Next at Grove Festival: Dan Fichera, Sara Caswell May 25, 2010
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Pianist Dan Fichera returns to Midland Oct. 22 for a recital sponsored by Grove Music Festival.
Fichera, right, will perform works by Schumann and Chopin in an 8 p.m. concert at Chapel Lane Presbyterian Church, 5501 Jefferson Ave., Midland. The concert commemorates the 200th anniversary of the births of the two composers.
Three weeks and a day later, on Nov. 13, violinist Sara Caswell brings her quartet to Midland for the 11th annual Grove Festival jazz concert. The music starts at 8 p.m. in Chapel Lane Presbyterian Church.
Tickets are $10 at the door, $5 for students.
Fichera, now living and concertizing in Spain, helped inaugurate the very first Grove Music Festival as a member of the Chagall Trio. He has performed here frequently since, most recently in 2008.
He spent his early years in Midland, and made his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall upon winning the Artists International Competition in New York City.
He earned degrees from Mannes College of Music, New York City, and DePaul University in Chicago, and carried out additional studies at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., where he won the Alice K. Whitney award. His principal teachers include Nina Svetlanova and Alexander Eydelmann.
Classically trained, Caswell leads her own jazz quartet and is co-leader of the Caswell Sisters Quintet, with her sister vocalist Rachel Caswell.
She has appeared as a soloist with the New York Pops,in Carnegie Hall and on national TV. She is part of the Randy Newman Project, led by vocalist Roseanna Vitro and pianist Mark Soskin.
She tours with violinist Mark O’Connor as a member of his American String Celebration, has toured with violinist Darol Anger’s Four Generations of Jazz Violin, and has performed or recorded with Gene Bertoncini, Charlie Byrd, Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Lynne Arriale, and John Clayton.
Singers From Lyric Opera perform here Friday May 17, 2010
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Chicago Lyric Opera members, from left, William Billingham, Angela Mannino and Paul Corona.
The 2010 Grove Music Festival chamber music series continues Friday with a vocal program by members of the Chicago Lyric Opera.
“Opera Arias, Art Songs and Broadway” starts at 8 p.m. May 21 at Chapel Lane Presbyterian Church, 5501 Jefferson Ave., Midland. Tickets are $10 at the door, $5 for students.
The concert is the second in the 13th annual Grove Music Festival spring chamber series. About 60 people turned out Sunday afternoon to hear a recital by the American Romanian Festival Quartet, a string quartet from the Detroit area.
Performers in the Friday evening concert are Angela Mannino, soprano; Paul Corona, baritone; and William Billingham, piano.
Mannino comes to the Grove Festival fresh from her Metropolitan Opera debut as the 15-year-old girl in Alban Berg’s Lulu, a role she performed earlier at Lyric. Also at Lyric she has had roles in “Manon,” “Tosca,” “L’Elisir d’Amore,” “The Marriage of Figaro,” and “The Abduction From the Seraglio.”
Corona was a 2006 Grand Prize Winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. His roles at Lyric include Dr. Grenvil in “La Traviata,” Pistol in “Falstaff,” the Bonze in “Madama Butterfly” and Sciarrone in “Tosca.” He has also performed with Chicago Opera Theater and made his Ravinia debut last summer in Kurt Weill’s “Mahagonny Songspiel” and as Marullo in “Rigoletto.”
Billingham has served as an assistant conductor at Lyric since 1995, working with many of the world’s leading opera singers and conductors. Also active as a recital accompanist and chamber musician, he holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, the Peabody Conservatory, and the University of Southern California. He started his opera career in Germany in the opera houses of Heidelberg and Düsseldorf.
The program includes arias by Mozart and Donizetti, art songs by Schubert, Debussy, Poulenc, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Ralph Vaughn Williams and others, and several songs from Broadway.
