HUDSON COMMUNITY CHOIR
Conducted by Michael Hofmann
with Paula Vitolo, piano
Thursday, December 19 at 7 pm
Hudson Hall
327 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534
More info coming soon!
HUDSON HALL PRESENTS
Concept and Libretto by Anthony Knight, Jr.
Musical Arrangement by Orrin Evans
Directed by Michael Hofmann
November 2 at 7 pm
Hudson Hall
327 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534
Masud Olufani as Frederick Douglass
Nia Drummond, soprano
Edward Washingington II, tenor
Gregory Sheppard, bass
No Cowards in Our Band is a musical drama telling the story of renowned activist and abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) through his own words. With the performance just days before the 2024 Presidential Election, the piece is a striking reminder of the power of the pen, the voice, and the vote.
Based on a libretto by Anthony Knight, Jr. and interwoven with spiritual songs arranged by GRAMMY-nominated jazz artist Orrin Evans, No Cowards in Our Band stars actor, artist, and TV personality Masud Olufani as Frederick Douglass performing with a trio of opera singers, the “moving and electrifying performer” (Wall Street Journal) Nia Drummond, soprano – who went viral last year for a rendition of Happy Birthday that made Busta Rhymes cry – Metropolitan Opera tenor Edward Washington II, and Opera Ebony and Syracuse Opera’s Gregory Sheppard, bass.
Learn more and purchase tickets on Hudson Hall’s website.
FRESH SQUEEZED OPERA PRESENTS
May 3 & 5–7, 2022 at 7:30 pm
Dorothy B. Williams Theater, HERE Performing Arts Center
145 6th Ave, New York, NY 10013
Michael Hofmann, Stage Director
Whitney George, Music Director
April Bartlett, Scenic Designer
Jennifer Burkhardt, Lighting Designer
Ted Boyce-Smith and Taylor Edelle Stuart, Video & Projection Designers
Corina Chase, Costume Designer
Victoria Benson, Production Manager
Newly created, a sex robot seeks to discover what it means to be a woman while trapped in a world created by her programmer, Pete, and his "Siri" device, Cora. Inspired in part by the composer's own experiences in an abusive relationship during her formative years, and the works of sci-fi pioneers Isaac Asimov and Ursula Le Guin, this world-premiere opera is a story of womanhood, artificial intelligence, and self-actualization.
Scenes from opera's history are reimagined in 360 degrees as students of the college's Opera Workshop perform in-the-round. The performance weaves together narrative threads in excerpts of operas by Mozart, Purcell, Poulenc, and others for an intimate and unique operatic experience.
LUMA Theater, Fisher Center at Bard
Tickets: $5, free for Bard students
January 31 at 8 pm
February 1 at 8 pm
February 2 at 3 pm
Michael Hofmann, director
Micah Gleason, Renée Ann Louprette, and David Mascari, music directors
Andrew Hill, lighting designer
Sharon Greene, costume designer
In this performance, as Mona struggles to reconnect with her estranged sister Hennie, she turns to the ant colony for inspiration. With more than 500,000 ant sisters migrating, raiding, and even reproducing as one superorganism, an army ant colony appears to Mona as the paragon of successful social existence. Informed by scientific research on ant colonies, The Colony ventures into speculative fiction and includes projected animations and imagery alongside live spoken and musical performance.
Funny, poignant, enlightening, and just the right amount of strange, The Colony aims to kindle a sense of awe and understanding of our diverse biological world, while using the ant colony as a lens for understanding the ever-present challenge of human connection. As part of a new genre called Evo Devo Art, The Colony weaves together evolutionary and developmental biology (Evo Devo) with multidisciplinary art. Audiences can expect to be entranced by visualizations of ant pheromone trails, a musical aria from the perspective of an ant queen, and a dance sequence set in a grocery store inspired by army ant swarm raids. In all, The Colony juxtaposes forms of biological communication – which have developed over millions of years – with modern technological media as a means of grappling with the paradox of acute loneliness in a world more connected than ever.
The Colony draws visual materials and research in part from the world-class Carl W. and Marian E. Rettenmeyer Army Ant Guest Collection housed at the University of Connecticut and is one of a number of “AntU” initiatives inspired by the collection. The Colony is made possible through the generous support of the Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts; the University of Connecticut School of Fine Arts Dean’s Grant and the Office of the Vice President for Research; the University of Connecticut School of Fine Arts Project Completion Grant; the University of Connecticut Department of Digital Media & Design; and a grant from the University of Connecticut Provost’s Academic Plan competition for the AntU project.
Learn more and reserve tickets at www.thecolony.show
Choir of St. Luke in the Fields
with Baroque in the Fields, an ensemble of period instruments
David Shuler, director
In 1767, for the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Haydn composed his monumental Stabat Mater, the first church work he wrote after entering the service of Prince Esterházy at Eisenstadt in 1761. It is a work of similar length, gravity and meditative concentration to the Seven Last Words composed some 20 years later. The Stabat Mater was praised by his contemporaries and frequently performed during his lifetime, and it was published on such a large scale that it became his most well-known sacred work. Today the piece is seldom performed and even more rarely recorded, even though it contains some of the composer's most rich and deeply felt writing.
https://stlukeinthefields.org/music-arts/concerts--choir-of-st-luke-in-the-fields/
Choir of St. Luke in the Fields
and the Washington Cornett and Sackbutt Ensemble
David Shuler, director
Giovanni Gabrieli was the principal organist at San Marco in Venice, from 1585 until his death in 1612. His musical legacy is one of unsurpassed elegance and grandeur inspired by the elegant ecclesiastical architecture of this venerable institution. During Gabrieli’s lifetime, San Marco - not yet a cathedral - was the private chapel of the Doge, and was the epicenter of the sumptuous religious and civic celebrations that were so notably a part of Venetian life. Lavish ceremony required appropriate musical selections, and visitors to the city encountered splendid music and elaborate pageantry in the many feasts and celebrations unique to this gateway to the east. The program will include music from Gabrieli’s Symphoniae Sacrae - mass movements, motets (including the famous In ecclesiis) and canzonas, along with works of Gabrieli’s contemporaries.
https://stlukeinthefields.org/music-arts/concerts--choir-of-st-luke-in-the-fields/
Come one, come all, to a concert featuring Alumni of the Bard College Conservatory of Music’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program!
Fresh from their successful endeavors in New York City, Boston, and the Hudson Valley, graduates from the past five years of the Vocal Arts Program return to Bard College on September 29th at 3:00pm for an hour-long concert in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building. Ten VAP alumni will present some of their favorite works in both the traditional and contemporary repertoires and in a wide variety of genres: opera, art song, chamber music, and musical theatre.
Admission is free; donations are encouraged.
All donations will be directed to the VAP Scholarship Fund and will directly benefit future members of the Vocal Arts Program.
OPERA? OPERA WHAT? WHAT IS THIS? IS THIS OPERA? — [*This opera*] This work [*knots*] binds operatic practices with elements from old and new media (e.g., TV, YouTube) into a chain of [*preposterous*] ludicrous [*events*] episodes. Disparate pieces [*with*] of text—original or [*appropriated*] quoted—generate [*symbols*] characters and situations on the border between the mundane and the absurd. #PostOpera #KnowYourMeme #FunnyCats
PRODUCTION
Michael Hofmann, director
Whitney George, music director
Matthew Wasser, projection design
Jennifer Burkhardt, lighting design
Corina Chase, costume design
Michael Minahan, set design
CAST
Andy Dwan, "Baritone"
Cara Search, "Mezzo Soprano"
Joanie Brittingham, "Coloratura Soprano"
Francesca Federico, "Lyric Soprano"
Sarah Dutcher, 'Keyboards"
Opera on Tap's New Brew heads to Michigan – that magical land where the cold never bothered us anyway. Actually we'll just be there in our minds. We'll really be at Barbés.
Join us as we regale you with tunes written by Michiganders, sung by Michiganians and some other people who WISH they were from Michigan. Bell's Brewery is sponsoring, so swing by for some fantastic music, tasty pints and free schwag!
$10 suggested donation
https://www.facebook.com/events/1982546185291240/
The Church of St. Luke in the Fields
Thursday, January 25 at 8 pm
The Choir of St. Luke in the Fields
David Shuler, conductor
Miss Tu es Petrus and a selection of motets by Palestrina.
$35 general admission, $25 students/seniors.
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit https://stlukeinthefields.org/
Assistant Stage Director
Hudson Hall, Hudson, NY
November 11, 12, 15, 18, and 19 at 4 pm
To mark the centenary of the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the re-opening of New York State’s oldest surviving theater, Hudson Hall in partnership with The Millay Colony for the Arts has commissioned a new production of Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s rarely performed opera The Mother of Us All. Using real and imagined characters, The Mother of Us All is about Susan B. Anthony and the Women’s Suffrage Movement in America, which began in upstate New York. Anthony spoke twice on the very stage where this opera will be performed.
R.B. Schlather, stage director
Tony Kieraldo, music director
Assistant Stage Manager
Saturday, August 19 at 8 pm
Sosnoff Theater
The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College
Leon Botstein, conductor
Mary Birnbaum, stage director
Stanislaw Moniuszko (1819–72), Halka (1858)
Halka (Warsaw version: 1858) (Wolski)
A performance of the first great Polish opera (something Chopin was continually expected to write), Moniuszko’s Halka, a work too frequently underrated outside of Poland.
NYC Premiere
The Stonewall Inn
July 2 and 9 at 3:30 pm
July 5 and 12 at 8 pm
More information available at operarox.org.
Produced by Opera on Tap, this Pint-Sized Operapalooza is an irreverent and entertaining concert filled to the brim with very short operas that pack a punch (shots of opera, if you will), written by some of today’s most exciting composers, and presented by singers who relish the direct contact with audiences not inhibited in their reactions by the looming menace of giant chandeliers.
Barbès
376 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Tickets: $10 suggested donation
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/new-brew-pint-sized-opera-edition-tickets-34329054125
