Fri

7/30/2010

8:00pm

Cabaret

Week After Art Fair Song Fest

Come Rain or Come Shine: An American Cabaret

• $25 Assigned Rows 1-2
• $15 Assigned Rows 3-5
• $10 General Admission
• $5 Student

• Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers, soprano
• Kevin Bylsma , piano
• and friends

Event Details

Join co-founders/artistic directors pianist Kevin Bylsma and soprano Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers for two evenings of vocal music. Thursday’s program, a free concert, features a more serious art song repertoire, while Friday is a no-holds-barred night of cabaret. Bylsma and Rodgers are joined each evening by a number of area star performers, including Emily Benner, Daniel Schuetz, Jennifer Hilbish Schuetz and others.

Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers

Soprano Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers’ concert, recital, choral, and stage engagements have taken her around the world: New York, London, Vienna, and Prague, as well as to Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Syracuse, and other Great Lakes cities. Recent activities have included performances and recordings with the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Toledo and National Polish Radio Symphonies, Moravian Philharmonic, American Composers’ Alliance, Mid-American Center for Contemporary Music, and the Society for New Music. She appears frequently at KCH, including the annual Wine, Women and Song concerts. She is currently an associate professor of voice at Bowling Green State University.

Kevin Bylsma

Kevin Bylsma is an accomplished pianist and vocal coach and is well-known in the Midwest for his work in art song, opera and oratorio. As head of music preparation for the Toledo Opera, he had coached productions of Tosca, The Tales of Hoffmann and The Magic Flute. He has served as music director of the Department of Community Programs for the Michigan Opera Theatre from 1993–97 and was vocal coach, accompanist and chorus master for OPERA! Lenawee from 1992 to 1997. Other music directing credits include the Lyric Chamber Ensemble of Detroit and the Papagena Opera Company of Ann Arbor. He has appeared throughout the United States, Canada and Europe as an organist, pianist and accompanist. In the summer of 1996, he toured Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic with tenor Robert Mirshak. Most recently, he has appeared in master classes and recitals with soprano Diana Soviero and mezzo-soprano Irina Mishura. He has served as principal keyboardist with the Adrian and Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestras and was the winner of a number of competitive awards, including the Robert Glasgow Organ Scholarship from the University of Michigan and the Lucille Mehaffie Young Artist Award. He currently serves as an instructor at Bowling Green State University and assistant organist at the historic Mariners’s Church in Detroit.