CCM Senior Lauren Roesner Wins Third Prize at 2013 Lotte Lenya Competition

2013 Lotte Lenya Competition winners (left to right): Lauren Roesner, Alison Arnop, Douglas Carpenter, and Maren Weinberger. Photo: Kurt Weill Foundation for Music.

We are delighted to announce that graduating CCM student Lauren Roesner (BFA Musical Theatre, 2013) has been named a winner of the 2013 Lotte Lenya Competition. The soprano was awarded third prize in the prestigious international theater singing contest during the final round of the competition on Saturday, April 13. Congratulations Lauren!

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, which sponsors the competition, distributed a record $61,500 in prizes this year. Roesner received a third prize of $7,500. CCM alumna Heather Phillips, soprano, was also a finalist in the competition and received an award of $1000.

Several other current and former CCM students were awarded special prizes during this year’s competition. Learn more about those awards here.

CCM Winds, Jazz, Musical Theatre, Guitar And More On Display This Weekend!

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You will find something for everyone on the CCM stage this weekend!

At 8 p.m. this evening (Friday, April 12), the CCM Wind Orchestra closes out its successful 2012-13 season with a survey of contemporary American composers. The eclectic program will include works by Samuel Barber, Warren Benson and more! Learn more about this performance here.

CCM welcomes acclaimed tenor Lawrence Brownlee to the stage at 8 p.m. this Saturday, April 13, for an encore performance of the program from his recent Carnegie Hall debut. Brownlee will be accompanied by composer, conductor and pianist Damien Sneed for this special performance. Learn more about this performance here.

CCM’s Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Lab Band will celebrate the impact of adjunct instructor of jazz drums and “living guru of big band drumming” John Von Ohlen with a swinging tribute concert at 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 14. Learn more about this performance here.

CCM Presents Guest Artist Lawrence Brownlee in Recital on April 13

Acclaimed tenor Lawrence Brownlee presents a guest artist recital at CCM on Saturday, April 13, 2013. Photography by Derek Blanks.

CCM presents a special recital by tenor Lawrence Brownlee at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 13, in Corbett Auditorium. This performance is presented by the CCM Busse Fund. Tickets are on sale now.

Brownlee will be accompanied by composer, conductor and pianist Damien Sneed, whose spiritual arrangements will be featured on the program. In addition, Brownlee will sing works from the 19th and 20th centuries, including music by composers Giuseppe Verdi and Francis Poulenc. Brownlee recently performed the same program at his Carnegie Hall debut, accompanied by pianist and conductor Martin Katz, with whom he recorded an album of Italian songs under EMI Classics in 2006.

Originally from Youngstown, Ohio, Brownlee has had a quick rise to sought-after status as an operatic tenor. Since graduating from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2001, he has won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and received the Richard Tucker Award and Marian Anderson Award. Brownlee has taken the stage with some of the world’s top opera companies including the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House, Hamburg State Opera and Opéra National de Paris. In addition to his EMI Classics release of Italian songs, he is featured on EMI’s release of Rossini’s Stabat Mater and on the Metropolitan Opera’s Met in HD recording of Rossini’s Armida, both from 2010.

Brownlee’s performing career has taken him back to Ohio before, for performances of Bach’s Magnificat with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 2002 and of Handel’s Israel in Egypt with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra in 2003. His return for this CCM encore performance of his Carnegie Hall debut program will be an event not to be missed.

CCM Alumnus David Daniels Profiled in April 2013 issue of ‘Opera News’

Photographed by Michal Daniel as Orfeo in the Minnesota Opera production of Orfeo ed Euridice, 2010
© Michal Daniel 2013

CCM alumnus David Daniels (BM, 1990) is profiled in the April issue of Opera News, which is on newsstands now. As previously reported, the acclaimed countertenor is a 2012 Opera News Award-winner.

In the lengthy profile, Opera News editor Adam Wasserman writes, “Daniels has the uncanny ability to bridge the gap and make us believe that the composer’s note barely had time to dry on the page before it came forth from his mouth. It seems to me that the highest compliment one can pay Daniels — now in the third decade of an unprecedented career in opera — is that the music he sings sounds both strikingly contemporary and as though it were written precisely for his voice.”

Read the entire profile here.

Daniels will be singing the title role in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Giulio Cesare this month. The production is scheduled to be broadcast as a part of the Met’s “Live in HD” Series on April 27, 2013.

Current and Former CCM Students Win at 2013 Gerda Lissner Foundation Vocal Competition

Congratulations to the following CCM alumni and students who were prize winners in the Gerda Lissner Foundation 2013 International Vocal Competition!

• CCM alumnus and countertenor John Holiday earned first prize in the competition, which came with a $10,000 cash award.
• CCM alumnus Norman Garrett, baritone, earned second prize, with an award of $5,000. This is Garrett’s second consecutive year taking home a prize from the competition.
• Artist Diploma candidate Yi Li, tenor, and CCM alumnus Emmet O’Hanlon, baritone, each received third prize, which came with a $3,000 cash award. This is also Li’s second consecutive year earning a prize at the Lissner Competition.

CCM Announces 2013 Opera Scholarship Competition Winners

Five voice students were named winners of CCM’s 2013 Opera Scholarship Competition, which was held Saturday, March 16, in UC’s Corbett Auditorium. The annual competition welcomes current and incoming CCM voice students to compete for scholarships and cash prizes, and a panel of judges composed of opera industry professionals selects each year’s class of prizewinners.

The 2013 CCM Opera Scholarship Competition winners are:

CCM Opera Scholarship Competition Brings Bright Young Stars to the Stage on March 16

CCM invites local audiences to hear tomorrow’s opera stars today, as CCM hosts its prestigious scholarship competition beginning at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 16, in UC’s Corbett Auditorium. Admission to this event is free, and reservations are not required. Audience members may enter and exit Corbett Auditorium at appropriate times throughout the day.

Twenty-three current and incoming young artists will compete for approximately $100,000 in tuition grants and $62,500 in other named awards, including the Corbett Award, Italo Tajo Memorial Award, Andrew White Memorial Award, Seybold-Russell Award and John Alexander Memorial Award. Each contestant will be judged on the basis of voice, acting, language, musicianship and style in a complete dramatic performance of an aria.

A panel of judges composed of world-renowned opera-industry professionals will select the winners. The judges’ panel for this year’s competition includes:

• Peter Kazaras, Director of Opera at UCLA, Professor of Music at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and Artistic Director of the Seattle Young Artists Program
• Kevin Murphy, Professor of Practice and Head Opera Coach at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Opera Theater and director of music administration at the New York City Opera
• Lenore Rosenberg, Associate Artistic Administrator of the Metropolitan Opera

The winners will be announced on Saturday afternoon, March 16, following the conclusion of the competition.

CCM Student Named Grand Finalist Winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2013 National Council Auditions

Artist Diploma student Thomas Richards, bass-baritone.

CCM Artist Diploma candidate Thomas Richards, bass-baritone, has been named a Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2013 National Council Auditions.

A student of CCM Professor of Voice William McGraw, Richards was one of 10 singers competing in the Met’s prestigious and highly competitive Grand Finals Concert this past Sunday, March 10. The finalists were accompanied by the Met Orchestra led by Marco Armiliato. Richards and five other young artists were named the winners of this year’s National Council Auditions.

WQXR, New York’s Classical Music Radio Station, will broadcast performances and interviews with all of this year’s winners at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 11. Visit www.wqxr.org to listen online or watch a live video stream of the performances and interviews.

The Cincinnati Enquirer also published an interview with Richards on the eve of his Grand Finals-winning performance this weekend. You can read that interview online at news.cincinnati.com/article/20130310/ENT07/303100029/CCM-student-finals-Met-contest.

Local audiences can next see Richards in CCM’s Mainstage Series production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, running April 4-7 in UC’s Corbett Auditorium.

CCM Student Among 10 Finalists in Met Opera National Council Auditions

We are pleased to report that bass-baritone Thomas Richards, a student of William McGraw at CCM, will be singing onstage at the Metropolitan Opera in the Grand Finals Concert of the Metropolitan Opera District Council Auditions this Sunday!

The public concert will be accompanied by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and will be broadcast nationwide on the Metropolitan Opera Radio Network.

Learn more courtesy of Janelle Gelfand and the Cincinnati Enquirer.

CCM Celebrates the 200th Anniversary of Verdi’s Birth With Performances of ‘Requiem’

Photography by Dottie Stover.

CCM’s Philharmonia Orchestra, Chamber Choir and Chorale will present a rare two-evening run of Giuseppi Verdi’s Requiem at 8 p.m. on both Friday, Feb. 1, and Saturday, Feb. 2, in UC’s Corbett Auditorium. Tickets are on sale now.

CCM mounts these performances in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth, which will be Oct. 10, 2013. Huge choral and orchestral forces come together for this highlight of the 2013 CCM Orchestra Series, with choirs prepared by Earl Rivers, director of Choral Studies, and Brett Scott, Choral Studies faculty member, as well as performances led by Maestro Mark Gibson, director of Orchestral Studies and of the CCM Philharmonia.

Soloists for both performances include:

• CCM alumna Helen Lyons, soprano, who most recently returned to sing the title role in CCM’s acclaimed 2011 concert performance of Puccini’s Turandot;
• Leah de Gruyl, mezzo soprano, who sang Mother Goose in CCM’s Mainstage production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress in 2012;
• CCM alumnus Daniel Weeks, tenor, who was both a national finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and the winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs’ Young Artist Competition.
• Andrew Funk, bass, who recently performed with Opera Lyra Ottawa, San Francisco Opera, Opera Boston, Arizona Opera and Chicago Opera Theater.
• Yi Li, tenor, a winner of the CCM 2012 Opera Scholarship Competition and Musical America’s “New Artist of the Month” for March 2012;
• Nathan Stark, bass, who recently served as a cover in Britten’s Billy Budd at the Metropolitan Opera.