LOS ANGELES RESIDENT AND UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GRADUATE MONICA COVITT SELECTED AS FALL 2009 INTERN AT THE KENNEDY CENTER

WASHINGTON, D.C.- The John. F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts selected Monica Covitt of Los Angeles, CA for its prestigious internship program this fall as part of the Kennedy Center Institute for Arts Management.

Monica, daughter of Gary and Laurie Covitt, graduated from the Cleveland High School Humanities Magnet as valedictorian of her class. In June 2009, she graduated Magna Cum Laude from The University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music with an emphasis on Education and a K-12 Teaching Credential in Music. Monica was on the Dean’s Honor List from 2005-2009 and a recipient of the Jacqueline and Ben Klein Memorial Scholarship. A classically trained musician in voice and piano, Monica taught voice and music at a middle school during all four years of college, has taught early childhood music to children ages 2-5, and has music directed four children’s musical productions.

While at the Kennedy Center, Monica is an intern in the education department’s National Partnerships program. The National Partnerships program creates liaisons between arts education outreach programs and public school districts across the country. Monica assists with the planning and implementation of major national meetings: a membership annual conference, advisory committee meetings, grant and awards programs, and artist training seminars. She is also responsible for a national newsletter.

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GRADUATE PENELOPE TURGEON SELECTED AS FALL 2009 INTERN AT THE KENNEDY CENTER

WASHINGTON, D.C.- The John. F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts selected Penelope Turgeon, of Union City, CA, for its prestigious internship program this fall as part of the Kennedy Center Institute for Arts Management.

Penelope, a native of Quebec, Canada, immigrated to the United States and graduated from James Logan High in Union City, CA. Penelope received a Bachelor of Arts in music performance and a Music Masters from UCLA in June 2009. While at UCLA, Penelope was an Orchestra Manager for two years, and was awarded a Teaching Assistantship and a Gluck Fellowship.

While at the Kennedy Center, Penelope is an intern in the National Symphony Orchestra Operations department. Penelope works in symphony orchestra production and administration with the NSO Operations and Productions staff; this includes administrative and technical preparation for rehearsals and concerts, various festivals, and tours among other programs. Penelope is involved in projects and assignments (as determined by the NSO’s season programming) while experiencing how symphonic, education, pops, and televised concerts are produced.

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THE KENNEDY CENTER INSTITUTE FOR ARTS MANAGEMENT

The Institute is an experiential training initiative that is rooted in the practical application of management skills within the context of administering programs and initiatives in an international arts organization. Through internships, fellowships, and management and board symposia, participants examine the many roles and responsibilities of successful managers in today’s complex world of performing arts.

Internships: The Kennedy Center selected 22 interns for a fall internship from September 8 through December 11, 2009. Assignments are full time and responsibilities include assisting with the administrative and/or technical aspects of the Center. In addition, interns attend weekly seminars led by executives of the Center and other major arts institutions in Washington, D.C., that cover major issues in arts management. The Kennedy Center Internship Program is recognized by the Princeton Review as one of the “Top 100 Internships” in the United States.

Fellowships: The Kennedy Center Institute for Arts Management also offers fellowships for highly qualified and motivated individuals who aspire to manage performing arts institutions and arts service organizations in both the public and private sector. The 10-month long arts management fellowship program, which opened with its first class of Fellows in September 2001, includes extensive coursework in contemporary business practices and practical management experience through the lens of planning, presenting and producing performing arts programming at an internationally recognized performing arts institution. Fellows are assigned a Kennedy Center mentor and have departmental assignments in addition to ongoing course work. Participants also attend performances and additional educational events and complete significant projects within the context of the Kennedy Center.

For more information about internships and/or fellowships contact:
The Kennedy Center Education Department (202) 416-8800
http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/artsmanagement

“On September 25 at Schoenberg Hall, the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and the Confucius Institute hosted the opening concert of a United States tour by the Shanghai Jiaotong University Symphony Orchestra. Shanghai Jiaotong University is one of China’s great scientific research institutions, and its orchestra has a long and honored tradition in China and abroad. The hall was packed for this free concert, led by one of China’s most revered conductors, Cao Peng, and the program was a fascinating mix of classical symphonic showpieces and arrangements of Chinese traditional folk and classical music. The students in the orchestra – none of whom are music majors – played with great skill and energy (especially given that they had just arrived in the U.S. the day before and had spent most of their concert day touring Universal Studios!) The president of the university, a former violinist in the orchestra, spoke proudly to the audience before the concert, and it was my pleasure to present Maestro Cao Peng with a Certificate of Artistic Achievement from our school.

The president and others from the university expressed their strong interest in inviting UCLA Philharmonia to perform in Shanghai. Nothing would please me more!

The role of Lina in the Metropolitan Opera’s coming production of Verdi’s “Stiffelio” will be shared between the American sopranos Sondra Radvanovsky and Julianna Di Giacomo. They are replacing Angela Marambio, the Chilean soprano, who has withdrawn, the Met said in a news release. Ms. Radvanovsky will sing the performances on Jan. 11 and 14, and the matinee of Jan. 30; Ms. Di Giacomo will sing the role on Jan. 19, 23 and 26. Both are performing the role for the first time at the Met. Ms. Radvanovsky previously sang Lina at London’s Royal Opera Covent Garden in 2007, and has performed in Verdi operas including “Il Trovatore” at the Met. Ms. Di Giacomo made her Met debut as Clotilde in “Norma” in 2007, and made her La Scala debut this past season as Lucrezia in Verdi’s “I Due Foscari.”

The Met’s performances of “Stiffelio” will be conducted by Plácido Domingo. Its cast also includes José Cura in the title role, Andrzej Dobber as Stankar and Phillip Ens as Jorg.

rscheinin@mercurynews.com
Posted: 09/13/2009 04:17:14 PM PDT
Updated: 09/13/2009 06:56:19 PM PDT
All photos by Pat Kirk.

Krassen Karagiozov as Lescaut and Alexander Boyer as the Opera San Jose’s new production of “Manon” takes off like a jet. It’s a refreshing French confection. It’s chiffon. It’s lace. It’s sexy. With great tunes and stylish singing, it goes down like a cool lemonade— at least for its first hour at the California Theatre, where “Manon” opened Saturday to kick off the company’s 26th season.

Along with “Carmen” and “Faust” and one or two others, “Manon,” by Jules Massenet, is a mainstay of the French repertoire. Its music is exhilarating. And its story is a keeper: It’s about the young beauty, Manon, torn between true love and luxury. She chooses love, then luxury, then love again. But her impetuousness leads to a nose-dive and — hey, this is opera — death.

Still, for the first hour it’s about the blossoming of love.

And with the opening night cast (one of this production’s two rotating casts), director Dianna Shuster gives us a kittenish couple in the throes of love: soprano Khori Dastoor as Manon, tenor Alexander Boyer as the Chevalier des Grieux, a student. They fall into each other’s arms in about three seconds, and then we’re off: Dastoor and Boyer, resident artists with the company, flying about in a series of exquisitely lyric arias and duets.

They cuddle. They lounge in bed. Until our fickle heroine gets bought off by a rich stud, De Brétigny (mellifluous baritone Adam Meza), who is part of a plot to abduct Chevalier — thereby bringing Manon into the stud’s 24-carat lair. At last, she’s rich.

But she is complicit in the abduction. And now the story, in its final 90 minutes, darkens: Manon grows progressively complex, a woman of spirit and ambition, of conflicting desires, and very self-aware; she understands the choices she makes and her failings.
Saturday, it was Dastoor who carried the show from this point forward.

Mirroring the deepening of Manon’s character, the soprano’s voice took on new layers, sparkled with new colors. This is her third season with Opera San Jose, and Dastoor has been learning new tricks: Saturday, her pianissimi (whispered signings) were beautifully controlled — and riveting. Dastoor held the stage with a murmur. Her acting was as confident and expressive as her singing.

Boyer, however, isn’t so comfortable in his body. As the innocent student, he was excellent, a goofy guy in love, singing with sweetness, warmth and power.

But as the Chevalier whose life has come asunder — he becomes a priest after the abduction, then rejoins Manon in a life of gambling and social extravagance — Boyer got stuck. He was physically stiff — Little Lord Fauntleroy in his satin suit — and seemed blocked in his efforts to go deeper into the role.

Likewise, the orchestra, crisp and flowing through the first hour, didn’t break new ground as the action twisted onstage. Conductor Joseph Marcheso might want to stir the pot, set those emotional undercurrents roiling as the plot darkens.

Hats off to Larry Hancock, the company’s general manager and production director, who takes on an additional role here: set designer. Within the walls of his 18th-century classical rooms, singing women roamed in lavish Watteau gowns, men in their powdered wigs. The chorus was exuberant — especially the women, whose ensemble piece in the second act was intricate and lovely.

As the Count des Grieux, father of the Chevalier, bass Silas Elash was grandly sonorous. As Lescaut, Manon’s cousin, baritone Krassen Karagiozov was suave, for sure, but lacked bite; Lescaut should be a rougher character.

As Guillot de Morfontaine, the lech who ultimately brings down Manon, tenor Bill Welch hammed it up — and craftily revealed just how repulsive this character really is. His dotty lady admirers (soprano Jillian Boye and mezzo-sopranos Cathleen Candia and Betany Coffland) formed a virtuoso power-trio in close harmony.

In the end, director Shuster, whose “The Elixir of Love” was a delight last season, hasn’t quite unlocked the secrets to “Manon.”

She has also made some questionable cuts, eliminating an entire festive scene in which Manon sings her two biggest numbers, one of them a coloratura extravaganza in which she boasts of her beauty and material acquisitions. Like a beanbag, this aria has been dropped by Shuster into a later scene, where Dastoor, as might be expected, sang it with aplomb.

“During my Spring Quarter sabbatical leave, I traveled to Italy to give a series of talks on Handel opera and teach master classes to voice students at the top music school in Tuscany, the “Luigi Cherubini” Conservatory in Florence. Here, I’m working with a young professional Italian soprano on German art song.”

“In June I was in residence at the Astoria Music Festival, located in a charming port town at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. While there, I taught master classes and private lessons to the singers of the Festival Young Artists program and performed as soloist with orchestra in performances of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, in a fully staged production of Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen” (in the title role), with chamber ensemble singing Astor Piazzolla’s “Tango Songs”, and as The Old Lady in “Easily Assimilated” from Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide”. Below is the review of “The Fairy Queen” that appeared in the Portland “Oregonian”. Paragraphs #4 and #6 mention my work.

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Land of enchantment at the Astoria Music Festival
by David Stabler, The Oregonian
Sunday June 28, 2009, 12:46 PM

ASTORIA — Fantasy is alive and well in Astoria. Fairies dance, lovers kiss and a queen falls in love with an ass. Yes, we’re in a mid-summer night’s dream, but not Shakespeare’s. Henry Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen” is its musical equivalent, a lyrical semi-opera based on the familiar play, so we are once again in the land of nod, presided over by the sleep-induced Titania, Queen of the Fairies.

The Astoria Music Festival, going strong in its seventh season (it ended Sunday) drew a soldout crowd to the Liberty Theater, Saturday, for this rarely seen masterpiece of the 17th century. An obscure choice for a summer festival? Yes. But definitely an enchanted evening, as unstuffy as they come, filled with bright, inventive music, elegant dancing, bawdy humor, wonderful singing and a colorful mix of flowing period costumes and sleek modern dress. The only drawback is that it did not repeat.

For all its obscurity — artistic director Keith Clark claimed this was its West Coast premiere — “The Fairy Queen” made a certain amount of sense at the festival, where risk and reward go hand in hand. Clark’s tenure has seen other seriously creative productions, including the regional premiere of “The Stone Philosopher” with its recently discovered and much heralded contribution from Mozart.

Part of the pleasure came from the unexpected mix of elements: veteran singers such as Richard Zeller and soprano Juliana Gondek strutting about with young singers just starting their careers; a briskly paced hybrid orchestra of modern and Baroque instruments (theorbo, harpsichord); and an overall feel of professionalism supported by community enthusiasm (the performers stay in local homes).

Too many highlights to name, but the orchestra was one, catapulting Purcell’s endlessly inventive music into the auditorium with color, character and zest. From brassy fanfares to weeping laments, the players enlarged each of the many scenes with clarity nicely scaled to the room.

Another was Titania’s lament, “O let me weep,” which stopped the show when Gondek brought forth a voice of mahogany tone and aching musical depth in her halting phrases. Her voice was a reflection of full-bodied grief. Now there’s a singing actress.

Everywhere the eye looked, something was happening, thanks to New York director and choreographer Catherine Turocy. Two members of her New York Baroque Dance Company circled and bowed with stately grace. Fairies flirted, monkeys pranced, singers courted, laughed and wept and a poet got drunk.

It all sounds improbable, and it is. A cumbersome and episodic 17th-century masque that could have bumped along in fits and starts, but no. Clark’s production lifted our spirits, tickled our ribs and touched our hearts. That’s entertainment.
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“I rounded out my summer travel with my annual stint as Head of Voice Faculty at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival on the Big Island. Here I performed on several concerts and taught students ranging in age from 14 to 72. This year we had an outstanding collection of young professional artists from the U.S. and Canada, as well as two incoming UCLA MM Voice students. Snorkeling and swimming with the “honu” (the endangered giant green sea turtles that inhabit the shallow water) provided an almost daily thrill, not to mention a great suntan!

Here’s a YouTube clip of my Opening Gala performance posted by a fan of the festival. I’m singing a piece by Astor Piazzolla arranged by UCLA DMA composer Bruno Louchouarn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlKxxGNFx4c
Alguien le Dice al Tango

The program presented was:

Adagio and Fuga of Sonata in G minor for violin solo–J.S. Bach
Sonata for violin and piano in G minor–Claude Debussy
La Valse–Maurice Ravel
Scherzo-Taranteel op. 16–Henryk Wieniawski

Photo, left to right: Professor of Violin Guillaume Sutre, Ji Young An, Young Ah Ha, Mrs. Carol Block

The art song class, with Judy Hansen and Vladimir Chernov, center

Daniel Suk, tenor, singing “Don Juan’s Serenade” by Tchaikovsky.