2017-2018 SEASON
January 14, 2018 – Wachet Auf – 3 pm
Baroque & Beyond continues its eleventh season with a program of music built around Wachet Auf by J.S. Bach. The featured baritone is Steven Kimbrough, whose distinguished bio is below. He will be joined by beloved soprano Florence Peacock, who sings the Bach arias and also a cantata by Boismortier, Actéon. Kimbrough will also be heard in a set of songs from a 1736 Bach collection.
The singers are accompanied by a small baroque ensemble: Andrew Bonner, violin; William Thauer, oboe and recorder; Rachel Evans, cello; and Beverly Biggs, harpsichord. This group will be highlighted in two trio sonatas by the prolific Georg Philipp Telemann.
Steven Kimbrough made his operatic debut in 1968 in the role of Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohème at the Teatro Sociale in Mantova, Italy as a winner of the American Opera Auditions. He has appeared in Mannheim, Frankfurt, San Francisco and Philadelphia. He was a member of the Bonn Opera Company in Germany from 1971, where he was for a number of years leading baritone. He appeared in 1989 in Essen as Wozzeck. He made concert tours of the USA, Germany, Italy and Austria. He appeared as a guest at the opera houses of Vancouver and Cincinnati (1983). He has performed on the operatic, concert and musical stages of North and South America, Europe and many other parts of the world including Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Bonn, Torino, London, Barcelona, Vienna, Rio de Janeiro, New York, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Detroit and Miami. He has sung some forty-four leading baritone roles and his repertoire includes also roles in operettas and musicals.
Kimbrough is well known as a recital and concert singer through many appearances at New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and with symphonies in the USA and abroad. He is the foremost interpreter of the “turn-of-the-century” school of Viennese composers (most of whom were effaced by Hitler’s Third Reich), as is demonstrated by his many highly praised recordings. He has presented in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and elsewhere a recital of their songs under the title “Forbidden Composers.”
Steven Kimbrough is an internationally known protagonist of contemporary opera and has appeared in twenty-two world premieres of operas including Christophorus by Schreker in Freiburg in 1978; Siegfried Matthus’ Count Mirabeau at the opera house in Essen, Germany. At the Teatro Regio in Torino, Italy he sang the first Italian-language performances of Hans Werner Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers, and he performed the German premiere of Zemlinsky’s Op. 20, Symphonic Songs (Africa Sings, African-American poets in song) with Dennis Russell Davies and the Beethovenhalle Orchester Bonn in Bonn, Germany.
Steven Kimbrough has been described as “a remarkable singer, with a cultivated, easily flowing baritone of fine quality and a rare command of words and rhythms” (The New Yorker), and a “master of vocal art” (La Stampa, Rome). His voice has been praised as “magnificent” (Journal de Genève), “mellow, dramatic, elegant” (The New York Times), and “pure liquid gold” (The Birmingham Post Herald).
Among his many recordings for EMI (Electrola), CBS (Columbia), Acanta/Pilz, Capriccio, Arabesque, Koch/ Schwann two CD’s of these composers’ German art songs (Alexander Zemlinsky and Erich Wolfgang Korngold) received nominations by Ovation magazine as “Best Vocal Record of the Year.” He has collaborated with the distinguished pianist Dalton Baldwin on a number of recordings.
Tickets are $18 and will be available at the door. Suggested parking includes the adjacent Planetarium lot and the nearby Rosemary Street parking garage.
PROGRAM
Telemann Trio Sonata TWV 42:B1
Four Bach songs
Boismortier Actéon
Telemann Trio Sonata TWV 42:d10
Bach – Wachet Auf
March 11, 2018 – Versailles – 3 pm
Jennifer Streeter, recorder, is featured, along with baroque violinist Gesa Kordes; Gail Ann Schroeder, viola da gamba; and Beverly Biggs, harpsichord. The program highlights works of the French baroque with music by François Couperin and his contemporaries. Couperin, called Le Grand, wrote masterful music evoking the sensibilities of the French court. His music includes bird songs, lullabies, and rousing dance rhythms.
Previous concert: October 8, 2017 – Mozart & Haydn – 3 pm
A perfect fortepiano for Mozart! The 11th Baroque & Beyond concert season opens with the sparkling music of Mozart and Haydn, played on a 1784 Stein replica fortepiano — an instrument rich in clarity and dynamism, one that Mozart loved. John O’Brien is featured, with violinist Leah Peroutka and cellist Stephanie Vial. The program includes Mozart’s Piano Trio (K.496); Mozart’s Violin Sonata (K. 305); Haydn’s A-major Piano Trio; and a sonata for cello by Anton Kraft, Haydn’s cellist.
John O’Brien was born into a musical family, studying piano with his father from the age of five until graduating from high school. While in high school he also studied violin, flute, and later harp. He began his undergraduate studies as a double major in violin and piano performance. In 1989 O’Brien was awarded the DMA in accompanying from the University of Southern California. O’Brien has been on the faculty of East Carolina University since 1985, serving in various roles including as Professor of Accompanying and as Chairperson of the Department. Dr. O’Brien has collaborated with such artists as Metropolitan Opera stars Hilda Harris and Victoria Livengood, violinist Eliot Chapo, tenor Bill Brown, flautist Carol Wincence (The Juilliard School), and clarinetist Deborah Chodacki (University of Michigan). He has performed in New York’s Merkin Recital Hall, and at the Istanbul Festival with cellist Selma Gokcen.
Violinist Leah Peroutka holds degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill (BM 2007) and the Cleveland Institute of Music (MM 2009). She performs regularly on both modern and Baroque violin, playing a wide range of styles from early Baroque to Classical to contemporary repertoire. She is a founding member of the NC Baroque Orchestra, and can also be heard in concert with the Mallarme Chamber Players, Baroque Arts Project, the Vivaldi Project with John Hsu, and UNC Faculty Baroque Ensemble, as well as with faculty members from UNC, Duke University, ECU, and UNC-Greensboro. She is on faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill as a Lecturer in Violin and Chamber Music, and she teaches privately at her home in Chapel Hill.
Stephanie Vial, cellist, performs regularly on both period and modern instruments. As a chamber musician and soloist, she has performed with many of the country’s leading period instrument ensembles. She has recorded for the Dorian Label, Naxos, Hungaroton, and Centaur Records. She is the co-director of the Washington DC based period instrument ensemble The Vivaldi Project and the Modern Early Music Institute, which teaches performance practices to professional string players using modern instruments. A sought after lecturer and teacher, Vial has taught at Duke and Cornell Universities, and is a regular guest teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music. Vial holds a D.M.A. in 18th-century performance practice from Cornell University. Her book, The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century: Punctuating the Classical “Period,” was published in 2008 by the University of Rochester Press’ Eastman Studies in Music Series. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The fortepiano being featured in this concert is a hand-made replica of a 1784 Andreas Stein. This Viennese builder crafted instruments that were favored by Mozart early in his career. Additional details are found at https://baroqueandbeyond.org/instruments/ .
Tickets for Mozart & Haydn are $18, available in advance from Preservation Chapel Hill (http://www.preservationchapelhill.org/baroque-beyond or 919-942-7818). Tickets will also be available at the door. The historic chapel at Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill is the venue. Suggested parking – in the adjacent Planetarium parking lot or the nearby Rosemary parking garage.