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From the AVA family to you...
We wish you a happy Holiday Season and a very musical New Years!
Photo #1 - Christmas tree decorated by Nan Altman, Margaret Mezzacappa & Justin Johnson
Photo #2 - Scott Connor & Ryan Kuster
Photo #3 - Nicholas Masters, Olivia Vote & Zach Nelsen
Photo #4 - Margarate Mazzacappa, Na Li Youm & Corrine Schaefer
Photo #5 - Alumna Joyce El-Khoury & Steven LaBrie
Photo #6 - Cynthia Cook & Zach Nelsen
Let the competition season begin! Our vocal gladiators at AVA are always ready to go into battle. They are primed and pumped for the prize that might lie at the end of the competition. The William Matheus Sullivan Foundation awards ten singers $10,000 grants towards their careers in opera. The winners participate in a five-year program of continued financial aid for coachings. Two of the winners this year are fourth year baritone Christopher Bolduc and AVA alumna mezzo-soprano Nicole Piccolomini. The panel also awarded at $2,000 encouragement grant to five singers, including AVA alum Kenneth Kellogg.
Opera Index is a non-profit volunteer organization whose mission is to provide advocacy for opera and support for its artists. Since 1984 they have given awards valued at over $400,000 to 282 singers early in their careers, many of which are AVA alums. One of this year’s winners is third year baritone Alex Lawrence.
The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions are well under way and AVA has been turning up winners already on the District level. Last weekend the competition was in Philadelphia, hosted by the Curtis Institute of Music. There were four winners from AVA. Going on to the Regional competition are soprano Jan Cornelius, baritone Steven LaBrie, and bass Nicholas Masters. Tenor Zach Borichevsky was given an encouragement award. All three winners will go on to the regional competition in Washington, D.C. and will be accompanied by AVA master vocal coach Richard Raub. Allison Hymel, AVA Administrative Associate, was one of the District winners in New Orleans and will compete on the regional level back in NOLA.
Throughout the year I receive telephone calls asking for AVA singers to perform at special events, assisted living communities, weddings, etc. This department is called the Concert Bureau, and I book up to 50 outside performances a year for the resident artists and alums.
With the holidays upon us, this tends to be the busiest season for singers. Many events during December tend to be holiday parties or fund raisers. Yesterday was one of those events called Jewel Noël given by the Chestnut Hill Committee of The Philadelphia Orchestra.
Michelle Johnson, Sean Arnold, pianist Jose Melendez, and I went to the event (did you know that lunch was provided!) Their repertoire included Classic Broadway, Holiday, and Act I selections from La bohème, which both Ms. Johnson and Mr. Arnold are working on at AVA for the May production of that opera.
I was happy to speak to the audience of almost two hundred-fifty women from the Main Line about AVA and its upcoming season which includes our 75th Anniversary Gala concert. AVA had taken concerts and productions to the Main Line of Philadelphia for over twenty years. This season two operas and two concerts will performed in Haverford and Bryn Mawr.
We have so many friends at these events, and it is wonderful when we make new ones.
An AVA caravan journeyed to the Big Apple on Sunday, November 22 to hear tenor Stephen Costello sing at Avery Fisher Hall. He is the 2009 winner of the Richard Tucker Award from the Richard Tucker Foundation and that evening was their concert and black-tie gala.
He was in amazing operatic company, including AVA alum James Morris. The New York Times mentioned that his singing of Ella mi fu rapita! from Verdi’s Rigoletto had “elegant tone and ardent feeling.” He was joined later in the program by soprano Anna Netrebko for the Act II finale of La traviata. Look for the combination of Netrenko and Costello in future opera productions – but I can’t let that cat out of the bag yet.
Along with the AVA bus of twenty-eight opera lovers, many AVA’ers went on their own, including Steven LaBrie, Corrine Winters, alums Ailyn Perez, Bryan Hymel, Joyce El-Khoury, Luis Ledesma, and AVA staff members Danielle Orlando and Denise Stuart.
There was a very quick meet-and-greet following the concert before Mr. Costello headed off to the black-tie gala. Sam Ramey somehow found himself in a photo with James Morris and Stephen Costello and has heard to exclaim “What! Two more singers from AVA!” Watch out, Mr. Ramey, we’re all over the place!
You can hear Mr. Costello in the Chicago Lyric Opera’s new production of The Merry Widow from December 5 to January 16.
Photo #1 - Maria Forte, JoAnne DiSanto, Stephen Costello, Matthew Drodz
Photo #2 - Sam Ramey, Stephen Costello, James Morris Photo #3 - Stephen Costello, Randy Apgar, Allen Black
Photo #4 - laren Pitcairn, Stephen Costello, Peggy and Bob Lyon
Photo #5 - AVA bus travellers
*Many thanks to Toni Forte for the pictures!
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