Friday, January 10, 2020 — 5:30pm
Music of Schoenberg and Vaughan Williams

Program

4 Songs, Op. 2, by Arnold Schoenberg

The House of Life, by Ralph Vaughan Williams

Rena Harms, soprano, was born and raised in Santa Fe (her mom is Cora Harms, a longtime music educator in the Santa Fe area).

Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for a “winningly liquid” voice as well as for her “dramatic vividness and vocal flourish,” Santa Fe native Rena Harms has recently brought her signature role of Cio-Cio-San to Madame Butterfly productions at English National Opera, Arizona Opera, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. During the Fall of 2019, Ms. Harms will join Avaloch Farms, as an artist-in-residence in preparation for a month-long recital tour in early 2020. In the 2018/19 season, Ms. Harms returned to the Grand Théâtre de Genève for its Ring cycle, covered the title role in Korngold’s rarely performed Das Wunder der Heliane with Bard SummerScape and collaborated with Peter DiMuro’s Public Displays of Motion dance company for a site-specific performance with Now + There, as well as an appearance at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Her performance as Nell Gwynn in the regional premiere of Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players at Florentine Opera was recorded live for international release.

Ms. Harms’ “breathtaking intensity” (NDR Kultur) was on display in her recent French debut as Amelia in Simon Boccanegra at Opéra National de Bordeaux, and in her return to Florentine Opera for her role debut as Beatrice in Heggie’s Three Decembers. She also brought her celebrated Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, a role she has performed in Milwaukee, Basel, and San Francisco, to Opera Santa Barbara.

Ms. Harms recently joined the Seattle Symphony as the soprano soloist for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival and OperaAmerica for their New Works Sampler and Seattle Opera for Don Giovanni. She has also appeared as Helmwige in Die Walküre with the Grand Théâtre de Genève, as Desdemona in Otello with the Oldenburgishes Staatstheater, and as the title role in Sigfried Matthus’ Judith with Staatstheater Braunschweigand Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg. Previously, she joined the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus to cover Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Florentine Opera as Micaëla in Carmen and Liù in Turandot, and Staatstheater Braunschweig as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte. She sang the title role of Fibich’s Sárka, Marenka in The Bartered Bride, and Contessa in Le nozze di Figaro, all in new productions with Staatstheater Braunschweig.

Ms. Harms made her English National Opera debut as Amelia in a new Dmitri Tcherniakov production of Simon Boccanegra and joined Theater Basel for Contessa in Le nozze di Figaro, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, the High Priestess in Calixto Bieito’s Aida, and a Flower Maiden in Parsifal. In the U.S., her other recent performances include Micaëla in Carmen with Opera Santa Barbara and Opera Southwest as well as first performances of Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Ericlea in Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria with Wolf Trap Opera. She sang Mimì in La bohème with Los Angeles Opera, where she was a member of the company’s prestigious Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program. Also with the company, she sang Barena in Jenufa, Erste Magd in Der zerbrochene Krug, along with Zweite Magd in Der Zwerg in a double bill conducted by James Conlon and released on DVD, and Sylvaine in The Merry Widow, in addition to joining the company for its Grammy Award-winning production of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. She also sang Nedda in Pagliacci in performances featuring the resident artists as well as Antonia in excerpts of Les contes d’Hoffmann. Ms. Harms was a participant in San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program where she sang Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni and the title role in excerpts of Arabella in concert. As an Apprentice Artist with Santa Fe Opera, she sang Contessa in Le nozze di Figaro and Barena in Jenufa in the company’s scenes program.

On the concert stage, Ms. Harms recently made her Mexican debut with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Orquesta Sinfonica Simón Bolívar with a program of opera arias, and has sung Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder with the Burbank Philharmonic and Santa Fe Community Orchestra. She has also twice joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a series of concerts for children and the Music Academy of the West Orchestra for Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915.

Ms. Harms was a 2010 Grand Finalist of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the winner of the Hennings-Fischer Foundation Competition, received second prize in the Marcello Viotti International Vocal Competition in Lausanne, Switzerland, and received an encouragement award from the Marilyn Horne Foundation. She received her Bachelor of Music from Manhattan School of Music and attended the Music Academy of the West, where she was awarded a merit fellowship.

Raised in Sacramento and based in London, American pianist Anyssa Neumann has been praised for the “clarity, charm, and equipoise” of her performances, which span solo and collaborative repertoire from the Baroque to the 21st century.

A dedicated contrapuntalist, Anyssa has given all-Bach recitals at The Banff Centre, the Sacramento Bach Festival, and St James Piccadilly in London. Bach’s music has also featured on tours of Canada and the American West Coast during the 2017/18 and 2018/19 seasons, including recitals in Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Montréal, Seattle, Portland, Berkeley, Denver, and on recital series at UC Riverside and UC Davis. Other notable venues have included St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Holywell Music Room, the Vernon Ellis Foundation, the American Cathedral in Paris, Chiesa di San Paolo entro le Mura in Rome, and Mazzoleni Hall in Toronto. In 2016, she gave the UK premiere of Christopher Cerrone’s Hoyt-Schermerhorn (2010) for piano and live electronics at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building in Oxford.

Anyssa has released two recordings, with a third scheduled this coming year. Her solo debut album of works by Bach, Beethoven, Messiaen, and Prokofiev was featured on David Dubal’s radio program The Piano Matters in New York and Chicago; The Holland Times praised it for “moving between old and modern material with breathtaking ease and fluency,” and La Scena Musicale described it as “subtle and lyrical…poetic and complex.” Her disc with with Grammy Award-winning cellist Sara Sant’Ambrogio (Eroica Trio), Dreaming, has been broadcast on radio stations throughout the United States, and the duo has been heard on NPR’s Performance Today and Sirius Satellite Radio as well as in concert at the Huntington Arts Festival in New York and Sevenars Festival in Massachusetts.

Anyssa performs regularly in the UK with bass-baritone Timothy Dickinson; their current project explores Don Quxiote-inspired songs and arias. In 2016-17, she toured an American art song project with mezzo-soprano Katherine Nicholson, featuring works by Barber, Copland, Chanler, Rorem, and Ives. She has also collaborated with sopranos Rena Harms and Emma Tring, violinists Yolanda Bruno and Amy Tress, violist Esme Allen-Creighton, pianist Joseph Li, cellist Simon Fryer, and trumpeter Jens Lindemann, and has performed with the London Chamber Collective and the Alexandra Ensemble. As guest pianist, Anyssa toured France with the Sheba Ensemble, an all-female, New York-based chamber group specializing in traditional Jewish music infused with jazz, classical music, and bossa nova. She has held artist residencies at the Banff Centre, the Bergman Estate, and Avaloch Farm Music Center.

A graduate of Manhattan School of Music (BM), where she studied with Marc Silverman, and Oxford University (MSt), Anyssa pursued advanced performance studies with Fabio Bidini in Berlin and Paul Stewart at Université de Montréal. She has additionally worked with Thomas Adès, Rita Wagner, and András Keller at IMS Prussia Cove and with Mitsuko Uchida, Marc Durand, Julian Martin, Ronan O’Hora, Andre-Michel Schub, Joseph Kalichstein, and Russell Sherman in master classes. In 2010, she was one of ten pianists from around the world selected to take part in a week-long Beethoven seminar with Anton Kuerti at the Banff Centre.

Anyssa completed a PhD in musicology at King’s College London in 2017, focusing on pre-existing music in the films of Ingmar Bergman. She is currently touring a lecture-recital about Bergman’s use of classical music, with appearances at the Ingmar Bergman: 100 Years conference at Lund University, TIFF in Toronto, Filmoteca Española in Madrid, the Helsingborg Classical Music Festival, London’s Blackheath Halls, and Bowdoin College in Maine. She has presented at conferences in London, New Orleans, and Los Angeles and has guest lectured at City University of London, the School of Advanced Study at Senate House, Hebrew University, and University of Washington.