Ravinia 2023 Issue 1

JON WES (SULAYMAN); IGA GOZDOWSKA (SHIBE) KARIM SULAYMAN Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman has garnered international attention as a versatile artist, having won the Gram- my for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album and continuing to earn acclaim for his recording and concert projects spanning opera, orches- tral, chamber music, and recital repertoire. Last season, Sulayman sang a sold-out solo concert at Carnegie Hall and immediately followed it with the premiere of his multidis- ciplinary production Unholy Wars , a Baroque pasticcio centered around the Crusades and the Middle East, at Spoleto Festival USA. Recent highlights have also included his debuts at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and Stockholm’s Drottningholms Slottsteater as well as with Houston Grand Opera, the Aus- tralian Brandenburg Orchestra, and the Chi- cago, National, and Pittsburgh Symphonies. Across the – season, Sulayman took part in three world premieres: portraying the title roles of Sarah Angliss’s Giant at the Aldeburgh Festival and Wolfgang Mitterer’s Peter Pan: the dark side at Teatro Comunale di Bolzano e Trento and the Fondazione Haydn, and singing the protagonist of Matthew Rick- etts’s theatrical song cycle Unruly Sun with Orchestre Classique de Montréal and the C Festival in Toronto. e tenor also appeared as Artaserse in the modern-stage premiere of Broschi’s Idaspe in Pittsburgh and debuted at Wigmore Hall with the Kaleidoscope Cham- ber Collective. Future engagements include his debuts at Opera Philadelphia reprising Unholy Wars , on the Boston Celebrity Se- ries and at Schleswig-Holstein Festival with guitarist Sean Shibe, and as a soloist with the New World Symphony and Boston Baroque, as well as his role debut as Grimoaldo in Han- del’s Rodelinda . He will also create the central role of David T. Little’s monodrama What Be- longs to You , written for Sulayman and Alarm Will Sound. Following up his Grammy-win- ning solo debut Songs of Orpheus , an album of Italian Baroque songs and arias, Sulay- man released Where Only Stars Can Hear Us ( ), a collection of Schubert Lieder with fortepianist Yi-heng Yang. His latest album, Broken Branches with Shibe, was released in May. Karim Sulayman previously appeared at Ravinia as a soloist in the Street Chorus for both the and productions of Ber- nstein’s Mass . SEAN SHIBE One of the most versatile guitarists perform- ing today, Sean Shibe brings in innovative approach to his instrument that made him the rst guitarist ever to be invited into BBC Radio ’s New Generation Artists program, awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, and honored with the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Young Artists. Last year he received the Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. Highlights of recent seasons include his New York debut at the nd Street Y and a US tour with Quatour van Kuijk, a tour of the UK with Manchester Collective, a special con- cert at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw with the Ludwig Orchestra, and performances at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, Alte Oper Frank- furt, Tokyo’s Musashino Hall, and London’s Southbank Centre and Wigmore Hall, where he was one of the rst artists to return to the latter’s stage following pandemic lockdowns. Shibe was also a guest of a variety of festivals, including Aldeburgh, East Neuk, Heidelberg- er-Frühling, Marlboro, Mecklenburg-Vor- pommern, Norfolk, and Norwich, in addi- tion to giving multiple performances at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival—with Krzysztof Urbanski and Christoph Eschen- bach in and with tenor Karim Sulayman in . Recent collaborators also include the BBC Singers, flutist Adam Walker, singers Allan Clayton, Ben Johnson, Robert Murray, and Robin Tritschler, and performance artist and art lmmaker Marina Abramović. Shibe is equally committed to new music and mas- terful compositions of the past. Alongside original transcriptions of Bach’s lute suites and th-century Scottish lute manuscripts, he has been expanding the repertoire for guitar with works by Daniel Kidane, David Fennessy, Shiva Feshareki, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Freya Waley-Cohen. New com- missions include solo works by omas Ad è s and Helen Grime , as well as a new collabora- tion with Cassandra Miller and the Dunedin Consort. Shibe has earned several accolades for his recordings, including an Opus Klassik and two Gramophone Awards. Following a string of successes on Delphian Records, he has recently recorded two solo albums for Pentatone, Lost & Found (featuring electric guitar performances) and Camino (a collec- tion of French and Iberian music). Sean Shibe is making his Ravinia debut. MARTIN THEATRE 7:30 PM THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 2023 MELODY GARDOT † † Ravinia debut Ravinia expresses its appreciation for the generous support of Featured Sponsor Audrey L. Weaver . MELODY GARDOT The story of dusky alto vocalist, guitarist, pianist, and songwriter Melody Gardot is lled with perseverance. Born in New Jersey in , she took up piano and played on the nightclub scene of Philadelphia as a young- ster, in uenced by jazz, folk, rock, and pop music. One fateful day, while riding her bicy- cle, a driver hurtled into Gardot and le her in the street for dead. As she lay hospitalized for months with head and pelvic injuries, her love of music was critical therapy—while bed-bound, she wrote and recorded songs that would become the EP Some Les- sons . Gardot found the strength and determi- nation to make music her career, overcoming hypersensitivity to light and noise as well as using a special seating unit and a nerve-stimulating device to alleviate pain while performing. She also leaped these hurdles to record her debut full- length album, ’s Worrisome Heart , which was rereleased by Verve in a er drawing comparisons to Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, and Eva Cassidy. Working with producer Larry Klein and arranger Vince Mendoza (veterans of Mitchell’s music) in , Gardot followed up with My One and Only rill , which hit number two on the jazz charts; the top spot became hers in with e Absence , produced with guitarist/composer Heitor Pereira. Shi ing her musical direction, Gardot reteamed with Klein to focus on R&B, blues, and jazz in uences in a set of original, socially conscious songs for ’s Currency of Man . Using a series of show recordings from – , she delivered her rst concert album in , Live in Europe , showcasing Gardot with her adept touring ensemble. Another pairing with Klein produced ’s Sunset in the Blue , which featured a variety of studio contributors, including musicians from countries recorded remotely for “From Paris With Love.” For two weeks in , composer-pianist Philippe Powell decamped to Gardot’s studio in Paris to collaborate on a series of tracks in the classic pia- no-and-voice format that would become ’s Entre eux deux , featuring sensual, intimate tracks like “ is Foolish Heart Could Love You” and “ À La Tour Eiffel .” Melody Gardot is making her Ravinia debut. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE