Artists
HERSCHEL GARFEIN is a two-time Grammy Award-winning composer, librettist and stage director. He is the composer/librettist of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, the first-ever operatic adaptation of a play by Tom Stoppard (excerpts: Fort Worth Opera Frontiers 2014; piano-vocal premiere: The Seagle Colony 2017). Of the Fort Worth performance, the Wall Street Journal wrote, "Garfein set the diamond-bright dialogue of the Tom Stoppard play with clarity and wit, heightening the comedy through skillful ensemble writing and characterization."
Recent work includes The Layers for cellist Sophie Shao, to premiere in 2022; King of the River for baritone Keith Phares and American Modern Ensemble (“…a marvelous piece of descriptive modernism. Garfein…has made a tremendous contribution to the relatively sparse repertoire for solo voice with orchestra”); The Luminous Particular for soprano Marnie Breckenridge and Brooklyn Art Song Society; the libretto for Robert Aldridge's opera Sister Carrie (Florentine Opera, Milwaukee) released on Naxos Records in 2017; stage direction and English dialogue for Mozart's The Magic Flute for Eklund Opera, University of Colorado; script and direction of the jazz-theater piece My Coma Dreams for composer Fred Hersch (Palmetto DVD; Boston Globe's Best of 2014).
Career highlights: Mythologies (music and lyrics) the landmark dance triptych for The Mark Morris Dance Group; Sueños (composer, co-lyricist) for Mabou Mines; American Steel for the Alabama Symphony; incidental music for Troilus & Cressida directed by Sir Peter Hall; Alzheimer's Stories (libretto) for Robert S. Cohen and Parables (libretto) for Aldridge.
Recordings include: The Brooklyn Art Song Society: New Voices (Roven Records) and Innocence/ Experience (GPR Records), mezzo Jennifer Rivera's solo disk which features his William Blake song cycle The Divine Image.
He received a 2012 Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for his "wildly operatic libretto" (BBC Music Magazine) for Aldridge's Elmer Gantry, and received a 2016 Grammy as Producer of Ted Nash's Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom.
DONALD HALL was born in Hamden, Connecticut, in 1928. He has published poems, essays, short stories, memoirs, plays, biographies, textbooks, and children's books. The Selected Poems of Donald Hall, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, came out in December 2015, which had issued Essays After Eighty a year earlier. His children's book The Ox-Cart Man won the Caldecott Award for 1980. In 2006, Hall was appointed the Library of Congress's fourteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, and in March 2011 President Obama awarded him the 2010 National Medal of Arts. He makes his home in Wilmot, New Hampshire. In 2018 he brings out A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety.
JANE KENYON was born in 1947 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1970 and in 1972 married the poet Donald Hall, with whom she moved to Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire in 1975. She published four books of poetry: From Room to Room in 1978, The Boat of Quiet Hours in 1986, Let Evening Come in 1990, and Constance in 1993. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In December 1993 she and her husband were the subject of an Emmy Award-winning documentary by Bill Moyers, called A Life Together. She died of leukemia in 1995. Her Collected Poems appeared in 2005.
MICHAEL SLATTERY has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, the French National Orchestra in Paris, the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's at Carnegie Hall.
Career highlights include the Tristan Project (Lincoln Center), the title roles in Candide (Royal Festival Hall) and L'Orfeo (Théâtre du Châtelet, Glimmerglass), and leading roles at the Berlin Staatsoper, Opéra de Lyon, and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, among others.
Mr. Slattery debuted with the New York Philharmonic in the Britten Serenade, returning the following season for Handel's Messiah. Other notable appearances include the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Houston Symphony, New World Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, and the Edinburgh and Spoleto Festivals.
Mr. Slattery's solo recordings include The Irish Heart and a collaboration with Montreal chamber ensemble LaNef entitled Dowland in Dublin, chosen by Opera News as a Best of the Year for 2012. Their next album, The People's Purcell, was released in January 2018.
Pianist DIMITRI DOVER has performed as recitalist and chamber musician in venues such as New York's Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and Park Avenue Armory, as well as Zipper Hall (Los Angeles), Segerstrom Hall (Orange County), and throughout the United States, Canada, and Austria. Recent appearances in the New York area include Brooklyn Art Song Society, Chelsea Music Festival, Cutting Edge Concerts, Joy in Singing, Met Opera Rising Stars, and The Song Continues. Mr. Dover has performed in the composer's presence the works of Thomas Adès, Valerie Coleman, George Crumb, Herschel Garfein, Jake Heggie, Libby Larsen, John Musto, André Previn, Shulamit Ran, Kaija Saariaho, and Chris Theofanidis, among many others.
In 2016, Mr. Dover joined the music staff of The Metropolitan Opera, where he has served as assistant conductor for Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin and Adès's The Exterminating Angel, in which he also performed as piano soloist. He holds degrees from The Juilliard School, Peabody Conservatory, and Harvard University. He has also received summer fellowships from Tanglewood and Aspen, as well as Songfest at Colburn, where he returned as faculty coach in 2016. He is a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Program.
American soprano MARNIE BRECKENRIDGE is captivating international audiences with roles ranging from the Baroque and bel canto to modern opera, concerts and recordings. She has sung with the San Francisco Opera, the English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Prague State Opera, The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Arizona Opera, Opera Parallèle, and other US and European houses. She has also performed at Carnegie Hall, the Ravinia Music Festival, the Bard Music Festival, Teatro São Paulo, and National Sawdust, as well as with the San Francisco Symphony and Philharmonia Baroque. As a favored interpreter of living composers' music, her in-depth portrayals and excellent musicianship have established her as a go-to performer of critically acclaimed new works with her "lovely soprano" voice (The New York Times), and "lyrical poignancy and dramatic power" (The Chicago Tribune). Recent favorite roles include Mother in Little's Dog Days, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, Gilda in Rigoletto, La Princesse in Glass's Orphée, Sierva Maria in Peter Eötvös' Love And Other Demons, Emily in Ned Rorem's Our Town, Margarita Xirgu in Golijov's Ainadamar, the title role in Milhaud's Médée, and Cunegonde in Candide, deemed "simply terrific" (Opera Magazine UK) and "note perfect" (Prague Post). Breckenridge is a featured soloist on the 2012 New World Records' album of Victor Herbert songs, and can be heard on Dimitri Hvorostovsky's Heroes and Villains, (a Delos recording), Vocal Music of David Conte, Dog Days (Little) and countless other recordings by American composers. She trained at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in voice (MM) and at The American Conservatory Theatre in drama.
For over 20 years, in repertoire spanning from the Baroque through the present day, Keith Phares has appeared in leading roles with Washington National Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Seattle Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, São Paolo Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and elsewhere; in collaboration with Hal Prince, Francesca Zambello, Frank Corsaro, Richard Hickox, Marin Alsop, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Thomas Allen, among others; and in recital with the Marilyn Horne Foundation, WordSong, Illuminarts, LyricFest and Brooklyn Art Song Society.
An ardent exponent of contemporary American opera, Phares created the role of Ty in Kuster's Campbell's A Thousand Acres with Des Moines Metro Opera - the company's first-ever commission in celebration of their 50th anniversary in the summer of 2022. He sang Kynaston on the Grammy-nominated recording of Carlisle Floyd's Prince of Players, Charlie in the premiere and recording of Heggie's and Scheer's Three Decembers with Houston Grand Opera and San Francisco Opera, the Father in the premiere and recording of Spears's and Walat's Paul's Case, Dr. Ludwig Binswanger in the premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon's Ellen West, Hurstwood in the premiere of Aldridge's and Garfein's Sister Carrie and the title role in the premiere and live, Grammy-winning recording of Aldridge's and Garfein's Elmer Gantry.
Keith Phares is an Assistant Professor of Voice at BGSU.
Andrew Garland has performed recitals at Carnegie Hall, the New York Festival of Song, the Ravinia festival, Vocal Arts DC, Marilyn Horne Foundation, The Bard Festival, The Cleveland Art Song Festival, Camerata Pacifica, Andre-Turp Society Montreal, Voce at Pace, Huntsville Chamber Music Guild, Fanfare in Hammond, LA, Cincinnati Matinee Musicale, Cincinnati Song Initiative, Tuesday Morning Music Club, Vocal Arts DC, college campuses around North America, and venues in Italy, Croatia, Greece and Turkey.
He has premiered works by Jake Heggie, William Bolcom, Stephen Paulus, Steven Mark Kohn, Eric Nathan, Lee Hoiby, Tom Cipullo, Thomas Pasatieri, and Gabriela Frank. This season he released his seventh Album: El Rebelde: Gabriela Frank and Dmitri Shostakovich.
He has performed in concert with the Atlanta Symphony, Boston Baroque, Handel and Haydn, Boston Youth Symphony, National Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Washington Master Chorale at the Kennedy Center, National Chorale at Lincoln Center, Colorado Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Houston Symphony, UMS Ann Arbor, Seoul, Korea, and with the Takács, Dover, Amernet, and Deadalus String Quartets. He has performed leading opera roles at Seattle Opera, New York City Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Cincinnati Opera, Minnesota Opera, Arizona Opera, Hawai'i Opera Theatre, Opera Colorado, Boston Lyric, Dayton, Fort Worth Opera, The Bard Festival, Opera Saratoga, and others. Garland is a member of the voice faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is a mentor with Bel Canto Boot Camp and is the 2003 Gold Medal Winner of the American Traditions Competition.
Andrew (Andy) bicycles year-round and for the past 30 years has raised funds for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute through the Pan Mass Challenge.
Hailed for his "wonderfully warm, pliant, spontaneous playing" by the Washington Post, award winning pianist David Korevaar is in demand as a soloist, chamber musician and collaborator. Korevaar has performed and given master classes throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Central and South America. Recent highlights include recitals and master classes in Taipei, and a tour of Brazil. He has also concertized and given master classes in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan as part of the U.S. State Department's Cultural Envoy program and taught at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) in Kabul.
Korevaar's active career includes solo performances with the Rochester Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, Japan's Shonan Chamber Orchestra, Brazil's Goiania Symphony, and with acclaimed conductors Guillermo Figueroa, Per Brevig, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and Jorge Mester. His performance of John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Paul Zukofsky was praised by the New York Times "as admirably projected in the devoted and lovely performance of David Korevaar." David was honored to work with Cage to prepare the concerto.
A passionate and committed collaborator, Korevaar is a founding member of the Boulder Piano Quartet, currently in residence at The Academy in Boulder, for which he curates a chamber music series. He performs regularly with the Takács Quartet, and recently appeared with them on the Great Performers Series at New York's Lincoln Center.
Korevaar's most recent addition to his extensive discography of nearly 40 titles is a highly acclaimed disc of world premiere recordings of piano music by the largely forgotten Italian impressionist composer Luigi Perrachio. Other recent releases include two recordings with violinist Charles Wetherbee, including works by Iranian-American composer Reza Vali issued on MSR, and a Naxos disc of the three violin sonatas by Russian/German composer Paul Juon. Forthcoing is a recording of Richard Danielpour's The Celestial Circus for two pianos and three percussionists with pianist Angelina Gadeliya.
Balancing an active performing schedule along with teaching at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Korevaar is a Distinguished Professor, only the second to bear that title in the College of Music and holds the Peter and Helen Weil fellowship in piano. He was also honored by the University in 2016 as a Distinguished Research Lecturer, a first in the College of Music.
He is a Shigeru Kawai artist.