A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival "Super Boy"

A psychiatrist and a young girl try to heal the events of their individual pasts through a lonely young boy who wears a red cape, in this compelling and often amusing story of friendship and the high price of betrayal. 

A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival "Desperate Times"

The showroom of Deltoné’s Family Auto Center in Paramus, New Jersey is the setting for this fast moving and hilarious story or three salespersons vying for survival due to a mandate by the businesses’ suspect owner.

A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival "Raindropped"

Elliot is the worst Best Man ever. He tries his absolute best to fall out of love with the bride, but he falls out of an airplane instead. On his tumble from grace, Elliot busies himself with secret agent daydreams and the theft of the wedding ring; all while pursuing enlightenment from a woman that is either the bride’s sister, or God.

LADAMA; a cross-cultural, Pan-American musical collaboration

$15 - Adult 
$12 – WU Fac/Staff, seniors, students (non-WU) 
FREE – WU Students (limit 1 per ID)

Tickets available for purchase beginning July 10.

LADAMA is an ensemble of women musicians from across the Americas who, as well as performing as a touring band, strive to engage youth in their respective communities in the process of music-making, dancing, composition and audio production through collaboration and performance workshops. They are Mafer Bandola (bandola llanera), Lara Klaus (percussion, drums), Daniela Serna (percussion)  and Sara Lucas (voice, guitar). Together they combine the rhythms and traditional instrumentation of frevo and maracatu from Pernambuco, Brazil;  joropo songs from the high plains of Venezuela; cumbia, gaita and champeta from the Colombian coast and contemporary strains of American pop and jazz. Members of LADAMA specialize in, among other instruments, the bandola llanera from Venezuela, the tambor alegre from Colombia, and the pandeiro and zabumba from Northeast Brazil. Their performances include original compositions and traditional songs sung in Spanish, Portuguese and English combining disparate elements into a cohesive whole. The result is a sonic experience through which we can view our future as a world that communicates across continents and cultures, with sound and story.

The women of LADAMA met during OneBeat, a fellowship curated by Found Sound Nation and produced by the State Department’s Bureau for Cultural Affairs. OneBeat brings musicians from around the world to focus on collaboration-based compositions and social engagement as ways to promote cultural diplomacy. In order to continue their work together, LADAMA formed as a way to reach youth and empower women through music making in South America. As activists, educators, producers and performers in their respective countries, their mission this year has been to create deeper roots within their own communities as a music ensemble while weaving a larger, global web. Their performances have been called "transformative" and "transporting",  and the audience is often asked to participate in their performances.

In the spring of 2015, LADAMA was awarded a $25,000 grant from The Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund through the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to complete a two-month tour through South America. They were the first arts-based project to receive this award for grass-roots organizing on a global scale As a result they spent all of February and March in Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela giving workshops to youth in an improvisatory and collaboration based setting. Additionally, they held free performances for the public and residencies in each country to develop original work as a music ensemble. They have worked in partnership with Paco do Frevo in Recife,  Brazil, Casa B in Bogotá, Colombia and Found Sound Nation in Brooklyn, New York.

They are also the recipients of a Creative Exchange Residency Award- granted through The Performing Americas in partnership with RED and the National Performer’s Network. As part of this Creative Exchange Residency they performed and conducted cultural music exchanges with local frevo and maracatu artists, music ensembles and schools for three weeks at Paco do Frevo in Recife, Brazil.

In May of 2016 LADAMA was an artist in residence at National Sawdust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There they worked with student dancers, writers and musicians in workshops at El Puente, creating collaborative, original work. This work was presented with the students, live at National Sawdust on May 20th, and was followed by a LADAMA performance. Additionally, The LADAMA Project is the recipient of a 2016 Brooklyn Arts Council grant for Local Arts Support and an Augustine Foundation Award to support their work at La Casita Comunal at Trinity Lutheran Church in Sunset Park. There they held workshops to create sound pieces with students in an after-school setting.

Recent engagements include RecBeat Festival in Recife, Brazil, Teatro Juares in Barquisimeto, Venezuela and Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.

Borgia Infami: An opera in English in two acts by Harold Blumenfeld (world premiere)

Produced by Winter Opera Saint Louis - (Two dates available)

September 30, 2017 - 7:30pm

Edison Theatre

Two Performances:
Saturday, September 30 - 7:30 P.M.  Tickets on sale June 1, 2017
Sunday, October 1 - 3:00 P.M.  Tickets on sale June 1, 2017

Cast/Conductor
Scott Schoonover - Conductor
Lindsey Anderson, soprano as Lucrezia Borgia
Andrew Potter, bass as Cesare Borgia

Synopsis:
Borgia Infami depicts the lives, loves and crimes of the notorious Borgia family. The opera focuses upon Rodrigo, who becomes the brilliant and corrupt Pope Alexander VI; his son Cesare, whose ruthless pursuit of power is immortalized in Machiavelli’s writings; and, finally, Lucrezia, the Duchess of Ferrara, Rodrigo’s beautiful daughter, and alleged poisoner of the family’s enemies. The action unfolds on dual levels, alternating historical fact with Victor Hugo’s hyper melodramatic portrayal of Lucrezia. She has given birth to an illegitimate son, a product of suspected incest, inside the Vatican walls. After being separated at birth, the boy matures into a virtuous young officer driven by two passions: to find his lost mother and a burning hatred for the Borgias. All the while, Lucrezia has lovingly watched over him from a distance, writing him anonymously. However, unwittingly she comes to poison him and his Borgia-hostile comrades. Out of shock and desperation she mortally stabs herself and, as she perishes, reveals her true identity to her son. After perishing together, her crimes are absolved through her selfless maternal devotion. Ingeniously, the librettist has connected all of this to the present.

Borgia Infami is a singers’ opera with arias emerging into duets, trios, and a sextet. This opera features violence, mayhem, and death. The auto da fe of Savonarola is presented, along with a scene of inebriation interrupted by the death chant of approaching monks, scenes of impassioned filial love, and street urchins for comic relief. In addition to the various scenes of overflowing emotion there are moments of wistful simplicity such as Lucrezia in her convent, with a Bingen-like women's chant in the background. The opera opens to a scene featuring a vast fresco of the coronation of Rodrigo Borgia as Pope coming alive to commence the opera.

Harold Blumenfeld Biography:
Born Oct. 15, 1923, in Seattle, Harold Blumenfeld studied at the Eastman School of Music from 1941-43. During World War II, he served as an interpreter in the U.S. Army Signal Corp, and was present at the liberation of Ohrdruf, the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops. 

Blumenfeld remained in Europe after the war, deploying his language skills to help identify former members of the Nazi Party. He then resumed his studies at the University of Zurich and at Yale University, earning both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Yale, in 1948 and 1949 respectively. Over the next four summers, he trained as a conductor with Robert Shaw and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

In 1950, Blumenfeld joined the faculty of Washington University, where he taught until his retirement in 1989. From 1960-71, he directed the Washington University Opera Studio and, from 1962-66, also directed Opera Theatre of St. Louis. An active music critic, he regularly wrote for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Opera News and other publications. 

Blumenfeld’s own compositions include Fourscore: An Opera of Opposites (1986) and Breakfast Waltzes (1991), both with librettist Charles Kondek, as well as vocal settings of works by Harold Hart Crane, Derek Walcott, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Rainer Maria Rilke and Osip Mandelstam.

Blumenfeld was the first composer to devote extensive attention to the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, beginning with a setting of “Being Beauteous” (c. 1980) and culminating in the two-act opera Seasons in Hell (1996), which traces Rimbaud’s adolescent adventures and disastrous fortune-seeking in Africa.

In 2001, Blumenfeld and Kondek completed Borgia Infami, an opera based on the notorious Renaissance family. In 2007, Blumenfeld recorded Vers Sataniques, based on Baudelaire’s “Flowers of Evil,” with the National Radio Orchestra of Poland.

Borgia Infami: An opera in English in two acts by Harold Blumenfeld (world premiere)

Two Performances:
Saturday, September 30 - 7:30 P.M. Tickets on sale June 1, 2017
Sunday, October 1 - 3:00 P.M. Tickets on sale June 1, 2017

Cast/Conductor
Scott Schoonover - Conductor
Lindsey Anderson, soprano as Lucrecia Borgia
Andrew Potter, bass as Cesare Borgia

Synopsis:
Borgia Infami depicts the lives, loves and crimes of the notorious Borgia family. The opera focuses upon Rodrigo, who becomes the brilliant and corrupt Pope Alexander VI; his son Cesare, whose ruthless pursuit of power is immortalized in Machiavelli’s writings; and, finally, Lucrezia, the Duchess of Ferrara, Rodrigo’s beautiful daughter, and alleged poisoner of the family’s enemies. The action unfolds on dual levels, alternating historical fact with Victor Hugo’s hyper melodramatic portrayal of Lucrezia. She has given birth to an illegitimate son, a product of suspected incest, inside the Vatican walls. After being separated at birth, the boy matures into a virtuous young officer driven by two passions: to find his lost mother and a burning hatred for the Borgias. All the while, Lucrezia has lovingly watched over him from a distance, writing him anonymously. However, unwittingly she comes to poison him and his Borgia-hostile comrades. Out of shock and desperation she mortally stabs herself and, as she perishes, reveals her true identity to her son. After perishing together, her crimes are absolved through her selfless maternal devotion. Ingeniously, the librettist has connected all of this to the present.

Borgia Infami is a singers’ opera with arias emerging into duets, trios, and a sextet. This opera features violence, mayhem, and death. The auto da fe of Savonarola is presented, along with a scene of inebriation interrupted by the death chant of approaching monks, scenes of impassioned filial love, and street urchins for comic relief. In addition to the various scenes of overflowing emotion there are moments of wistful simplicity such as Lucrezia in her convent, with a Bingen-like womens’ chant in the background. The opera opens to a scene featuring a vast fresco of the coronation of Rodrigo Borgia as Pope coming alive to commence the opera.

Harold Blumenfeld Biography:
Born Oct. 15, 1923, in Seattle, Harold Blumenfeld studied at the Eastman School of Music from 1941-43. During World War II, he served as an interpreter in the U.S. Army Signal Corp, and was present at the liberation of Ohrdruf, the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops.

Blumenfeld remained in Europe after the war, deploying his language skills to help identify former members of the Nazi Party. He then resumed his studies at the University of Zurich and at Yale University, earning both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Yale, in 1948 and 1949 respectively. Over the next four summers, he trained as a conductor with Robert Shaw and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

In 1950, Blumenfeld joined the faculty of Washington University, where he taught until his retirement in 1989. From 1960-71, he directed the Washington University Opera Studio and, from 1962-66, also directed Opera Theatre of St. Louis. An active music critic, he regularly wrote for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Opera News and other publications.

Blumenfeld’s own compositions include Fourscore: An Opera of Opposites (1986) and Breakfast Waltzes (1991), both with librettist Charles Kondek, as well as vocal settings of works by Harold Hart Crane, Derek Walcott, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Rainer Maria Rilke and Osip Mandelstam.

Blumenfeld was the first composer to devote extensive attention to the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, beginning with a setting of “Being Beauteous” (c. 1980) and culminating in the two-act opera Seasons in Hell (1996), which traces Rimbaud’s adolescent adventures and disastrous fortune-seeking in Africa.

In 2001, Blumenfeld and Kondek completed Borgia Infami, an opera based on the notorious Renaissance family. In 2007, Blumenfeld recorded Vers Sataniques, based on Baudelaire’s “Flowers of Evil,” with the National Radio Orchestra of Poland.

Department of Music Lecture: Steve Swell

Talk by award-winning improvisor, composer, and trombonist Steve Swell.

Steve Swell, born in Newark, New Jersey, has been living, working and performing in New York City his entire adult life. In the mid-seventies he studied with Roswell Rudd, Grachan Moncur III and Jimmy Knepper after attending Jersey City State Teacher’s College. He's toured and recorded with such diverse jazz personalities as mainstreamers Lionel Hampton and Buddy Rich, to so-called outsiders like Anthony Braxton and Jemeel Moondoc. Swell has 40 recordings as a leader or co-leader and is a featured artist on more than 100 other releases. His CD, "Suite For Players, Listeners and Other Dreamers", recorded on the CIMP label, was ranked number 2 in the 2004 Cadence Readers Poll. He received grants from US Artists International in 2006, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, an MCAF award (LMCC) in 2008 & 2013 and was commissioned for the Interpretations Series at Merkin Hall in 2006 and again in 2012 at Roulette. Steve is well known for his many collaborations with Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Alan Silva, William Parker, and his many projects including “Slammin’ The Infinite” with Sabir Mateen, The Ullmann/Swell 4tet featuring Barry Altschul, “Fire Into Music with Hamid Drake and his large ensemble, Nation Of We. He was the Jazz Journalist’s Association Trombonist of the Year nominee for 2008 & 2011, named Trombonist of the Year 2008, 2009, 2010 & 2012 by El Intruso, an Argintinean Jazz journal and selected for the 2010, 2011, 2012 & 2013 Downbeat Critics Poll in the Trombone category. Steve is a Teaching Artist in the NYC public school system working with special needs children and was awarded the 2008 Jubilation Foundation Fellowship Award of the Tides Foundation for recognition of that work.

"Songs and Rhythms of Spain," featuring Nerea Berraondo, mezzo-soprano and the Kingsbury Ensemble

Nerea Berraondo is a native of Pamplona, Spain. She has performed principal opera roles such as Adrastro and Creusa in Demofonte (Gluck) at Theatre an der Wien in Vienna; Lucio in Catone in Utica (Vivaldi) at Theatre des Champs Elysees in Paris; Malika in Lakmé at Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile; La Messaggiera in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at Teatro Real in Madrid; Arminda in Selva Encanada de Amor (Sebastian Duron) at L’Auditori in Barcelona; Marco Antonio in Marc'Antonio e Cleopatra by J.A. Hasse in Bantierra in Zaragoza; Romeo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi  (Bellini); Fulbio in Tito Manlio by Vivaldi in Auditorio Nacional in Madrid and Centro Cultural de Belem in Lisboa. Flora Bervoix in La Traviata in Pamplona (Spain); Doña Munia in the world premiere of the opera Un puente para el camino by Italian composer Giulio Genovese; Contessa di Ceprano and Giovanna in Rigoletto at Baluarte in Pamplona. 

Ms. Berraondo has worked with conductors such as Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Maximiano Valdes, Juanjo Mena, Alan Curtis, Marco Guidarini, Tito Munoz, Eric Jacobsen, José Antonio Montaño, Ernst Martínez Izquierdo, José Miguel Pérez-Sierra, and Yaron Traub. 

Additional highlights include symphonic repertoire performances with violinist Gidon Kremer at the Spanish premiere of Styx by Gija Kantschelli;  Mendelssohn's Elijah at the Palacio Euskalduna with Juanjo Mena; El Amor Brujo by Falla at the Ordway with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; Chichester Psalms by Bernstein at Palau de la Musica with Yaron Traub in Valencia; La vida breve by Falla in Baluarte; She has been guest soloist with Orquesta Sinfónica de Valencia, The Saint Paul Chamber Orquestra, The Great Bridgeport Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Bilbao, Orquesta Sinfónica de Bizkaia, Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra, Complesso Barocco, Concerto di Cavallieri, and Lyra Baroque.

Ms. Berraondo has worked with early music conductors and orchestras including Eduardo López Banzo, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Alan Curtis, Jacques Ogg, Simon Carrington, Marcelo di Lisa, Josetxu Obregón, Marian Rosa Montagut. Recently she has recorded Biagio Marini’s vocal music with her ensemble Aldatu on the Arsis recording label and Demofonte by Gluck with il Complesso Barocco conducted by Alan Curtis.

Reviews of her work in these roles include: “Nerea Berraondo is the new revelation. This Spanish mezzo has a seductive voice and a powerful low range” (trans. French, forumopera.com). “One of the most powerful and evocative voices of the current Spanish vocal landscape… A golden contralto that thrilled knowledgeable and demanding audiences…a voice brimming with generous fiato subtleties, dramatic overtones, enough roundness to leave grupetos embedded without concessions in the listener” (trans. Spanish, La Cronica de Leon). “The voice moves perfectly in the style, in the force arias as well in the recitatives. The contained arias were very beautiful - also showing nuanced expressivity, with admirable outsets, in piano, of the messa di voce. The agilities, clean and spectacular. Nerea Berraondo –with one of these mezzo-textured voices with high notes – excelled in her breeches role of Count of Castilla” (trans. Spanish, Diario di Noticias). 

Ms. Berraondo has won international prizes and competitions including Juventudes Musicales de España and Julián Gayarre International Singing Competition. In 2012 she was bestowed a Merit Award by the Centro Nacional de Difusión Musical (CNDM). She has had the honor of performing at the opening recital of the CNDM season with Eduardo López Banzo. Ms. Berraondo has also offered comparable solo recitals in London, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Minneapolis and St. Louis.

Nerea is currently on faculty at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University and she directs the International Spanish Music Festival in Minnesota