18 JANUARY 2016

NASHVILLE SYMPHONY & CHORUSGIANCARLO GUERRERO, conductorKELLY CORCORAN, chorus directorJAMES BUTTON, oboeJAMES ZIMMERMANN, clarinetMIAH PERSSON, sopranoLEAH WOOL, mezzo-sopranoJEREMY OVENDEN, tenorANDREW FOSTER-WILLIAMS, bass-baritone

JENNIFER HIGDONOboe Concerto James Button, oboe | Live recording

FRANK TICHELI Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra

1. Rhapsody for George2. Song for Aaron3. Riffs for Lenny

James Zimmermann, clarinet | Live recording

INTERMISSION

THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, AT 7 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY, JANUARY 8 & 9, AT 8 PM

REQUIEM

NASHVILLE SYMPHONY & CHORUS

MOZART’S

19INCONCERT

C L A S S I C A L S E R I E S

T H A N K YO U TO O U R S P O N S O R S

A E G I S

EST. 2013

FOUNDATIONS C I E N C E S

This presentation of Mozart’s Requiem is made possible in part by the generosity of Allis Dale and John Gillmor.

WEEKEND CONCERT SPONSOR

MEDIA PARTNER

OFFICIAL PARTNER

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZARTEdited by Robert Levin Requiem, K. 626

INTROITUSRequiem aeternamKyrie

SEQUENZDies iraeTuba mirumRex tremendaeRecordareConfutatisLacrimosaAmen

OFFERTORIUMDomine JesuHostias

SANCTUSSanctusBenedictus

AGNUS DEIAgnus Dei

COMMUNIOLux aeternaCum sanctis tuis

Miah Persson, sopranoLeah Wool, mezzo sopranoJeremy Ovenden, tenorAndrew Foster-Williams, bass-baritone

20 JANUARY 2016

TONIGHT’S CONCERTAT A GLANCE

JENNIFER HIGDON Oboe Concerto

• Composer Jennifer Higdon grew up in East Tennessee, graduating from Heritage High School in Maryville. Today, she’s one of the 10 most frequently performed American composers writing for orchestras today. She is the recipient of both a Pulitzer Prize (for her Violin Concerto) and a GRAMMY® Award (for her Percussion Concerto). One of her latest works is an opera based on Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain.

• Higdon’s Oboe Concerto will be a showcase for Nashville Symphony principal oboist James Button, an accomplished performer who earlier this year served as a guest principal with the Chicago Symphony. According to the composer, this work “gives the instrument a chance to highlight its extraordinary lyrical gift…. I have always thought of the oboe as being a most majestic instrument, and it was a pleasure to be able to create a work that would highlight its beauty and grace.”

FRANK TICHELI Clarinet Concerto

• Los Angeles-based composer Frank Ticheli is winner of a 2012 award from the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters. His Clarinet Concerto will feature the Nashville Symphony’s principal clarinetist, James Zimmermann, a member of the orchestra since 2008. The piece is a tribute to iconic American composers: George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein. Respectively titled Rhapsody for George, Song for Aaron and Riffs for Lenny, each movement is a showcase for the alternately jazzy and lyrical qualities of the clarinet.

MOZART Requiem

• Mozart’s Requiem is his final masterpiece. The work adapts the Latin Mass for the dead — which is eerily appropriate, given that the composer died in 1791, as he was in the midst of writing it. The incomplete work was given its first public performance at a memorial for the composer just five days after his passing.

• Mozart’s widow, Constanze, asked one of his students, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, to complete the score of the Requiem. This is the version that most listeners heard until the 1990s, when Mozart scholar and pianist Robert Levin created a new edition of the score. Working from the composer’s long-lost musical sketches, Levin yielded a version of the Requiem that better matched Mozart’s musical style.

• Despite its hybrid creation, Mozart’s Requiem is moving example of the composer’s artistry. It reflects several notable influences, including the liturgical ceremonies he heard as a young person, the Baroque styles of his predecessors Bach and Handel, and the music of his peers, who included Michael Haydn (brother of the better-known Josef ). Based around the key of D-minor, it also contains some of the composer’s darkest music and reflects the same dramatic sensibilities that come through in celebrated operas such as Don Giovanni. CONSTANZE MOZART

JAMES BUTTON

21INCONCERT

CL

AS

SIC

AL

JENNIFER HIGDON

Composed: 2005First performance: September 9, 2005, with soloist Kathy Greenbank and The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra First Nashville Symphony performance: These are the first Nashville Symphony performances.Estimated length: 17 minutes

Oboe Concerto

Born on December 31, 1962 in Brooklyn, New York; currently resides in Philadelphia

Jennifer Higdon is a major figure in contemporary classical music: she received

the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto and a GRAMMY® Award in 2010 for her Percussion Concerto. Over the last decade, Higdon has established herself among the top 10 living American composers most frequently performed by symphony orchestras. Her piece blue cathedral is one of America’s most-performed contemporary orchestral works, having tallied more than 600 performances worldwide since 2000. Her works have been recorded on over four dozen CDs. Higdon’s debut opera, based on Charles Frazier’s best-selling novel Cold Mountain, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, was premiered by Santa Fe Opera in August 2015 and will travel to Opera Philadelphia, Minnesota Opera, and North Carolina Opera in the next two seasons.

Born in Brooklyn, Higdon came to the world of classical music relatively late. She grew up in Atlanta and rural Tennessee, with much exposure

to country, rock, and — thanks to her parents’ involvement with the visual arts — avant-garde art happenings. At age 15 she decided to teach herself flute and became a performance major at Bowling Green State University.

The idea of composing, Higdon recalls, emerged almost by chance after a few years of study, when her flute teacher asked her to write a short piece. “I found arranging sounds to be fascinating,” she says. Soon the desire to compose became unavoidable, taking over her life. Now, with commissions pouring in and her music in high demand, Higdon is frequently on the road yet still maintains the discipline to compose several hours every day of the week. Higdon also holds the Rock Chair in Composition at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her music is published exclusively by Lawdon Press.

The concerto format figures prominently in Higdon’s catalogue. Examples include an acclaimed Concerto for Orchestra, a bluegrass-styled concerto for string trio, and concertos for piano, violin, viola, soprano sax, and percussion, as well as an innovative concerto she wrote for the chamber ensemble eighth blackbird.

The composer has expressed a special fondness for her Oboe Concerto, which was commissioned by the Minnesota Commissioning Club. The prospect of tailoring a concerto to a particular artist’s personality, notes Higdon, stimulates her creativity — and this is certainly the case with the Oboe Concerto, which was inspired by the playing of Kathy Greenback, principal clarinet of The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. “When I met with them, I remember them talking about how even her tuning note sounds like ‘butter.’

“The music is written so that it should speak to the audience, without them having to have an explanation,” adds the composer. While other orchestral works such as blue cathedral have at times drawn from the impetus of imagery, Higdon points out that no imagery lies behind the composition of the Oboe Concerto: “Just the instrument itself and the beauty of Kathy’s tone.” In his review of the world premiere, Minneapolis Star Tribune critic Michael Anthony wrote that the Oboe Concerto “shares the shimmering beauty and rhythmic playfulness of many of her other works.”

HIGDON SAYS, “THE MUSIC IS WRITTEN SO THAT IT SHOULD SPEAK TO THE AUDIENCE, WITHOUT THEM HAVING TO HAVE AN EXPLANATION.”

22 JANUARY 2016

CL

AS

SIC

AL

“This Oboe Concerto gives the instrument a chance to highlight its extraordinary lyrical

gift. The beauty of the soaring line intrigued me as a starting point, and then the realization that the oboe makes a great partner for duets within an orchestral texture sent me in the direction of creating interactions with other instruments in the supporting ensemble.

“This instrument’s playful quality in quick-moving passages set the tone for the faster sections. I have always thought of the oboe as being a most majestic instrument, and it was a pleasure to be able to create a work that would highlight its beauty and grace.”

In addition to solo oboe, the Concerto is scored for 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), oboe doubling on English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 1 percussionist, and strings.

“The first movement, titled Rhapsody for George after a wink to the famous clarinet

solo — with thanks to the Gershwin Estate — is built largely from chromatic, jazzy, relentless flurries of 16th notes, volleyed back and forth between the soloist and ensemble. This high-speed game is intensified by a walking bass line, jazzy syncopations, and heavy backbeats that come and go at will.

“The second movement, Song for Aaron, evokes the gentle, open-aired quality sometimes heard in Copland’s slow movements. If the listener notices a song-like quality here, it may be because the music was in fact originally composed for voice. Thus, this movement is an adaptation of my earlier work (An American Dream, for soprano and orchestra), but altered significantly to suit the unique lyrical traits of the clarinet.

“While composing the final movement, Riffs for

IN THE COMPOSER’S WORDS

IN THE COMPOSER’S WORDS

FRANK TICHELI

Composed: 2010First performance: April 17, 2010, in Vilnius, Lithuania, with Håkan Rosengren as the soloist and Juozas Domarkas conducting the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra First Nashville Symphony performance: These are the first Nashville Symphony performances.Estimated length: 21 minutes

Clarinet Concerto

Born on January 21, 1958, in Monroe, Louisiana; currently resides in Los Angeles

“It’s a process in which the head and the heart are constantly keeping each other in check,”

Frank Ticheli says about the art of composing. “The tension between those two forces is what creates a piece of music. And it’s a real mystery, a hall of mirrors: the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know.”

Also a highly respected teacher and mentor, Ticheli has taught at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California since the early 1990s. He studied composition with William Bolcom and others at the University of Michigan and has won such accolades as the Charles Ives Scholarship, the 2012 Arts and Letters Award, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship. His catalogue of orchestral, choral, and chamber works includes pieces commissioned by Chamber Music America, the American Music Center, and the Orange County, California-based Pacific Symphony, where he served as composer-in-residence for seven years. Ticheli has also built a reputation as a composer for concert band and as a guest conductor.

Wishing for years to compose a concerto specifically for the clarinet, Ticheli found his opportunity when he received a commission from the Swedish-American clarinetist Håkan Rosengren. “His fiery virtuosity, combined with his poignantly beautiful sound, had a direct influence on my creative decisions throughout the work,” notes Ticheli. Cast in the familiar three-movement format, the Clarinet Concerto also pays homage to a trio of American musical icons: George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein.

23INCONCERT

CL

AS

SIC

AL

One of the most haunting aspects of Mozart’s Requiem is its state of incompletion. Over

the past two centuries, countless scholars and Mozart aficionados have pondered the extent to which the Requiem as we know it represents the composer’s own musical thoughts. A correspondingly wide variety of theories has been vented, but the genesis of the work is more or less as follows:

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Composed: 1791, though Mozart died before he could complete the Requiem First performance: Part of the Requiem was performed as a memorial for Mozart on December 10, 1791, while a performance of the posthumously completed score was arranged for his widow Constanze on January 2, 1793. First Nashville Symphony performance: November 9-11, 1978, with guest conductor Robert ShawEstimated length: 47 minutes

Requiem (Robert Levin edition)

Born on January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria; died on December 5, 1791, in Vienna

AS HE BECAME MORE ENGROSSED IN COMPOSING THE REQUIEM, MOZART REPORTEDLY BEGAN TO IMAGINE THAT HE WAS WRITING IT FOR HIMSELF.

Lenny, I imagined Bernstein perched on a pulpit (a podium?), passionately preaching about Music as a powerful and necessary force for humanity. In a sense, I pay tribute to his lifelong enthusiasm, unleashed through his conducting, composing, performing, and teaching, and in countless other ways. Like the opening movement, Riffs for Lenny is somewhat jazzy, but now in a more, sultry, gospel-like manner. It swoons, sighs, seduces, and then suddenly takes off in double-time, dancing all the way.”

In addition to solo clarinet, the Concerto is scored for piccolo and 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 3 percussionists, piano, and strings.

In the summer of 1791, in between work on his two last operas, Mozart was approached by an emissary of the Austrian Count Franz Walsegg-Stuppach and offered a generous fee to compose a Requiem, which the dilettantish Count intended to pass off as his own work. The offer came during a time of financial troubles for Mozart, and he readily accepted the commission from the stranger, who declined to disclose his or the Count’s identity.

These mysterious circumstances have added to the Romantic lure of a work that the composer reportedly began to imagine he was writing for himself as he became more engrossed in it. At one point his wife, Constanze, enforced a moratorium and withheld the score, so concerned had she become by the toll it was taking on her husband.

And of course the topic of Mozart’s successful peer and sometime rival, Antonio Salieri, has given rise to an entire category of its own within the lore surrounding Mozart’s Last Year. The scenario of Salieri murdering Mozart has made for intriguing theater (and film) but is historically absurd.

Of the Requiem’s movements, only the Introitus and Kyrie were written in full score. Along with the strings and basso continuo, the orchestration calls for the darker woodwind timbres of basset horns (a type of clarinet) and bassoons and a solemn brass component of trumpets and trombones, punctuated by timpani. Mozart managed to sketch out only the vocal parts and continuo line of the Dies irae sequence (suggesting its instrumentation here and there); part of the Lacrimosa (where the manuscript breaks off after eight bars); and the Offertory (which includes the Domine Jesu and Hostias movements).

The most frequently encountered version of the Requiem is the one completed shortly after Mozart’s death by his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr, at the request of Constanze. The longstanding

24 JANUARY 2016

CL

AS

SIC

AL

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

There can be no mistaking Mozart’s authentic voice in the music that frames the Requiem

and in the Dies irae sequence. These passages represent his most mature style, while at the same time drawing on his earliest memories of the impressive liturgical ceremonies of Catholicism from Salzburg. Part of the mixture also includes the music he had been developing in his recent score for The Magic Flute, which expresses the enlightened ideals of his Masonic humanism.

The eminent musicologist Christoph Wolf, author of a detailed study of the Requiem, points out that Mozart would have undertaken a wide-ranging study of models from “the tradition of

funeral music.” These extended from a then-famous Requiem by his former Salzburg colleague Michael Haydn (brother of Joseph) to other contemporary works, as well as the remarkable legacy of Bach and Handel that Mozart had been rediscovering during his Vienna years.

In his recent book Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune, Wolff underscores of the importance of Mozart’s rediscovery of Baroque contrapuntal polyphony for the Requiem: “The work essentially represents a folding of Handelian and Bachian ideas and principles into Mozart’s very own language of music.” Overall, Wolff concludes, the Requiem “creates the awareness of both artistic consummation and irretrievable loss, a loss clearly extending beyond the Requiem fragment as such and casting a light on the much larger fragment of an abbreviated creative life.”

The Requiem contains some of Mozart’s darkest music. To give resonance to the solemnity and terror of death, he instinctively draws on his operatic sensibility, using as his central tonality the key of D minor — the key with which he had conjured the sounds of Don Giovanni’s fateful reckoning.

Mozart’s score stages a drama of contrasts between darkness and light, despair and consolation, threat and hope. It is a drama whose tone is announced immediately by the solemn and relentless processional that opens the work — the fact of death itself in music.

Rays suggesting redemption shine through intermittently, perhaps most movingly in the Recordare, with its plea to be remembered. Significantly, Mozart scores this passage for the solo quartet of singers. In his sublime setting, the plea is not only for the departed, but also for those left grieving.

The Requiem is scored for a quartet of vocal soloists, mixed chorus, and an orchestra of 2 basset horns, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings with organ continuo, 1 percussionist, and strings.

— Thomas May, the Nashville Symphony’s program annotator, is a writer and translator who covers classical and contemporary music. He blogs at memeteria.com.

consensus used to be that Süssmayr orchestrated all of the Dies irae and Offertory and then composed the rest of the Lacrimosa and all of the Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei, though he recycled Mozart’s Introitus and Kyrie music for the concluding Lux aeterna and Cum sanctis tuis.

But how much of those later sections Süssmayr really “composed” — as opposed to implementing musical ideas Mozart had passed on to him —has remained a matter of vigorous debate. Constanze’s claim that Süssmayr merely followed instructions dictated by her husband was long regarded with skepticism. Yet as the music writer Andrew Raeburn reports, the discovery of a cache of sketches in the composer’s own hand in 1962 suggested that Constanze’s assertion might have a grain of truth.

In the 1990s the Mozart scholar and pianist Robert Levin followed through on those implications and prepared an alternative edition of the Requiem. While basing his work on the Süssmayr completion, Levin emended and clarified some of the orchestration to make it more closely match his understanding of Mozartean style. The most obvious changes are found in Levin’s recasting of the Osanna fugue and in his substitution of a new fugue for the simple cadence on “Amen” at the end of Süssmayr’s setting for the Lacrimosa. Here Levin interpolates a fully worked-out fugue that he composed in the manner of Mozart, drawing on material from one of the belatedly discovered sketches.

26 JANUARY 2016

CL

AS

SIC

AL

ABOUT THE SOLOISTS

JAMES ZIMMERMANN, clarinet

James Zimmermann joined the Nashville

Symphony as Principal Clarinet in 2008. Originally from Hillsborough, New

Jersey, he holds a B.M. from the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and a M.M. from the University of Minnesota. His principal teachers were Yehuda Gilad and Burt Hara. He has performed at music festivals such as the National Repertory Orchestra, Sarasota Music Festival, and the Tanglewood Music Center, where he was awarded the Gino B. Cioffi Prize for Outstanding Woodwind Performance. Prior to joining the Nashville Symphony, he was a member of the Pacific Symphony.

Outside of the Schermerhorn, Zimmermann works closely with the symphony’s education and community engagement programs — he is a private teacher at the W.O. Smith School and also gives workshops and performs in many Nashville schools and community centers. Additionally, he maintains a private teaching studio and plays on a wide variety of recording projects all around town. He resides south of Nashville with his family.

Zimmermann is a Buffet Group USA performing artist who plays exclusively on Buffet Crampon clarinets. He is also a Vandoren Artist and plays exclusively on Vandoren reeds.

JAMES BUTTON, oboe

Originally from Australia, oboist

James Button made his solo debut with the Melbourne Symphony at the age of 17. Principal oboist of the

Nashville Symphony since 2011, he was previously a member of the Seoul Philharmonic and the New World Symphony. In 2015 he served as guest

MIAH PERSSON, soprano

Swedish soprano Miah Persson has

worked all over the world as a recitalist and concert artist, as well as on the operatic stage. Throughout

her distinguished career, she has appeared at the Wiener Staatsoper, Metropolitan Opera New York, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Aix-en-Provence Festival, Berlin State Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Opera du Rhin Strasbourg, New National Theatre Tokyo, Theater an der Wien, and the Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona, among many others.

Engagements in the 2015/16 season and beyond include Governess in Turn of the Screw at La Scala; Brahms’ Requiem with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Spain; Blank Out, a new work by Michel van der Aa, for Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam, Rome, and Rotterdam; Peer Gynt with Vienna Symphony Orchestra; Donna Elvira at the Liceu Barcelona; Four Last Songs with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; Fiordiligi with Tokyo Symphony Orchestra; concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra; and Persson’s return to London’s Wigmore Hall.

principal with the Chicago Symphony under Riccardo Muti.

Button has performed at the Verbier, Edinburgh, and Tanglewood Music Festivals, as well as Italy’s Spoleto Festival dei Duo Mondi and the Granada Festival of Music and Dance. In 2006, he performed the Beethoven Quintet for Piano and Winds with James Levine at the Verbier Festival. He attended Temple University and The Juilliard School, where his teachers were Jonathan Blumenfeld and Eugene Izotov, respectively. Other teachers include John Mack, John de Lancie, Joseph Turner, and Ian Falloon.

Button spends his summers in Santa Fe, N.M., performing as a member of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra.

27INCONCERT

CL

AS

SIC

AL

LEAH WOOL, mezzo-soprano

Mezzo-soprano Leah Wool has

been hailed by Opera News as “among the more distinctive and accomplished artists of her generation.”

This season, she returns with Boston Baroque as Holofernes in Juditha Triumphans.

Last season, Wool made anticipated returns with two companies: the San Francisco Symphony, for Handel’s Messiah, and the Utah Opera, for Dorabella in Così fan tutte. Highlights of previous seasons include appearances at the Metropolitan Opera as the Second Bridesmaid in Le Nozze di Figaro and as Marshal Murat’s Adjutant in War and Peace; as Angelina in La Cenerentola with Opera New Jersey (role début) and Opera Fairbanks; and performing with fellow Yale Opera alumni at Weill Recital Hall as part of the inaugural “Yale at Carnegie” series.

Sought after on the concert stage, Wool has appeared as mezzo-soprano soloist in Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor with Gloria Musicae, Haydn’s Theresienmesse with the New Jersey Symphony, Handel’s Messiah with the Utah Symphony, and Duruflé’s Requiem with the Greenwich Choral Society.

A two-time Regional Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Wool is also a 2008 Winner and a 2004 Encouragement Grant recipient of the Sullivan Foundation Awards. She was a second place winner in the 2005 Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation International Vocal Competition and subsequently made her Alice Tully Hall debut in the Foundation’s gala concert, receiving praise from Opera News as “the afternoon’s most arresting voice.” Other honors include the 2003 Judith Raskin Memorial Award from Santa Fe Opera.

Wool has been a Young Artist at Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Utah Symphony & Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Opera North, and the Caramoor Festival. She holds an Artist Diploma and Master of Music from Yale University and received her Bachelor of Music magna cum laude from Westminster Choir College.

JEREMY OVENDEN, tenor

Jeremy Ovenden studied with Norman

Bailey and Neil Mackie at The Royal College of Music, London, and privately with Nicolai Gedda. Plans

this season and beyond include Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni with the Freiburger Barockorchester in Prague, the title role of Idomeneo in concert at Theater an der Wien, and Enea in Steffani’s Amor vien dal destino for Staatsoper Berlin. Other current and forthcoming performances include title roles in Mozart’s Lucio Silla for La Monnaie, Brussels, and La Clemenza di Tito in Karl-Ernst Herrman’s production for Teatro Real, Madrid; Handel’s Messiah with the Chicago and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras; and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Recent roles include Nerone in L’Incoronazione di Poppea for Opéra National de Paris; Bajazet in Il Tamerlano for La Monnaie and Dutch National Opera; Ferrando in Così fan tutte for the Royal Opera, Covent Garden and Staatsoper Berlin; Belfiore in La Finta Giardiniera and Jupiter in Handel’s Semele at La Monnaie; and Don Ottavio in Berlin with Daniel Barenboim. In 2004 Ovenden made his debut at La Scala, Milan, in Salieri’s Europa Riconosciuta conducted by Riccardo Muti.

Concert appearances have included Mozart’s Requiem at the 2015 Edinburgh International Festival with the Budapest Festival Orchestra; Mozart’s Requiem at the BBC Proms and Mass in C Minor with Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra; and Haydn’s Seasons with the LSO and the late Sir Colin Davis.

Ovenden’s extensive discography includes Bach’s St. Mark and St. John Passions and Cantatas, Haydn’s Seasons and Creation, and an acclaimed recital of Mozart arias with OAE: An Italian Journey.

CL

AS

SIC

AL

Matthew Passion (Christus) with the Philadelphia Orchestra; Bach’s St. John Passion (Christus and arias) with The Cleveland Orchestra; and Haydn’s The Seasons with the Gabrieli Consort on a European tour and recording.

Recent opera roles have included Donner in Das Rheingold at the 2015 Ruhrtriennale Festival; Faraone in Rossini’s Mosé in Egitto and Alidoro in La Cenerentola for Welsh National Opera; Count Figaro at the Beaune Festival; Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande; and Villains in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffman in Moscow.

Concerts include Méphistophélès in Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust with the Russian National Orchestra; Bach’s St. John Passion (Christus) with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Haydn’s The Seasons and Mozart’s Requiem with the LSO; Mozart’s Requiem and Handel’s Messiah with the New York Philharmonic; Beethoven’s Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II with the San Francisco Symphony; and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (arias) and Mozart’s Requiem with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

ANDREW FOSTER-WILLIAMS, baritone

Andrew Foster-Williams is a

Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, London. Opera highlights this season

and beyond include Balstrode in Peter Grimes for Theater an der Wien; Telramund in Lohengrin for La Monnaie, Brussels; the title role in Saint-Saëns’ Henry VIII on a European tour and recording; and Donner and Gunther in Opera North’s Wagner Ring Cycle.

Concert plans include Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, with whom he will also appear in concerts including music by Bach and Mendelssohn; Haydn’s The Creation with Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia and the Porto Symphony Orchestra; Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass with Orchestre Métropolitain Montreal; Bach’s St.

CL

AS

SIC

ALNASHVILLE SYMPHONY CHORUS

SOPRANOBeverly AndersonKaren ArgentAlessandra AsteteEsther BaeAmie BatesElizabeth BeldenJill BoehmeSue ChoiSara CurtissClaire Delcourt Amanda DierSarah DonovanAshlinn DowlingKatie DoyleBecky Evans-YoungDenise FullerKelli GauthierGrace GuillJane HarrisonVanessa Jackson*Jené JacobsonCarla JonesMelissa JonesAlesia KelleyStephanie KopelBarbara Jean LaiferKatie LawrencePenny LueckenhoffJennifer LynnDiana McCormackMarisa McWilliamsAlisha MenardJean MillerJessica MooreCarolyn Naumann*Angela Pasquini CliffordIris PerezBeth RingDeborah SchraugerRenita Smith-CrittendonMaria Spear

Anna SpenceJennifer Goode StevensClair SusongMarva SwannMarjorie TaggartMarla ThompsonJennice ThrelkeldSarah UpchurchJan Staats VolkJanelle WaggenerPaige WetzelKathryn WhitakerSiane WilsonSylvia WynnBecky Young

ALTOCarol ArmesCathi CarmackKelsey ChristianLauren ChristiansTeresa CissellLisa CooperPaul CorbachoKaitlin CroffordJessica DavidJanet Keese DaviesCarla DavisLeriel DavisJune DyeCara FrankElizabeth GilliamDebra GreenspanJudith GriffinLeah Handelsman*Callie JacksonLeah KoestenStephanie KraftGabrielle LewisShelly McCormackSarah MillerStephanie Moritz

Lisa PellegrinElla RadcliffeStacy ReedGerda ReschDebbie ReylandBrooke SemarLaura SikesMadalynne SkeltonEmily StubbsChristina VanRegenmorterKelby WengerSarah WilsonLucy Wrenn

TENORIrving BasañezEric BoehmeBrandon ByrdChriston CarneyBrett Cartwright James CortnerDavid DuBoseDanny GordonKory HenkelCory HowellJohn MansonLynn McGillDon MottMark NaumannRyan NorrisBill PaulJohn PerryIsaac PullenKeith RamseyDavid RussellDavid M. Satterfield*Daniel SissomEddie SmithStephen F. SparksJoel TellinghuisenChristopher ThompsonBen Trotter

James WhiteScott WolfeJonathan Yeaworth

BASSGary AdamsGilbert AldridgeRobert A. AndersonAnthony BartaMitchell CrainKenton DickersonPatrick DunnevantThomas EdenScott EdwardsMark FilosaJohn FordRichard HatfieldMichael HopfeCarl JohnsonClinton Anthony JohnsonJustin KirbyNeal KoleskeTodd LawrenceBill Loyd*Rob MahurinTommy McCormacW. Bruce MeriwetherChristopher MixonSteve MyersDwayne MurraySteve PrichardFred RowlesScott SandersJesse SarloLarry StrachanDavid ThomasBrian WarfordEric Wiuff

* Section Leaders

KELLY CORCORAN, chorus director

Jim White, President

Cory Howell, Assistant Director

Sara Crigger, Librarian

Jeff Burnham, Accompanist