Joseph Summer
Study
Composer Joseph Summer began playing French horn at the age of seven. While attending the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina at age fourteen he studied composition with the eminent Czech composer Karel Husa. At age 15 he was accepted at Oberlin Conservatory, studied with Richard Hoffmann, Schönberg’s amanuensis, and graduated with a BM in Music Composition in 1976. Recruited by Robert Page, Dean of the Music Department at Carnegie Mellon University, Joseph taught music theory at CMU before leaving to pursue composition full time.
Composition
For the next twenty years Joseph Summer concentrated his efforts composing a series of comic operas based on the bawdy stories of Boccaccio’s The Decameron. These consist of four completed works: And The Dead Shall Walk The Earth; Courting Disaster; Their Fate In The Hands Of The Friar; and Gianetta. The fifth in a projected cycle of seven: Also Known As is currently in progress.
Summer is currently composing his ever expanding collection of settings of the bard’s ever living texts, which he titles The Oxford Songs, (titled thus due to Summer’s support of Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the likely identity of the author also known as William Shakespeare.) In addition to the individual scenes, sonnets, and songs from Shakespeare in The Oxford Songs, Summer completed the opera Hamlet, in 2006 and The Tempest in 2013.
The Shakespeare Concerts
Summer is best known for The Oxford Songs, his artistic leadership of The Shakespeare Concerts and the many CDs dedicated to his music on Albany and Navona Records. What a Piece of Work Is Man, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day, So Many Journeys, (published by Albany Records,) and Shakespeare’s Memory (published by Navona Records) are four recordings consisting entirely of Summer’s own compositions. Grammy nominated (2014) The Fair Ophelia, a collection of settings of Ophelia songs by various composers includes four of Summer’s compositions alongside those of Brahms, Strauss, and Schumann (published by Navona records.) The Garden of Forking Paths (published by Albany) is a recording of Summer’s string quartet based on short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. Released October 14th, 2014: Goddesses is the latest recorded collection consisting solely of Summer’s Shakespeare settings (also published by Navona.) More recent releases of Summer’s music include Orpheus With His Lute Made Trees and Full Fathom Five (both on Navona). In April 2015, Summer’s opera The Tempest was premiered in Somerville, Massachusetts; and subsequently recorded for release (on Albany records.) The Dance of the Mechanics, a string quintet, has just been released on Centaur Records along with the world premiere recording of Erich Korngold’s newly discovered string quartet Much Ado About Nothing. Upcoming releases (for 2017) include Fleeting Realms (with settings by Summer from Hamlet) and No Enemy But Winter and Rough Weather (both for the Parma Recording company.)
Summer’s Works
Operas: The Tenor’s Suite; Hippolytus; And The Dead Shall Walk The Earth; Courting Disaster; Their Fate In The Hands Of The Friar; Gianetta; Hamlet;
The Tempest.
Vocal music with chamber accompaniment: The Oxford Songs (about 100 settings of Shakespeare and other English language poets for sundry ensembles)
Other music of note: The Garden of Forking Paths (string quartet); Dance of the Mechanics (string quintet); Sonata for cello and piano; The Silver Swan (horn concerto); The Dumb Show (piano sonata); and the recently finished Sea Change string quartets.
PERFORMERS
SangYoung Kim
Praised by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as a “Brilliant champion,” and by La Libre Belgique for her “poetic enchantment” and “epic performance,” internationally recognized pianist SangYoung Kim has gained attention through numerous competitions and performances throughout South Korea, North America, Europe, and Israel. In May 2013, Ms. Kim became a Laureate of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition.
Since her orchestra debut at age 9 with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Ms. Kim has appeared as a soloist with the Yewon Orchestra and won numerous prizes in Korea. After coming to the United States in 2002, Ms. Kim has continued to meet with succession in competitions such as the New England Conservatory Concerto Competition and the Heida Hermannes International Music Competition, San Marino International Piano Competition, and obtained not only the Gold Medal but also the Russian and Chopin etude Prizes from the Usasu Bösendorfer International Piano Competition. Other prizes include the highest honors from the both the Yewon Art School and the Seoul Art High School, and the Carol and Robert T. Henderson Presidential Scholarship from New England Conservatory.
Ms. Kim has appeared as soloist with the NEC Philhamonia Orchestra, Concord Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie in Belgium, and the National Orchestra of Belgium. Other featured performances include recitals at Chopin Hall, Kumho Gallery and Kumho Art Hall in Korea, Norris Cultural Center in Illinois, Williams Hall and Jordan Hall in Boston, Cleveland Play House Bolten Theater in Ohio, Eckhardt-Gramatte Hall and Roza Centre in Calgary, Canada, the Courchevel Music Festival and Music Academy of Villecrozein France, Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Belgium, and the Paderewski Piano Academy in Poland. In 2009, Ms. Kim was invited to the Kennedy Center in Washington. D.C to give a recital as the part of the Millennium Stage Concert series.
As a chamber music lover, Ms. Kim’s chamber performances have been frequently heard in Jordan Hall, Fraser Performance Studio at WGBH Radio, and Harvard University. Ms. Kim participated in an extensive tour of the Boston area, playing Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with other musicians including flutist Paula Robison as the narrator. She also collaborated with composer Michael Gandolfi in a performance of his Resin in Resonance (2008) which was broadcasted by WGBH. Recently, Ms. Kim’s commercial recordings of David Owens’ Piano Sonata for Two Pianos and of Joseph Summer’s “You May Think of Art” have been released by Albany Records in July 2014 and by Parma Recordings Company in February 2015.
After graduating from Seoul Art High School as a student of Kyung Sook Lee and Bon Hee Ku, Ms. Kim has studied at New England Conservatory under the guidance of Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She is currently pursuing a Doctoral of Musical Arts degree.
Kathryn Guthrie
Soprano Kathryn Guthrie is quickly becoming recognized as an artist of unusual artistic versatility, equally praised for her performances of the traditional classical repertoire and her sharp-witted interpretations of contemporary works. After debuting at New York City Opera in 2012 as Marie in folk-pop star Rufus Wainwright’s Prima Donna, Kathryn has since appeared with Mr. Wainwright twice at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and Madrid’s famed Teatro Real. Her 2013 Philadelphia premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ayre” with Astral Artists was praised by the Philadelphia Inquirer by saying, “No matter what she did, she still sounded like herself and maintained fierce dedication to the music’s inner meaning.”
A champion of new music, Kathryn enjoyed other performances with New York City Opera that included the VOX 2012 concert performing OsnatNetzer’s The Wondrous Woman Within, and the educational production of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland as the Cheshire Cat. She also recently premiered the workshop performance of Justine F. Chen and David Simpatico’sThe Turing Project as Sara Turing with American Lyric Theater.
Ms. Guthrie was a member of the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute Program for Singers and Glimmerglass Opera’s Young American Artists Program, where she performed as First Witch in Dido and Aeneas and covered Clorinda in La cenerentola. No stranger to musical theater, she has recently worked with Broadway conductor Patrick Vaccariello, performing in an Andrew Lloyd Webber/Rodgers & Hammerstein revue and a reading of the new musical The Ballad of Little Jo.
Ms. Guthrie is the recipient of awards from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Houston Grand Opera, Palm Beach Opera, the Fort Worth Opera, and AIMS Graz. She holds a Master of Music from the Peabody Conservatory, where she received the Phyllis Bryn-Julson Award for Contemporary Music, and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Connecticut.
John McGinn
Emeritus music director of The Shakespeare Concerts from 2003-08, composer/pianist John McGinn has performed throughout the United States and Europe and appeared on more than a dozen commercial recordings, including the first two The Shakespeare Concerts CDs (Albany), John Adams’ opera Nixon in China with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (Nonesuch), and a critically acclaimed solo album, The 20th Century Piano (AmCam). An assistant professor of theory and composition at Austin College in Sherman, TX, McGinn received his undergraduate music degree from Harvard University in 1986 and his doctorate in composition from Stanford University in 1999. He served as a lecturer at Stanford from 1999-2001 and also taught for a number of years at Clark University in Worcester, MA. In 2011, McGinn contributed a vocal setting “It’s a Letter” to A River of Words Song Cycle, a collaborative cycle commissioned by baritone Bruce Cain and guitarist David Asbury; upcoming performances include the Kennedy Center and the Library of Congress. Other recent premieres include Score for Score (2009) by the Inscape Chamber Orchestra of Bethesda, MD; A Tad Low Strung (2006) for viola and piano with violist Peter Sulski; Spit and Polish (2006) for horn and string quartet by hornist John Peiffer and KCO members at a Kennedy Center Millennium Stage concert; and a recording of The Clarinet in the Machine (2006) by the Gennusa Clarinet Camerata (MD). The latter work appears in the Anthology of Contemporary Concert Music 2011 edited by Chris Brubaker et al., available from thatnewmusicwebsite.com . As an arranger, McGinn has created piano reductions of several large-scale works including John Adams’ Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, Gnarly Buttons and Violin Concerto and Christopher Rouse’s Pulitzer-winning Trombone Concerto, all for publication by Boosey & Hawkes. His latest reduction, of Adams’ I was looking at the ceiling/and then I saw the sky, is slated for release in 2012.
Thea Lobo
Hailed as "excellent", "impeccable", "limpidly beautiful", "impressive", "stunning", and "Boston's best", Grammy-nominated mezzo-soprano Thea Lobo's 2017-18 season includes performances with the Northwest Florida Symphony, The Shakespeare Concerts, Artists Series of Sarasota, Harvard Musical Association, EnsembleNewSRQ, Peregrine Consort, and Naples Philharmonic. She has recently performed with Boston Symphony Orchestra, Sunshine City Opera, Machias Bay Chamber Concerts, Callithumpian Consort, and Guerilla Opera. Ms. Lobo has appeared under conductors Gunther Schuller, Harry Christophers, Stephen Stubbs, Joshua Rifkin, Martin Pearlman, and Andris Nelsons, and has been featured by the Firebird Ensemble, Boston Baroque, Handel + Haydn Society, Boston Early Music Festival, and Europäisches Musikfest Stuttgart. Her dedication to new music, art song, and early music has seen her featured on True Concord's 2016 Grammy winning recording of Stephen Paulus's 'Prayers & Remembrances', invited to the Carmel Bach Festival as an Adams Fellow, a prizewinner at the Bach Vocal Competition for American Singers, a grant recipient of the Julian Autrey Song Foundation, a winner of the St. Botolph Club Emerging Artist Award, creating the duo ‘Songeaters’ and archive ‘Indictus Project,' and performing as a soloist under the direction of composers Steve Reich, Fred Lerdahl, Christian Wolff, and Louis Andriessen. Thea Lobo is a graduate of New England Conservatory and Boston University, and represented by Vocal Artists Management.
Luke Grooms
Tennessee born Luke Grooms, is quickly earning a name for himself around the country as a leading tenor. ?In recent years Luke joined the Metropolitan Opera Roster covering in their production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler, and made his Carnegie Hall debut as Fante in Opera Orchestra of New York’s concert of Verdi’s I Due Foscari. He also covered the roles of Barbagio (I Due Foscari), Elvino (La Sonnambula), and Bomelii in Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, all with OONY at Carnegie Hall. Some of his other career highlights include Tonio, Rodolfo, Belmonte, Albert Herring, Riccardo Percy in Anna Bolena, Tebaldo, Des Griex, and Lindoro, taking him to companies such as The Baltimore Opera, Lyric Opera Baltimore, Glimmerglass Opera, New York City Opera, Opera in the Heights, Des Moines Metro Opera, Sarasota Opera, Chelsea Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Opera North, and many others.
Luke is equally at home in musical theater. He performed in the New York premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera, at Carnegie Hall, singing the dual roles of Dwight and God. Luke reprised these roles at Boston’s Speakeasy Stage Company in May of 2009. In March 2010, Luke joined the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera, in the role of Piangi, till its close.
Recent engagements include The Duke in Rigoletto with St. Petersburg Opera Company, Beadle Bamford in The Fulton Theatre’s production of Sweeney Todd, the title role in Mozart’s Mitridate with little Opera Theatre of New York, Ferrando in Cosi fan tutte with Opera Lancaster, Almaviva with Baltimore Lyric Opera’s educational tour, and Nemorino in L’Elisir d’amore at Mississippi Opera. He was recently nominated for an Elliot Norton award for his work in Jerry Springer at Speakeasy Stage Company. Mr. Grooms is the recipient of an encouragement award from The Mario Lanza Scholarship Competition, an encouragement from the West Tennessee Metropolitan National Council Auditions, and received an award from the Orpheus International Vocal Competition, and has been a semi-finalist at the Mobile Opera, Shreveport Opera, Annapolis Opera, and Palm Beach Opera competitions. He is also featured of the recording of Pasatieri’s Signor Deluso, in the role of Leon, available on Albany Records.
Ian Watson
Ian Watson is one of today’s most extraordinarily versatile and accomplished musicians. Described by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “a conductor of fomidable ability”, and by The Times in London as a keyboard performer with “virtuosic panache and brilliantly articulated playing” and “a world-class soloist.”, his versatility is revealed in the equal ease with which he performs the roles of orchestral conductor, choral director, organist, harpsichordist, pianist, teacher and public speaker.
Ian has appeared as soloist or conductor with the London Symphony, London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, BBC and London Concert Orchestras, City of London Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber, English Chamber, Polish Chamber, Irish Chamber and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestras, Bremen Philharmonic, Rhein-Main Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Handel and Haydn Society, Bach Society, Houston, English Baroque Soloists, and The Sixteen amongst many others. He has also been featured on more than 200 recordings and film soundtracks including Amadeus, Polanski’s Death and the Maiden, Restoration, Cry the Beloved Country, Voices from a Locked Room, and BBC‘s David Copperfield. In 2011/12 he directed concerts with the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston as well as the Bach Society Houston and appeared with Chicago’s Baroque Band . He has been invited back to direct all three in the 2012/13 season.
Kellie Van Horn
Mezzo-soprano Kellie Van Horn debuted with The Shakespeare Concerts in 2006 and has returned each season since then. Over the years she has premiered eight of Joseph Summer’s works either on stage or recording. She is featured on the title track of Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day and can also be heard on So Many Journeys, both released by AlbanyRecords. Since the Jordan Hall debut of The Shakespeare Concerts in 2007 Kellie has also presented Shakespearean settings by Berlioz, Korngold, Poulenc, and Stravinsky. This season she sings the premieres of Summer’s Sonnets III and CXVI.
Ms. Van Horn has sung with regional companies throughout the United States, including Sarasota Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Opera Theater of St. Louis, Opera Colorado, and Boston Midsummer Opera. Highlights among her operatic performances have been Charlotte (Werther) and Prince Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus) in Sarasota, the title role in Carmen with Commonwealth Opera (Northampton, MA), Hermia (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) in Des Moines, and Anne Lindbergh in the world premiere of Loss of Eden (Cary John Franklin) in St. Louis. She also sang the role of Dido to great critical acclaimin a semi-staged concert performance of Dido and Aeneus for the Miami-based chamber choir Seraphic Fire. Elsewhere on the concert stage, Kellie has an affinity for operetta and cross-over repertoire, having appeared with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano as the title role in La Périchole, Lois Lane in Kiss Me, Kate, and the Old Lady in Candide.
Paul Soper
This season baritone Paul Soper makes his first appearance with The Shakespeare Concerts. In 1998 he debuted with Boston Lyric Opera, recently performing as the Imperial Commissioner in their 2006 production of Madame Butterfly. Paul has sung many roles with the Glimmerglass, Longwood, and Cambridge Chamber Opera companies, as well as Houston Grand Opera, Raylynmor Opera, and the New England Conservatory Opera Theater (where he received his Master of Music degree.) He is a graduate of the Boston University Opera Institute, where he performed in (amongst others) Midsummer Night’s Dream. Paul won first place in the concerto competiton there; as well as receiving a fellowship and the C.D. Jackson Memorial Award at the Tanglewood Music Center.
Andrea Chenoweth
Andrea, soprano, is a two-time regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions. She has appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, Cleveland Opera, Dayton Opera, Commonwealth Opera, Lyric Opera Cleveland, the Springfield Symphony, the Bach Society of Dayton, Mansfield Symphony Orchestra, and Arcadia Players. Career highlights include her recent Carnegie Hall debut singing Verdi’s Requiem and touring Japan with Maestro Neal Gittleman and the Telemann Chamber Orchestra. She has sung numerous operatic roles, including Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor; Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, and Atalanta in Handel’s Xerxes. A proponent of new music, Ms. Chenoweth has worked with many living composers including Libby Larsen, Joseph Summer, Jonathon Sheffer, and Monica Houghton. Ms. Chenoweth received her Masters of Music degree in Voice from The Cleveland Institute of Music and her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Dayton. Her teachers include Ruth Golden, George Vassos, Ellen Shade, and Linda Snyder. Ms. Chenoweth is an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Dayton.
Kevin Owen
Kevin Owen is a journeyman musician and educator, performing with symphony orchestras, chamber music groups, swing bands, rock bands, jazz ensembles, and in the recording studio.
Principal horn of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, the Boston Lyric Opera, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, and the Boston Philharmonic, for 25 years he has been "first-call" horn substitute with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops Orchestra. He has also "subbed" with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic. Owen has been featured as a soloist by the Boston Pops, the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony, the Boston Philharmonic, and many other regional orchestras. He has appeared on the David Letterman and Conan O'Brien shows with the rock groups Guster and My Morning Jacket. He has toured internationally with Empire Brass, the Boston Chamber Music Society, and, recently, A Far Cry, a self-conducted, Grammy-nominated Boston chamber orchestra. He's been in the backup band for Peter Frampton, the Moody Blues, Kansas, Frank Sinatra Jr., and many other popular artists.
Owen graduated from Boston University in 1983. While there, he received the Outstanding Brass Performer Award and won the Concerto-Aria Competition. With the Boston Wind Quintet, the quintet in residence at Boston University, he won five international chamber music competitions. His teachers were Robert Hagreen, Dr. Charles Kavaloski, David Ohanian, Myron Bloom, and Jay Wadenpfuhl.
David Salsbery Fry
Widely praised for his skills both as a singer and as a nuanced and subtle actor, David Salsbery Fry seized the spotlight when he stepped in as Mosè in Mosè in Egitto for a four-performance run with New York City Opera in 2013 on very short notice. In his review for The Associated Press, Ronald Blum said, “With noble stature and flowing bass-baritone, Fry’s Moses had a world weary and endearing quality ...”
Possessed of virtuosic technique and a wide vocal range which gives him command of both the bass and bass-baritone repertoires, Mr. Fry plunged down to contra G (49 Hz) for his performances of Ogro in Gotham Chamber Opera’s production of Montsalvatge’s El gato con botas. Other notable engagements from the past few seasons include Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail for St. Petersburg Opera, Seneca in L’incoronazione di Poppea and Hobson in Peter Grimes for Aspen Music Festival, Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia for Vero Beach Opera, Truffaldin in Ariadne auf Naxos at Tanglewood, Arkel in Pelléas et Mélisande and Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte in Tel Aviv, his Mostly Mozart debut in Stravinsky’s Renard, and Olin Blitch in Susannah with Opera at Rutgers.
Victor Cayres
Hailed as “spirit of a leader!” by La Liberté (Fribourg, Switzerland), Brazilian pianist Victor Cayres has earned praise for concerts with the Sine Nomine string quartet and as soloist with such orchestras as the Boston Pops and Brno Philharmonic in the Czech Republic. Winner of 8th Iowa Piano Competition, 18th Leoš Janáček Competition, Sommerfestspiele Klavier Wettbewerb, Gina Bachauer South American Competition, Nelson Freire International Competition, Petrobras International Competition, Magdalena Tagliaferro Competition, Artlivre International Competition, Victor Cayres has been a guest artist at Banff Center for the Arts in Canada, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and Western Washington University.
He has released recordings for Albany Records with works by David Owens, Parma Records with works by Joseph Summer and Charles Ives, and Centaur Records with works by John H. Wallace. Mr. Cayres frequently performs in Brazil, Europe, and in prestigious concert halls across the U.S., such as Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York, and Jordan Hall and Symphony Hall in Boston. In the summer of 2016 his concert at Sala São Paulo, Brazil, was broadcast live by TV Cultura channel, and his recital at Preston Bradley Hall in Chicago for the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series was broadcast live at WFMT Fine Arts Radio.
Neal Ferreira
Tenor Neal Ferreira, especially noted for his dynamic and captivating stage presence, is quickly gaining national recognition.
Mr. Ferreira opened last season with his Boston Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Hall debut as Ein Tierhändler in Der Rosenkavalier under the baton of Maestro Andris Nelsons. He made another company debut with Odyssey Opera in March 2017, singing the role of Jack in Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's setting of The Importance of Being Earnest. The tenor will return to Odyssey Opera in October 2017, singing the role of Giovanni d'Aire in Donizetti's rarely heard L'assedio di Calais at the Huntington Avenue Theatre. Upcoming engagements include performances with the Shakespeare Concerts this fall, his role debut as Le Remendado in Carmen with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, and a return to Boston Lyric Opera in May of 2018 as the Jazz Tenor in Trouble in Tahiti.
Arcadia Players
The Arcadia Players are a professional ensemble of musicians founded in 1989 by Margaret Irwin Brandon, with the invaluable assistance of founding patron T. Marc Futter. Currently under the direction of renowned keyboardist and conductor Ian Watson, they present a series of concerts each year in several communities in Western Massachusetts, performing chamber music, opera, orchestral and choral repertoire, including highly acclaimed performances of Handel's Messiah. They also regularly collaborate with vocal ensembles throughout New England, at institutions such as Dartmouth College, Mount Holyoke College, Yale University, and the Hartt School, as well as Commonwealth Opera and the Connecticut Early Music Festival. Arcadia Players is in residence at the Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
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