Ravinia 2019, Issue 7, Week 15

CHICAGO CHORALE For more than a decade, Chicago Chorale has been a leading interpreter of repertoire ranging from the 16th century to the present day. Led by artistic director Bruce Tammen, the 60-voice ensemble strives to stimulate and engage both its auditioned, volunteer singers and its audienc- es with performances of well-loved choral works as well as overlooked masterpieces. Past perfor- mances have included Rachmaninoff ’s All-Night Vigil (“Vespers”); Requiems by Howells, Duru- flé, Fauré, Brahms, and Mozart; Martin’s Mass for Double Chorus; Tallis’s Lamentations of Jere- miah ; Handel’s Messiah ; Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden ; and Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion , Mass in B minor, Magnificat , and Christmas Orato- rio. Chicago Chorale has appeared several times on WFMT’s Live with Kerry Frumkin and has recorded six albums, including an acclaimed performance of Rodion Shchedrin’s The Sealed Angel . In 2015, the ensemble toured Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland in celebration of its 15th anniversary. Chicago Chorale is making its eighth season appearance at Ravinia, where it first performed in 2008. BRUCE TAMMEN, artistic director Chicago Chorale artistic director Bruce Tam- men holds degrees from and has taught and directed choirs at Luther College and the Uni- versity of Chicago. He additionally has a degree from Northwestern University and has taught and directed at the University of Virginia. He studied extensively in France with Dalton Bald- win and Gerard Souzay, and for several years studied with Max van Egmond at Oberlin’s Ba- roque Performance Institute. Tammen has per- formed with the Robert Shaw Choral Institute in Souillac, France, and for several seasons with Helmuth Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival. He was also the baritone soloist on the Telarc/ Shaw albums Appear and Inspire and Liebeslie- der Waltzes. Tammen recently received Luther College’s Weston H. Noble Choral Award for outstanding service in vocal music education. VOCALISTS FROM RAVINIA’S STEANS MUSIC INSTITUTE The director of the RSMI Pro- gram for Singers since 2012, Kevin Murphy earned a bachelor’s degree in piano from In- diana University, where he is cur- rently professor of practice and head opera coach, and a master’s in accompaniment from the Curtis Institute. In 1992 he became the first pianist invited to the Lindemann Young Artist Program of the Met- ropolitan Opera, where he served as an assis- tant conductor until 2006. He also performed with the company’s orchestra for productions of Rossini’s Cinderella and Mozart’s Così fan tutte , Marriage of Figaro , Idomeneo , La clemenza di Tito , and Don Giovanni , reprising several of those performances at Ravinia. Murphy regu- larly collaborates with such artists as Michelle DeYoung, Gary Lakes, Kathleen Battle, Nathan Gunn, Bryn Terfel, Cecilia Bartoli, Frederica von Stade, Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Gerald Finley, and Pinchas Zukerman. He has also been an artistic consultant for the Tucson Desert Song Festival since 2013. Soprano Chris- tine Lyons was at RSMI in 2019, and this season she sings Cio-Cio San in Puccini’s Mada- ma Butterfly with Baltimore Concert Opera and each of Violetta in La tra- viata , Leonora in Il trovatore , and Gilda in Rigo- letto for “Viva Verdi” with Penn Square Music Festival, as well as excerpts from Il trovatore and Puccini’s Tosca in “The Me I Want to Sing” at National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, a reprise of her Kennedy Center performance this past spring. Lyons also sang the title role of Bell- ini’s Norma with Winter Opera Saint Louis, Mo- zart’s Exsultate, jubilate with the Queens Sym- phony Orchestra and the Spectrum Symphony of New York, and Rossini’s Stabat Mater with Teatro Nuovo last season. Recent highlights also include Amenaide in Rossini’s Tancredi rifatto (Teatro Nuovo), the title role of Puccini’s Suor Angelica (New York), and excerpts from Doni- zetti’s Anna Bolena (Opera Naples) and Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah (Wolf Trap). Lyons is an alum- na of the Peabody Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Salzburg Mozarteum. Mezzo-soprano Siena Licht Mill- er was at RSMI in 2019 and be- gan the present concert season originating the title role of Philip Venables’s Denis & Katya with Opera Philadelphia, where she made her profession- al debut as the Second Lady in Mozart’s The Magic Flute and has also appeared as Hermia in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Miller is an alumna of the Curtis Institute, where she has portrayed the title roles of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia , Dinah in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti , Baba in Menotti’s The Medium , and Kitty Oppenheimer in John Adams’s Doctor Atomic ; Santa Fe Opera’s apprentice program, where she covered Suzuki in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Kitty Op- penheimer; and Aspen Music Festival, where she sang the title role of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges . In concert, Miller has been a soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Symphony in C and the Oregon Symphony and the compos- er’s Missa solemnis with the Grant Park Sympho- ny Orchestra. Tenor John Mat- thew Myers was at RSMI in 2019, having made a breakout Los An- geles Philharmon- ic debut in 2017 as Mao in John Adams’s Nixon in China , conducted by the composer. He was also a winner of Vo- cal Arts DC’s 2017 Art Song Competition and has been a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and Gerda Lissner Foundation International Vocal Competition. An alumnus of the Manhattan School of Music, Myers recently performed Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Jennifer Johnson Cano at Gretna Music, and he has been a soloist in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with the Grant Park Festival Orchestra and C-major Mass with the Santa Barbara Symphony. This season he joins the Metropolitan Opera as a cover for productions of Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier , and Myers recently made his New York Philharmonic debut in the world pre- miere of David Lang’s opera prisoner of the state and returned to the LA Phil for new productions of Adams’s Europeras 1 and 2. RAVINIA MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 5, 2019 – MAY 9, 2020 92 DECEMBER 14, 2019 JANUARY 25, 2020