djupstrom. This concert is co-presentated by two non-profit organizations devoted to promoting American song, the New York Singing Teachers Association, Inc. and the Lotte Lehmann Foundation.
Repertoire for this concert reflects some of the most exciting recent vocal work by major American composers and illustrates the powerful eloquence of music and text embodied in the art song. Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man, based on lyrics by Bob Dylan, forces the listener to reexamine this unforgettable poetry in an entirely new light. Several of the Corigliano songs address the subject of war, as does Lee Hoiby’s beautifully unadorned setting Private Jesse Givens, a letter written by a soldier to his family shortly before his death in Iraq. Libby Larsen’s Try Me, Good King: Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII also offers first-person narrative in the face of death, in a cycle packed with high drama and emotion. Opening this program is a set of songs by Mr. Hoiby, Leonard Bernstein and Chris de Blasio on poetry of Walt Whitman. Daron Hagen’s moving setting of Holy Thursday, a poem by Paul Muldoon, will also be heard.
Along with these well-known composers, the concert features songs by three winners of the 2005 ASCAP/Lotte Lehmann Foundation Song Cycle Competition, all under thirty years old: first prize winner, Scott Gendel, Damine prize winner Eli Marshall and third prize winner Michael Djupstrom. Gendel, whose output includes over twenty vocal works, is represented by his cycle Violi Songs, a fine addition to the song repertoire based on the fresh and funny poetry of Paul Violi, and his “remixes” of two 18th century Italian songs. Gendel, as the competition’s first prize winner, was commissioned to write a song cycle and the resulting work, The Space Between was premiered by the Joy of Singing on February 24th this year. The second and third prize winners are each commissioned to write a song, and Marshall’s Infini , on a poem of Andrée Brunin and Djupstom’s I Would Live in Your Love on a poem by Sara Teasdale, will be performed on this concert.
The singers are sopranos Deborah Lifton and Amy Synatzke Blake, tenor Matthew Garret, and baritone Jesse Blumburg, all of whom are gifted artists with rising careers. Ms. Lifton, who will sing the Larsen songs, performs many concerts in the New York area, has appeared in several operatic and orchestral performances at the Aspen Music Festival and can be heard on Albany Records CD of A Death in the Family. Soprano Amy Syntazke Blake, who tackles the Corigliano, has appeared as Pamina and Nedda at the Natchez Opera, has covered several leading roles at the the Caramoor Festival, and appears regularly with the Goliard Chamber Ensemble. Matthew Garrett, who performs this season with Houston Grand Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Connecticut Concert Opera, Opera Orchestra of New York, the Oratorio Society of New York, and the Basel Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, will sing Gendel’s cycle. The Whitman set and Mr. Hoiby’s Private Jesse Givens are performed by baritone Jesse Blumberg, who appears this season in the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon's opera The Grapes of Wrath at The Minnesota Opera, in the title role in Monteverdi's The Return of Ulysses with Opera Vivente in Baltimore and with American Bach Soloists in the San Francisco Bay area.
Collaborative pianists in this event are of equally high caliber: the credits of Charis Dimaris, who plays Larsen and Gendel, includes the Salzburg Mozarteum International summer concerts, Brighton and Newcastle International Chamber Music Festivals, University Sacaellum, Amsterdam Concertgebouw Hall, Holland Music Sessions and many New York City concerts. Jocelyn Dueck, who performs the Corigliano and Whitman sets and the Hoiby, is heard frequently in contemporary music in New York, and has performed internationally at the Cloître du Monastére de Cimiez in Nice, the Konzertsaal der Hochschule für Künste in Bremen, and as soloist on NPR’s Talking Volumes.
The New York Singing Teachers Association, Inc. (NYSTA) was founded in 1906 and celebrated its centenary last year. One of the leading pedagogical organizations in the U.S., NYSTA presents a full season of lectures, symposiums, and master classes, and an ongoing Professional Development Program offering extensive courses in vocal pedagogy. A commitment to singing in English was one of the organization’s founding tenets, and remains an important focus today.
The Lotte Lehmann Foundation was founded in 1997 with the dual mission of preserving and perpetuating Lotte Lehmann's legacy, and to honor her dream of bringing art song into the lives of as many people as possible. The Foundation sponsors two major music competitions: CyberSing, an Internet-based international Art Song Performance Competition for singers and pianists, takes place in even-numbered years; the ASCAP / Lotte Lehmann Foundation Song Cycle Competition, a major national composition prize funded by Board Member Margo Garrett, is held in odd-numbered years.
The Yamaha Showroom is located at 689 Fifth Avenue, with its entrance on 54th Street just East of Fifth Avenue. Tickets for the concerts are free to NYSTA members, $20 for the general public and $10 for students and seniors, and can be reserved at www.nyst.org.
