Complete Recital Programs

Under Cover of Night

As we go through life, our relationship to nighttime and sleep evolves. This was never more apparent to me than when I was approaching the end of my pregnancy last year at this time. Many nights I gave up hours of sleep when the baby inside, having been lulled to sleep by gentle movements during the day, was aroused by my stillness. Other nights my body decided that it could not wait until the morning to eat. After our daughter Katarina was born, I often rocked her to sleep in the wee hours of the night, looking out the window every so often in an effort to connect to the rest of the world.

I have always been intrigued by what is happening when most people are asleep. It never ceased to amaze me throughout this strange time of late pregnancy and early infancy that there was always something happening outside on our relatively calm street in Washington Heights. A car would drive by. A person—either headed home from a long night or going out to start a day of work—would walk down the street.

In addition to noticing the activity, I wondered how the night affects us emotionally and behaviorally. When is it a cloak of darkness protecting us from being fully seen, and when does the invisibility it gives to others threaten us? When does it fill us with wonderment and flights of imagination, and when does it leave us lying awake in bed, swirling thoughts disturbing our sleep?

This program, like our daughter, was “born” of my seeing a lot more of nighttime, which made me wonder what other nighttime experiences had been captured by composers and poets. When David and I started to program the recital, we knew a good number of atmospheric “night” songs, but we did not know we would find songs covering the range of experiences that we have programmed. Nor did we know that we would be honored with the beautiful songs of Nico Muhly that we are premiering tonight. I was singing in the world premiere of Nico’s opera Dark Sisters in my eighth month of pregnancy when this program was inspired, so it seems right that Nico’s music should appear on this recital.

The chapters of this program are titled, respectively, Encounters, Melancholy, The Fantastic, The Nightingale, and Dreams and Flight.

Composers include: Handel, Grieg, Brahms, Strauss, Debussy, Wolf, Barber, Granados, Shostakovich and Rimsky-Korsakov. The first performance of this program also included a world premiere cycle for soprano and string quintet by Nico Muhly.

Alice Tully Hall; Juilliard Vocal Arts Recital Award

Bird Songs

Birds—those multifarious creatures of song and flight—have inspired the lyrics of this program. The nightingale that sings through the night, the lark who sings first in the morning, the swan that sings only before dying, the stork that brings messages, the hummingbird that drinks the nectar of flowers, as well as amorous turtledoves, waddling ducks, and chattering swallows, are the apparent subjects of these songs. Humans, however, lie just beneath the surface of each lyric, since in each of these avian characters we have seen ourselves.

Composers include: Alabiev, Berlin, Bishop, Brahms, Chabrier, Chausson, Duke, Granados, Grieg, Hahn, Lennon/McMartney, Milhaud, Puccini, Wolf.

The Juilliard School (Paul Hall), Artist Series of Sarasota

Straddling the Pyrenees

French music with Spanish dance rhythms, Spanish music with flavors of Debussy, a little American perspective, and some castanet playing complete this program.

Composers include: Berlioz, Mompou, Poulenc, Ravel, Rorem, Turina.

Florida Grand Opera

Words and Music

An exploration of the composer's relationship to his or her own words.

Composers include: Ravel, Debussy, Boulanger, Schubert, Justine F. Chen, Ives, Porter

Marilyn Horne Foundation On Wings of Song series, full program broadcast on WQXR

Motherhood

A chronology of motherhood drawing on songs from all over the world.

Composers include: Bernstein, Chanler, Fine, Ives, Poulenc, Rachmaninov.

Caramoor

Opera

COMPOSER	WORK	ROLE
Bellini	La sonnambula	Lisa
Berg	Lulu	Lulu*
Bizet	Carmen	Frasquita
Britten	A Midsummer Night's Dream	Tytania
Carlson, David	Anna Karenina	Kitty
Cavalli	La Calisto	Diana
Chabrier	L'étoile	Laoula
Chen, Justine F.	The Maiden Tower	Miranda
	Jeanne	Joan of Arc
Debussy	L'enfant prodigue	Lía
Donizetti	La fille du regiment	Marie*
	L'elisir d'amore	Adina*
Glass	The Fall of the House of Usher	Madeline Usher
Gounod	Roméo et Juliette	Juliette
Hagen, Daron Aric	Amelia	The Flier
Humperdinck	Hänsel und Gretel	Gretel
Janáček	The Cunning Little Vixen	Vixen
Liebermann, Lowell	Miss Lonelyhearts	Betty
Massenet	Cendrillon	Fairy Godmother
Menotti	The Medium	Monica
	The Last Savage	Sardula
Mozart	Don Giovanni	Zerlina
	La clemenza di Tito	Servilia*
	Le nozze di Figaro	Susanna*, 1st Bridesmaid
	Die Zauberflöte	Pamina
	Idomeneo	Ilia*
Muhly, Nico	Dark Sisters	Zina
Mussorgsky, Modest	Boris Godunov	Xenia
Offenbach	Orpheus in the Underworld	Euridice
Puccini	Manon Lescaut	1st Madrigal Singer
	La bohème	Musetta
	Turandot	Liu*
Prokofiev	War and Peace	2nd French Actress
Ravel	L'enfant et les sortilèges	La Bergère La Princesse La Pastorelle
Romberg	The New Moon	Marianne
Rorem, Ned	Our Town	Emily Webb
Strauss, R.	Elektra	Fifth Maid
	Der Rosenkavalier	Sophie*
	Ariadne auf Naxos	Komponist*, Echo
Verdi	Falstaff	Nannetta
	Rigoletto	Gilda*
Wagner	Der Ring des Niebelungen	Woglinde, Waldvogel
	Tannhäuser	Shephard Boy*

* suggested repertoire

Orchestral/Choral Solo

Bernstein	Kaddish Symphony
Britten	Les Illuminations
Foss	Time Cycle
Handel	Messiah
Haydn	Harmoniemesse
Mahler	Symphony No. 4
Mozart	Mass in c minor (Great Mass)
	Requiem
	Coronation Mass
Respighi	Lauda per la Nativitá del Signor
Stravinsky	Les Noces
Tavener	Requiem

Chamber Works

Carter, Elliot	Tempo e tempi
Gould, Gabriel	The Ideas Inside *premiere
Muhly, Nico	Far Away Songs *premiere
Schoenberg	String Quartet No. 2
Schubert	Der Hirt auf dem Felsen
Shostakovich	From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79
Tan Dun	Silk Road
Villa-Lobos	Bachianas Brasilieras, No. 5
Webern	Drei Lieder, Op. 18

Repertoire