LAUGHTER AT THE HAPPY HOUR
Featuring Joan Morris, William Bolcom, William Sharp,
Amy Burton and John Musto
WEDNEsday, FEBRUARY 10 @ 5:30 PM EDT
This program is generously sponsored by Maurice & Linda Binkow.
February 10th is Joan Morris’s birthday, and we couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate it than to feature Joan and Bill for our next installment of Laughter at the Happy Hour. “One thing I loved about the Hobbit books,” Joan says, “is that on their birthdays, hobbits give presents to other people instead. So that’s what this program will be–my birthday present to our audience!”
Joan and Bill, along with the SongFest Art Song Festival at Colburn, have graciously shared a concert video with us so that we can share it with you for Joan’s birthday. These excerpts from An Evening of Popular Song, presented in 2012 at Thayer Hall in Los Angeles, California, include songs from The Great American Songbook and feature Joan and Bill, but also, baritone William Sharp, soprano Amy Burton and pianist/composer, John Musto. A very special archival performance from these important and expressive artists!
Named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America and honored with a Grammy Award (Best Classical Contemporary Composition) for his ground-breaking setting of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (the album received a total of 4 Grammys), William Bolcom is a composer of cabaret songs, concertos, sonatas, operas, symphonies, and much more. He was awarded the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his 12 New Etudes for piano. Bolcom joined the faculty of the University of Michigan’s School of Music in 1973, was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition in 1994, and retired in 2008 after 35 years.
Born in Portland, Oregon, chanteuse Joan Morris attended Gonzaga University in Spokane prior to her scholarship studies at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She continued speech and voice studies with Clifford Jackson and Frederica Schmitz-Svevo while appearing in off-Broadway and road productions and with harpist Jay Miller at the Cafe Carlyle, the Waldorf-Astoria’s Peacock Alley, and other Manhattan night spots. On their travels throughout the United States, Canada, and abroad, Joan Morris and William Bolcom frequently give master classes focusing on “classic American popular song.” Recent residencies have been at College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, Northwestern University, Rice University (Houston, TX), SongFest (Los Angeles, CA), and the University of Wisconsin/Madison. Occasionally they can be heard underlying TV documentaries featuring the American Popular Song era.
With a voice the New York Times has called, “luminous” and “lustrous,” versatile soprano Amy Burton has sung with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, at the White House, and with major opera companies and orchestras throughout the US, Europe, UK, Japan and Israel, as well as on recital and cabaret stages from New York to Barcelona. A frequent interpreter of 20th and 21st-Century music, she has premiered pieces by John Musto, Paul Moravec, Lee Hoiby, John Harbison, Richard Festinger, and Richard Danielpour, to name a few. Also specializing in French vocal music of the 1920s and 30s, Ms. Burton has performed both mélodies and chansons populaires throughout the US and Europe, and recorded a critically acclaimed CD with conductor Yves Abel, Souvenir de Printemps.
A sought-after teacher, Ms. Burton is Professor of Voice at the Mannes College of Music and the CUNY Graduate Center Doctoral program, and is on the faculty of SongFest at Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles. She has taught French Vocal Literature at Manhattan School of Music, and maintains a private voice studio in New York City. She has given master classes and residencies throughout the United States and in Paris.
Composer and pianist JOHN MUSTO is that all too rare exemplar, the classical composer whose work is both critically acclaimed and widely performed, who has also distinguished himself as an instrumental soloist and chamber musician. His activities encompass virtually every genre: orchestral and operatic, solo, chamber and vocal music, concerti, and music for film and television. His music embraces many strains of contemporary American concert music, enriched by sophisticated inspirations from jazz, ragtime and the blues. These qualities lend a strong profile to his vocal music, which ranges from a series of operas – Volpone, Later the Same Evening, Bastianello and The Inspector – to a catalogue of art songs that is among the finest of any living American composer.
Mr. Musto was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his orchestral song cycle Dove Sta Amore, and is a recipient of two Emmy awards, two CINE Awards, a Rockefeller Fellowship at Bellagio, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, and a Distinguished Alumnus award from the Manhattan School of Music. He is currently on the piano faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, where he also serves as Coordinator of the D.M.A. Program in Music Performance.
Baritone William Sharp has a reputation as a singer of artistry and versatility, garnering acclaim for his work in concert, recital, opera and recording. He performs actively, as he has for four decades. He has appeared with most major American symphony orchestras including those of New York, Chicago, Washington, Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. He has created world premiere performances and recordings of works by composers such as Leonard Bernstein, John Harbison, John Musto, Jon Deak, Libby Larson, David Del Tredici, Lori Laitman, Steven Paulus, Scott Wheeler, and David Liptak. His performances and recordings of baroque and earlier music are equally acclaimed.
Sharp’s discography of several dozen discs encompasses music spanning 900 years, from the 12th century to today. His 1990 world premiere recording of Leonard Bernstein’s last major work, Arias and Barcarolles won a GRAMMY Award, and he was nominated for a 1989 GRAMMY for Best Classical Vocal Performance for his recording featuring the works of American composers such as Virgil Thomson, John Musto, and Lee Hoiby. He made his New York recital debut in 1983, Kennedy Center debut in 1984, and Carnegie Hall recital debut in 1989. He is winner of the Carnegie Hall International American Music Competition, the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Prize, and the Geneva International Competition.
Sharp has taught voice at the university level since 1977 and joined the Peabody Conservatory faculty in 2002. His students are performing throughout the world in concert and opera.
