Nacole Palmer, Artistic Director
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Handel: Nine German Arias, Zenith Ensemble’s new album, is coming soon!
The exquisite and rarely performed pieces of Nine German Arias feature some of Handel’s most beautiful writing for the voice and a solo obbligato line, sung by soprano Nacole Palmer and played by solo baroque violinist, Marika Holmqvist. The voice and the violin shine in equal measure throughout the entire work, which explores themes of life, nature, and the divine.
Digital albums and CDs will be available.
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Artists
Marika Holmqvist
baroque violin
During her quarter-century career as baroque violinist, Marika Holmqvist has appeared as a concertmaster for orchestras and opera companies on three continents, directed ensembles on both sides of the Atlantic, and served as artistic co-director for groups in the USA such as Sinfonia New York and the Boston-based ensemble, Cambridge Concentus. Show more.
Cellist Rebecca Humphrey lives and works in the Philadelphia area where she is an active freelancer and member of several chamber ensembles including Kleine Kammermusik, Night Music, aMuse, Franklin Quartet, and Galline.
A versatile and engaging musician, Barbara Weiss’ diverse musical experiences range from recording and performing ancient classical Cambodian music to directing a baroque opera company to chairing a university’s early music program.
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Recordings
Handel: Nine German Arias
Handel: Nine German Arias, Zenith Ensemble’s new album, is coming soon!
The exquisite and rarely performed pieces of Nine German Arias feature some of Handel’s most beautiful writing for the voice and a solo obbligato line, sung by soprano Nacole Palmer and played by solo baroque violinist, Marika Holmqvist. The voice and the violin shine in equal measure throughout the entire work, which explores themes of life, nature, and the divine.
Digital albums and CDs will be available on November 15. Early bird sales start November 1!
Blue Hill Bach Christmas
In December, 2021, when live concerts were still cancelled due to the COVID pandemic, Blue Hill Bach reached out to Zenith Ensemble about creating an online concert of Christmas music for their music loving audiences.
The a cappella concert featured sopranos Michele Kennedy and Nacole Palmer, alto Melissa Attebury, tenor Eric Christopher Perry, and basses John David Adams and Charles Wesley Evans.
Thanks to our friends and concert presenters at Blue Hill Bach, you can watch that special concert here.
Bach Birthday Concert
Zenith Ensemble performs J.S. Bach’s ‘Jesu Meine Freude’ and other works with Abraham Ross, organ, and Sarah Freiberg, baroque cello.
Performed March 19, 2022 at St. Francis by the Sea Episcopal Church in Blue Hill, Maine.
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Thank you so much.
~ Nacole Palmer, Artistic Director
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Contact
Email contact:
info@zenithensemble.org
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Nacole Palmer, ArtisticDirector
soprano
Praised by the New York Times as “most impressive,” “gorgeous,” “lovely,” “precise, brightly projected” and for her “depth and nuance,” soprano Nacole Palmer is primarily an oratorio and concert artist, though she is also at home on the operatic and recital stages. Ms. Palmer is proud Maine resident, by way of New York City.
Carnegie Hall debut: Handel’s Messiah with the Oratorio Society of New York. Lincoln Center debut: Bach's Christmas Oratorio with the Riverside Choral Society. Other solo credits include acclaimed performances with The Clarion Music Society; Bach's St. John Passion and Orff's Carmina Burana with Seraphic Fire of Miami; Haydn’s Creation with the Ulster Choral Society; Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with Trinity Wall Street. Ms. Palmer’s first professional recording, The Complete Haydn Masses, was released on the NAXOS label; in it she joined The Choir of Trinity Wall Street as soprano soloist for Theresienmesse, Schöpfungsmesse, and Harmoniemesse, conducted by Jane Glover.
Ms. Palmer is the winner of several competitions, including the NY Oratorio Society Competition and the William Waite Concerto Competition of Yale University (Third Place). A Fellowship Recipient in the Vocal Chamber Music program at the Aspen Music Festival, Ms. Palmer is a graduate of Yale University (B.A.) and Rice University (M.M.).
Ms. Palmer, an arts and non-profit leader, is a passionate proponent of arts and music as avenues of strengthening communities. She is the mother of a vivacious, music-loving three year old. www.nacolepalmer.com
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Marika Holmvist
baroque violin
During her quarter-century career as baroque violinist, Marika Holmqvist has appeared as a concertmaster for orchestras and opera companies on three continents, directed ensembles on both sides of the Atlantic, and served as artistic co-director for groups in the USA such as Sinfonia New York and the Boston-based ensemble, Cambridge Concentus. Currently her leadership positions include Washington Bach Consort (DC), Reykjavik International Baroque Orchestra (Iceland) and Zenith Ensemble (New England), among others. Marika is also a dedicated and passionate educator. She has served as coach and guest leader for baroque operas at Cornell, Harvard and Rutgers Universities, and given master-classes and lectures at institutions across Europe. Alongside her master’s degree in baroque violin performance from the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague in the Netherlands, she also graduated with a master’s in baroque violin pedagogy—the first such degree ever granted in Europe. Her 20-odd recordings include the Grammy-nominated Handel’s Israel in Egypt with the Trinity Wall Street Choir and Baroque Orchestra. Marika has a Finn’s love for the outdoors and when she is not performing or teaching, you will most likely find her cross-country skiing, hiking, kayaking, or biking.
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Rebecca Humphrey
baroque cello
Cellist Rebecca Humphrey lives and works in the Philadelphia area where she is an active freelancer and member of several chamber ensembles including Kleine Kammermusik, Night Music, aMuse, Franklin Quartet, and Galline. Rebecca discovered the world of early music while studying at Oberlin College. Based on this newfound passion, she moved to Minneapolis and was principal cellist in the Lyra Consort for twelve years. During extended periods overseas, she collaborated with Kammerensemble Luzerne and Capriccio Basel in Switzerland, and Latitude 37 in Melbourne, Australia. Rebecca’s talent to craft bass lines, solos and vocal accompaniment makes her a sought after as a Bach specialist. Still, her greatest passion is exploring the intimate and collaborative dynamic of chamber music, which she has pursued as founding member of many ensembles notably Belladonna, which performed extensively in the US and Brazil. When not playing cello or viola da gamba, Becca will be on the tennis court, or in the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania.
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Barbara Weiss
harpsichord
A versatile and engaging musician, Barbara Weiss’ diverse musical experiences range from recording and performing ancient classical Cambodian music to directing a baroque opera company to chairing a university’s early music program. She has been on the faculty of both the Oberlin Conservatory and the Peabody Institute, as well as Concordia College and the University of Minnesota and Pennsylvania. She has taught at summer workshops such as the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, the Madison Early Music Festival, and Indiana University’s Recorder Academy. She currently lives in Asheville, NC, where she performs with Muses Delight, Pan Harmonia, North Carolina Baroque Orchestra and Asheville Baroque. Her collaborations include Belladonna, the Newberry Consort, Quicksilver, Chatham Baroque, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the King's Noyse, Apollo's Fire, the Chicago Opera Theater, North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Vermillion and Piffaro. Ms. Weiss has recorded with the Dorian, Flying Fish and Harmonia Mundi labels. She is the director of western North Carolina’s first melodica band, Next Road Over. She is currently teaching harpsichord at Swarthmore College.
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Jennifer Bates
soprano
“...the songs were sung with such passion, such conviction that I thought I could never forget those words.” ~ London’s The Independent
Maine native, soprano Jennifer Bates enjoys a multifaceted career in the opera, concert and recital worlds. Recent engagements include the role Pepik in the NY Philharmonic production of The Cunning Little Vixen, multiple appearances with NY City Opera, Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg with the American Symphony Orchestra, and was the featured soloist at the Bach Vespers Cantata Series, just steps from Lincoln Center, for ten years.
Highlights of previous seasons have included performances at Carnegie Hall, singing Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass with the New England Symphonic Ensemble, and many European engagements, including Elgar’s The Kingdom with Maestro Leonard Slatkin and the Philharmonia in the prestigious Three Choirs Festival, Haydn’s Creation with Robert
Tear at the Dartington International Summer Festival, Fauré’s Requiem with Sir David Willcocks at Royal Albert Hall, and Verdi’s Requiem at Windsor Castle.
Jennifer is a strong advocate of late 20th and 21st century music, singing numerous premiers of new works and revamping classics of the contemporary repertoire, including
Lukas Foss’ Time Cycle, and Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. She appeared regularly on NY City Opera’s VOX series and has sung on the ALEA III
series in Boston.
Ms. Bates was a Chamber Music Fellow at the Aspen Festival, a Scholar at the Steans Institute for Singers at the Ravinia Festival, and is on the faculty of Colby College. http://www.jenniferbates.org
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Michele Kennedy
soprano
Praised as “an excellent and impassioned” soprano possessing "a graceful tonal clarity that is a wonder to hear" (San Francisco Chronicle), Michele Kennedy is a versatile specialist in early and new music.
Michele's recent highlights include Bach St. John Passion (San Francisco Symphony), Poulenc Gloria (Bach Society of Saint Louis), Fireworks of Handel & Purcell (Portland Baroque), Handel Messiah (Trinity Wall Street), Smith Moore's MLK Oratorio (UC Berkeley), Monteverdi Vespers (Thirteen & Dark Horse Consort), and her Carnegie Hall debut with The Hollywood Film Orchestra. As a lifelong champion of new works, Michele has sung premieres with Experiments in Opera, Harlem Stage Opera, Kaleidoscope Ensemble, The New York Philharmonic, and with Lorelei Ensemble in a world premiere tour of Julia Wolfe’s Her Story that culminated this summer with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood.
This season, Michele will debut with Miami’s Seraphic Fire, Cleveland’s Les Délices, and with Washington Bach Consort in Haydn’s Die Schöpfung. Her singing is highlighted on a new recording of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 with The Thirteen and Dark Horse Consort, and in her solo debut album with AGAVE - called In Her Hands - showcasing a trailblazing range of female composers from over the ages.
Michele completed her musical studies at Yale University and at NYU. She lives in Oakland with her husband, visual artist Benjamin Thorpe, and their daughter, Audra May. www.michele-kennedy.com
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Melissa Attebury
mezzo-soprano
Praised by the New York Times as a “rich-toned alto who brought a measure of depth to her performance,” Melissa Attebury appears regularly as soloist in concert and oratorio. She is in particular demand for her skill in music of the Baroque – recent appearances include Messiah, Christmas Oratorio, St. Matthew and St. John Passion, and as a regular soloist in the Bach at One series of complete cantatas with Julian Wachner and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street. She played the role of the Witch in Trinity’s staged production of Händel’s Saul. Other recent performances include the Rachmaninoff Vespers and Rosalia (West Side Story Concert Suites) with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall; Elijah at the Berkshire Choral Festival, Israel in Egypt with The Washington Chorus, Beethoven 9th Symphony at Trinity Wall Street, and Messiah at Carnegie Hall with the New Jersey Masterworks Chorus.
Ms. Attebury is a featured soloist on the Grammy-nominated Israel in Egypt with the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Ralf Yusuf Gawlick’s Missa Gentis Humanae for 8 voices, Julian Wachner’s Symphony No. 1, and a new release of the choral works of Trevor Weston. A skilled ensemble musician, she appears on Julia Wolfe’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning work Anthracite Fields, recorded with Bang on a Can All-Stars as well as Trinity’s Bach Motets.
Melissa is the Associate Director of Music at Trinity Wall Street and on the faculty of the Berkshire Choral Festival. She manages Trinity’s music outreach program in the public schools, serving over 250 school age children. Also at Trinity, she created and directs the chorister program; her choristers make their recorded debut on The Snow Lay on the Ground, carol settings of Julian Wachner, and on the Trevor Weston works. She has conducted performances of the choristers with Josh Grobin, in the film Love is Strange, and many events at Trinity Wall Street.
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Julia Soojin Cavallaro
mezzo-soprano
Julia Soojin Cavallaro, mezzo-soprano, is a professional choral artist and oratorio soloist based in Boston. Praised by New York Classical Review for her “warm mezzo, perfect diction, and easy phrasing,” she sings with leading ensembles in New England and beyond, including the Handel and Haydn Society, Ensemble Altera, Upper Valley Baroque, and GRAMMY-nominated groups Skylark Vocal Ensemble and True Concord Voices & Orchestra.
Recent oratorio solos include Bach’s St. John Passion with Ashmont Hill Chamber Music, Handel’s Messiah with the Kent Singers, and Vivaldi’s Gloria with the New England Classical Singers. Julia is currently a member of the Choir of the Church of the Advent and was previously a staff singer at Trinity Church in the City of Boston, with whom she toured England twice. She collaborates frequently with composer-pianists Rodney Lister at Boston University and John McDonald at Tufts University.
Her own songs for voice, piano, and chamber ensemble have been premiered at Tufts and as part of Art Song Lab in Vancouver, BC.
In addition to her performing career, Julia is Vice President of Marketing and User Experience for Artusi: Interactive Music Theory & Aural Skills, an online learning platform.
She holds degrees in music and vocal performance from Harvard College and the Boston University College of
Fine Arts. Julia lives in Cambridge with her husband, Dan, and two cats, Bun and Gin.
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Andrea Graichen
mezzo-soprano
Andrea Graichen is a frequent soloist in the Greater Portland area, performing a wide variety of alto and mezzo-soprano repertoire. Her most recent solo program featured music for voice and lute by Early Music composers Jean-Baptiste Boësset, Antoine Boësset, Barbara Strozzi, and John Dowland. In June of 2023 Andrea sang in the vocal ensemble in Portland’s Bach Virtuosi Festival presentation of Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Cantata 140). In July of 2023 she sang in Blue Hill Bach’s Festival Finale concert, Handel’s Israel in Egypt. Andrea appeared with Zenith Ensemble in Blue Hill Bach’s “Birthday Concert for Johann Sebastian Bach” featuring Jesu, meine Freude BWV 227 and Felix Mendelssohn’s setting of Jesu, meine Freude.
She has performed as a guest artist with the Portland Symphony Orchestra (PSO), singing the role of Mother Jeanne in the PSO’s presentation of Poulenc’s opera Dialogues of the Carmelites. Solo repertoire includes Mozart’s Parto! Ma tu ben mio (La Clemenza di Tito); Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen; Robert S. Cohen’s Alzheimer’s Stories; Raminsh’s Magnificat; Pergolesi’s
Stabat Mater; Poulenc’s Gloria; Stravinsky’s Mass; Mendelssohn’s Elijah; Britten’s Ceremony of Carols; Bach’s Mass in B minor; Handel’s Messiah; Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Regina Coeli, and Requiem; plus many smaller works, among them Ballio’s The Old Bridge at Florence, Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Ariana, and the tone-deaf diva comedy piece, A Word on My Ear by Flanders and Swann.
Andrea has sung with Portland’s ChoralART Camerata, Singers, and Masterworks Chorus; the St. Mary Schola early music ensemble; and Portland’s Dirigo Ensemble. She earned a B.S. in Nutrition from the University of Texas.
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Timothy Parsons
countertenor
Timothy Parsons, countertenor and conductor, is active internationally as both soloist and ensemble singer. He has performed with the GRAMMY®-nominated Clarion Music Society and since 2014 has been a member of the GRAMMY®-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street. Timothy most recently served as Alto Lay Clerk with the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. A devoted performer of new music, Timothy premiered the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning Angel’s Bone with the Prototype Festival and 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winner p r i s m with LA Opera and the Prototype Festival. He has performed extensively with vocal ensemble Ekmeles, specializing in micro-tuning and extended vocal techniques.
Timothy has performed as a soloist with the Bach Society of Charleston, the Charlotte Master Chorale, The Saint Tikhon Choir, Music Worcester, the Stamford Symphony, Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, and has toured internationally with the English Concert. He has toured with GRAMMY®-winning Apollo’s Fire in two productions of Monteverdi. Timothy has been hailed as a “most dazzling contributor… whose magnificently muscular singing… made one want to coin a new vocal category just for him—the heldencountertenor, ready to sing Wagnerian roles in his powerful falsetto.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
International appearances include the Montreal Bach Festival, The Festival Musica Sacra Quito, the Stavanger Kammermusikkfestival, St John’s Smith Square, and the Utrecht Early Music Festival.
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Andrew Fuchs
tenor
A native of Kansas City, MO, NYC-based tenor Andrew Fuchs’s wide-ranging repertoire includes an abundance of early and new music which he performs as both a soloist and vocal chamber musician. In 2020, he joined the twice GRAMMY-nominated quartet New York Polyphony whose extensive touring takes the acclaimed ensemble to major concert series and festivals around the world. He is a frequent artist with some of the US’s finest historical performance ensembles, such as Pegasus Early Music, ARTEK, TENET, The Clarion Choir, and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and his expressive singing shines in repertoire ranging from Monteverdi madrigals to Bach’s Evangelists. Also passionate about contemporary music, Andrew has premiered many works including the principal role of ME in Daniel Thomas Davis’s chamber opera Six. Twenty. Outrageous. with American Opera Projects, and song cycles by Alexander Goehr (Verschwindenes Wort for The Juilliard School’s Focus Festival) and Juliana Hall (Piano Lessons with Lyric Fest). He has sung substantial works by Harrison Birtwistle and Kurt Rohde with Brooklyn Art Song Society, and by Steve Reich with Ensemble Signal. Other notable performances include Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes and Britten’s Curlew River with the Mark Morris Dance Group, Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge with the Momenta Quartet, and Bach’s St. John Passion Evangelist at St. John the Divine. Andrew is an alumnus of the Tanglewood Music Center and Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar, and holds degrees from the University of Kansas and Stony Brook University. www.andrew-fuchs.com
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Noah Horn
tenor
As a conductor whose work has been praised as “superb” (The New York Times), “well-prepared and joyful” (Detroit Free Press), “excellent,” and “fluent and fresh” (Opera News), Noah Horn recently began tenure as Music Director of Cantata Singers, a prominent ensemble in Boston. His other current positions include serving as chorus master for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and artistic director and founder of the professional vocal ensemble Audivi. With Audivi he has conducted historically-informed landmark performances of Bach’s Mass in B minor and Monteverdi’s Vespers, as well as premiering dozens of new compositions and touring several times around the US. He has worked with ensembles in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Turkey, Greece, Canada, and the Philippines.
Committed to celebrating diversity and inclusion in all areas, Noah co-founded and sings with Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, a group that focuses on a diverse representation in its membership, and which has recently given headliner performances in 2022 at Podium (Canada’s national choral conference) and ACDA’s Southern Regional Convention. He has commissioned dozens of works by composers from a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds, and considers it essential to do the work of advocacy and education with every artistic decision.
As a tenor, Noah has sung solo roles in much of the standard oratorio and concert repertoire. He has sung with professional ensembles across the country, including Conspirare, Spire, Yale Choral Artists, Arkora, Cerulean, and the Tallis Scholars. He appears in numerous commercial recordings, including five albums released on Naxos Records. His singing has been featured on America’s Got Talent, MLB.com, and YouTube’s homepage. Also an organist, Noah has served as music director at a number of churches, and currently works in that capacity at Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, MA. He has given organ recitals in several countries and many states, and specializes in choral accompaniment. He recently won the nationally competitive AAGO and S. Lewis Elmer Prizes from the American Guild of Organists. He continues to collaborate with soloists and ensembles on organ, harpsichord, and piano. In his younger years he enthusiastically pursued trumpet, and played principal trumpet for several orchestras, bands, and jazz ensembles, along with having the opportunity to play solo jazz trumpet for President Bill Clinton during his time in office.
Noah holds the D.M.A., M.M.A., and M.M. degrees from Yale University in choral conducting, and the M.M. and B.Mus. degrees from Yale and Oberlin College in organ performance. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and children.
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Eric Christopher Perry tenor
Lauded by The Boston Globe for his “sharp physicality and ringing tenor voice,” and highly regarded for his “indefatigable energy” and “expert interpretation” at the podium as well as the concert stage, Eric Christopher Perry is rising as one of the nation’s most dynamic vocal artists, conductors, and educators. Recent solo appearances: Handel and Haydn Society, Emmanuel Music, MIT Symphony Orchestra, Connecticut Early Music Festival, Cantata Singers, The Phoenix Symphony, South Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Tennessee Wesleyan University Symphony Orchestra, Phoenix Bach Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, The Boston Camerata, Zenith Ensemble, Huntington Symphony Orchestra, Tallahassee Bach Parley, Music at First Presbyterian Charleston, WV. International engagements include concert tours in Japan, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Iceland, Germany, and Australia. He is the artistic director and conductor of Renaissance Men, New England’s professional male vocal chamber ensemble, whose work spans a near decade worth of sold-out performances across the Eastern United States and multiple critically-acclaimed albums released on Navona Records and its own label, RenMen Records. He is a frequent guest choral/vocal clinician across the United States and has served on music faculties at Colby College, Plymouth State University, Phillips Academy Andover, and Federation University Australia. He currently serves as Visiting Lecturer of Voice at Salem State University and Endicott College.
www.ecpmusic.com www.renmenmusic.com
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John David Adams
bass-baritone
Bass-baritone John David Adams is a versatile and accomplished artist with a career spanning concert, opera, recital, and professional vocal ensembles. Acclaimed as a powerful and communicative soloist, he has appeared in concert with orchestras, choral
organizations, and music ensembles across the country in repertoire from Baroque masterworks to world-premiere compositions.
A respected interpreter of early music, he has been featured in performances with the San Francisco Bach Choir, Montclair Bach Society, Oratorio Chorale, St. Cecilia Chamber Choir, St. Mary Schola, and the Blue Hill Bach, Portland Bach, White Mountain Bach, and Portland Early Music festivals.
His portrayals in diverse opera and stage roles have been equally praised, including productions by Opera Boston, San Francisco Lyric Opera, Granite State Opera, Berkeley Opera, Apollo Opera, Opera Maine, and New England Light Opera. In vocal ensembles he has held professional positions with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus (including three Grammy Award-winning recordings), the San Francisco Chamber Singers, Sanford Dole Ensemble, Aureole Chamber Choir, Amethyst Chamber Ensemble, and the Zenith Ensemble. He studied voice and opera at the Hartt School of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and trained under William Metcalf, Leopold Simoneau, Dr. Edwin Barlow, and Malcom Smith.
He currently serves on the voice faculty of Bay Chamber Concerts Music School in Rockport, Maine.
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Charles Wesley Evans
bass-baritone
Applauded by the New York Times for his “elegant, mellifluous and expressive baritone,” Charles Wesley Evans is establishing a fine career as an early music artist, and recitalist. This Georgia-born singer began singing professionally as a chorister at The American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey. With The American Boychoir he toured both nationally and internationally, performing under the batons of notable conductors, John Williams, Zubin Mehta, James Levine, Kurt Masur, Vladimir Spivakov and Lorin Maazel. His singing has won him awards from numerous organizations and vocal competitions including the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the Mobile Opera Auditions, the Orpheus Vocal Competition, the Atlanta Music Club Auditions, and the Georgia Young Artist Competition.
Charles’ singing has led to a variety of opportunities throughout the United States and abroad. Most recently he has performed various works with Princeton Pro Musica chorus and orchestra, the Delaware Valley Philharmonic Orchestra and chorus, the Dryden Ensemble, TENET, Berkshire Baroque, the Master Chorale of South Florida and “Baroque Masterpieces” with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra. He is also proud to be on the roster of the Grammy award-winning ensemble Conspirare and Grammy-nominated ensembles Seraphic Fire and the Trinity Choir of Trinity Church Wall Street. Charles has been broadcast on New York, South Florida, Texas and Kansas public radio, and he has recorded on the Naxos and Harmonia Mundi labels.
Charles holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Brewton-Parker College in Mt. Vernon, GA with further study at the Boston Conservatory of Music and Westminster Choir College of Rider University. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.
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Enrico Lagasca
bass-baritone
Filipino-American bass-baritone Enrico Lagasca has traveled long musical distances in the short time since he began his career – comprising 16 oratorios, 17 new-music works, seven opera roles plus 13 song cycles and collections. Heard on four Grammy Award-nominated recordings, Enrico is both a solo and ensemble singer in settings as diverse as New York’s mission-specific TENET Vocal Artists and major orchestras under conductors such as Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Pablo Heras-Casado, Nicholas McGegan, Jane Glover, John Butt, John Nelson, Matthew Halls and Carl St. Clair.
His performances have been noted for their emotional power. “Lagasca’s singing was an outpouring of devotion and grief as elegant as it was moving.” wrote Rick Perdian in Seen and Heard International regarding Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at New York's Saint Thomas Church in New York.
Soloist highlights of his current season include Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass with Voices of Ascension in New York, Handel's Messiah at Ann Arbor's University Musical Society and at Carnegie Hall with Musica Sacra, Bach's Christmas Oratorio at Washington Bach Consort, and Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht with the St. Louis Symphony. "Whether it's opera or oratorio, it's storytelling to me," he says, "even when singing the often-heard words Kyrie Eleison."
Enrico is increasingly inclined to seek out music by living composers such as Wolfe, Dove, Caroline Shaw, and Reena Esmail. He has sung Sarah Kirkland Snider's Mass for the Endangered, Jake Heggie's The Moon is a Mirror and Nico Muhly's The Last Letter. Joby Talbot's Path of Miracles will figure repeatedly in his 2022-2023 season, along with Craig Johnson's Considering Matthew Shepard - the latter reflecting Enrico’s particular interest in works that address the LGBTQ+ community. He is a member of the Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, which is dedicated to diversity and social justice.
He continues moving between solo and ensemble, deriving great satisfaction from participating in concert ensemble repertoire, with highlights this season including two hybrid presentations -Tyshawn Sorey’s Monochromatic Light (afterlight) directed by Peter Sellers in September 2022 at the Park Avenue Armory with Trinity Wall Street, and joining the Grammy-award winning ensemble The Crossing in the New York Philharmonic’s premiere of Julia Wolfe’s multi-media unEarth. Regular engagements include Bach Collegium San Diego, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Seraphic Fire, Skylark, Clarion, Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble and the LEONIDS.
An educator himself, Enrico maintains a small private vocal studio, and conducts visiting artist residencies in schools such as Southern Virginia University and Amherst College. He is a graduate of New York's Mannes College of Music and lives in New York City with his domestic partner of several years.