I have been woefully lax in my blogging during the past few months. How embarrassing!

Here are a few of the musical occurrences in which I have participated recently:

I was a soloist in one of Bach’s most famous cantatas, BWV 140, or Wachet Auf, in Baltimore, at The Bach Concert Series.

I was a soloist for the Mozart Requiem (Süßmayr completion) with the Princeton Society for Musical Amateurs.

And I sang at a performance of Princeton composer Clive Muncaster’s narrative concert work Benjamin Franklin Frankly, in which I was mostly singing as part of a three-person Greek-chorus-like entity, but also got a brief moment in the spotlight wherein I got to channel Deborah Read. The sonorities were modern, but were played on a baroque combination of instruments. It was an effective juxtaposition.

Next on the menu, I’ll be singing as a chorus member with the American Bach Soloists in their annual run of Messiah. I can’t describe how much fun it is to sing with that group! I am looking forward to seeing my singer-friends in California, too.

I was recently asked to fill in at the last minute as a soprano soloist for Bach’s Mass in B minor, one of his greatest works. This is going to be fun!

The Bach Concert Series

Sunday May 3rd, 2009, at 4pm
Christ Lutheran Church
701 South Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21230

Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/51062

Also, do not miss the 3pm pre-concert lecture by Dr. Chrisoph Wolff, a leading Bach scholar (and professor at my alma mater).

Today, I was invited to be the soprano soloist at the Princeton Society of Musical Amateurs’ performance of Joseph Haydn’s Theresienmesse on April 5th. This piece has a lot of work for the soprano soloist (yay!). However, the soprano doesn’t just go flying alone, singing a bunch of arias like the big diva she might think she is. Instead, she’s part of a quartet of soloists that sings passages interspersed with the full chorus, with a chamber-chorus sort of effect. Each soloist gets a moment to shine alone here and there, but largely it is the united solo quartet that is the mass’s “soloist.”

I’ve never done the Theresienmesse, so I’ve got a lot of notes to learn in the next couple of weeks. But I can already tell that it’s going to be fun!

Haydn’s Theresienmesse
Princeton Society for Musical Amateurs
4pm, Sunday, April 5th, 2009
Princeton Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Rt 206 at Cherry Hill Road, Princeton, NJ

I am excited to report that I will be the soprano soloist for Bach Cantata 29, Wir danken dir, next spring at The Bach Concert Series in Baltimore, MD.

Cantata 29 was written for the inauguration of the Leipzig Town Council, and was first performed in 1731. (This information came from the website www.bach-cantatas.com.)

Sunday, March 1, 2009 at 4 PM
Christ Lutheran Church
701 South Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21230

For more information:
www.bachinbaltimore.org

At the beginning of June I’ll be singing in Philharmonia Baroque Chorale’s contribution to the performance of Alessandro Striggio’s Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno.

There are sixty individual voice parts in the final movement, and forty for the rest of the movements. The group is organized into five choirs of eight (five choirs of twelve for the final movement).

Read more information on this work at Wikipedia.

The performances are at the Berkeley Early Music Festival.

Saturday, June 7th, 8pm
Sunday, June 8th, 7pm
First Congregational Church, Berkeley

Save the date!

I’ll be singing in an evening recital of opera arias and duets with another soprano at All Souls on the evening of Saturday, July 26th. More info as the date approaches.

This summer I’ll be singing chorus in the Lamplighters production of The Mikado. This is my first experience with them and only my second G&S show (in 2004 I sang Josephine in HMS Pinafore back in Boston). I am really looking forward to this!

The Philharmonia Baroque concert in which I sang last weekend got a good review in the San Francisco Chronicle. The reviewer referred to the chorale as “excellent.”

In San Francisco Classical Voice’s review, the chorale was referred to as “outstanding.”

I’ll be singing in a recital on April 27th at All Souls in Berkeley.

Two fabulous Scarlatti arias for soprano and trumpet will be the featured delicacies, as well as songs from Purcell’s Harmonia Sacra and the final two movements of Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate.

Sunday, April 27th, 3:00pm
All Souls Episcopal Church
2220 Cedar St (at Oxford)
Berkeley, CA, 94703