Sunday, November 26, 2017 @ 3:00pm
in Westminster United Church
Allison Cecilia Arends, soprano & Peter Tiefenbach, piano with Miles Newman, trumpet
Program
Schubert set:
- Suleika 1
- Dass sie hier gewesen
- Suleika 2
Duparc set:
- Phidylé
- Au pays où se fait la guerre
- La vie antérieure
Peter Tiefenbach’s “3 Poems” with Miles Newman, trumpet:
- The Sunset of the Pink-Tipped Hills
- The Silver Rose
- Winter Meeting
Intermission
Rachmaninov set:
- Oh, Never Sing to Me Again – Op. 4, no. 4
- How Fair This Spot – Op. 21, no. 7
- Believe Me Not, Friend – Op. 14, no. 7
- Lilacs – Op. 21, no. 5
- The Harvest of Sorrow – Op. 4, no. 5
Obradors’ “Siete canciones clásicas españolas”:
- La mi sola, Laureola
- Al Amor
- ¿Corazón, porqué pasáis?
- El Majo celoso
- Con amores, la mi madre
- Del Cabello más sutil
- Chiquitita la novia
“È strano… Ah! fors’e lui… Sempre libera” (La Traviata) – Verdi
“The voice is stunningly beautiful and she uses it with intelligence and great sensitivity.” – Hnatyshyn Foundation
Canadian soprano Allison Cecilia Arends is quickly making her mark as a versatile singer whose “voice is stunningly beautiful and [is used] with intelligence and great sensitivity” (Hnatyshyn Foundation). Highly sought-after as an interpreter of opera, new music, and concert repertoire, she is noted for having “charmed listeners with her lyrical upper tones” and for her “empathetic acting” (Opera Canada).
Allison commenced her 2016-2017 season with a Gilbert and Sullivan concert at Casa Loma with the Toronto Concert Orchestra. Operatic appearances this season include Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata with the Southern Ontario Lyric Opera and Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore with Opera York. With the choirs of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, Grace Church-on-the-Hill, and Christ Church Deer Park, she sang as soprano soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G minor. Allison will make concert and recital appearances with the Waterdown Arts Festival, Neapolitan Connection, Heliconian Club, Arts and Letters Club, Latvian Society, Dignitas International, as well as a self-produced recital of art and song with mezzo-soprano and artist Paula Arciniega. She looks forward to adjudicating music festivals for the Saskatchewan and British Columbia Music Festivals.
Allison commenced her 2015-2016 season as co-founder and instructor for the St. Andrew Parish Foundation’s Mini Mozarts Music Camp, a camp for underprivileged children in Kingston, Jamaica. Additionally, she traveled to Jamaica for a repeat performance of Festum Sancti Andreae, a performance of operatic highlights, as well as various television and radio appearances, and as a guest instructor in a masterclass at Kingston’s Edna Manley College for the Arts. Concert and operatic performances included A Grand Night for Opera in Burlington and Festitalia’s Canto Quaranta in Hamilton with the Southern Ontario Lyric Opera, Lauretta in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi with the Cathedral Bluffs Orchestra, and Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata with Barrie Concerts. Allison made many recital appearances with the Heliconian Club, Arts and Letters Club, Neapolitan Connection, Alliance Française, Campbell House Recital Series, Dante Club, and a self-produced collaboration with violinist Alex Toskov, pianist Marty Smyth, and sculptor Farhad Nargol-O’Neill. Allison joined the Saskatchewan Music Festival as guest adjudicator in Regina.
Allison is a graduate of Calgary Opera’s Emerging Artist Program, and completed a Masters of Music at the University of Toronto Opera School and a Bachelor of Music at the University of Victoria Voice Performance Program. Allison currently studies with W. Stephen Smith, and has previously studied under the tutelage of Mary Morrison, Timothy Noble, Wendy Nielsen, Alexandra Browning, Selena James, and Diana Woolrich. She has completed summer studies at the Alliance Française, Goethe Institut, Britten-Pears Young Artist Program, Opera Workshop for Advanced Singers in St. Andrews, Highlands Opera Studio, Centre for Opera Studies in Italy, International Vocal Arts Institute in Israel, Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, Banff Centre, Franz Schubert-Institut in Austria, and Stuttgart Festival International Choir under the direction of Maestro Helmuth Rilling.
As a recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s Artist’s Grant, Allison was afforded the opportunity to perform at Rideau Hall in Ottawa. She also had the honour of being the guest artist at the Inter-American Development Bank Governor’s Dinner, as well as singing the National Anthem at the International Annual Meeting of the Boards of Governors, which was attended by Prime Ministers, Governors, Delegates, and Ministers of Finance and Foreign Affairs from forty-five different countries. Additionally, she toured China with the Brahms Symphonie Orchester, has appeared in concert on numerous occasions in Jamaica, was recorded and broadcast by CBC Radio Saskatchewan, and joined Toronto’s Eglinton St. George United Church Choir as a soloist and choir member on their tour of the major cathedrals of Italy. Allison’s awards include first place and audience choice in the Clifford Poole Voice Competition, being named a Laureate of the Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques, second place in the Barry Alexander International Voice Competition, third place in the Spazio Musica International Competition, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Governor General’s Award for Classical Voice, a Senior Award through the B.C. Arts Council, an Encouragement Award through the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the Holbrook Opera Tour Graduating Award, and scholarships from the Johann Strauss Foundation, the Aldeburgh Foundation, the Wagner Society, ARIAS (formerly COVC), and the Universities of Toronto and Victoria. She was also a participant and semi-finalist in the Joy in Singing masterclass series and competition in New York.
Peter Tiefenbach is a Toronto-based pianist, composer, conductor and vocal coach. A native of Regina, Saskatchewan, he studied music in Canada, the U.S. and England.
Since 1997, he has been a member of the faculty of the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music. In addition to serving as music director for the school’s fall opera productions, he coaches singers in the Artist Diploma and Performance Diploma programs. He’s given master classes in voice at Wilfrid Laurier, Dalhousie, and Memorial Universities, for the Saskatchewan Registered Music Teachers Association, and the Bayfield Festival of Song. In January, he will make his ninth annual visit to coach the Emerging Artists of Calgary Opera.
Prior to joining the Glenn Gould School faculty, he was a broadcaster with CBC Radio, where his interview subjects included such major musical figures as Witold Lutoslwaski, Luciano Berio, Henri Dutilleux, Isaac Stern, Birgit Nilsson, Krystian Zimerman and Andras Schiff, among many others. He also presented a number of highly regarded specials and series for CBC Radio including The Case for Anton Bruckner, Who Was Richard Strauss? and Aspects of Mozart.
He has served as assistant conductor for numerous productions of Toronto’s Opera Atelier, including their recent Marriage of Figaro. For Opera in Concert, he was music director and pianist of Charpentier’s Louise (2015) and for the 2013 Canadian première of Britten’s Gloriana. Last season he conducted The Chocolate Soldier (Straus) for Toronto Operetta Theatre, and will return this spring to lead a production of La Belle Hélène (Offenbach).
This past summer he was music director of Charlotte: A Tri-Coloured Play with Music, with performances at the Isabel Bader Centre in Kingston, at Toronto’s Luminato Festival, and at the World Stage Design conference in Taipei. He also led performances of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale at Stratford Summer Music, appeared with Mary Lou Fallis at the Elora Festival, and with Brett Polegato, Julie Nesrallah and Robert Kortgaard at the Indian River Festival in PEI.
A Juno-nominated composer (Best Classical Composition 1993 for Three Poems), his most recent work is the song cycle The Long Walk Home, for the Canadian Art Song Project. Other major commissions include works for the Orpheus Choir of Toronto, Debut Atlantic, the Borealis String Quartet, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, the Canadian Brass and the Elmer Iseler Singers, and the Elora Festival Singers.
Current projects include a new comic operetta for the Saskatoon Children’s Choir, a pastiche celebrating the 200th anniversary of Dalhousie University, arrangements of Bernstein songs for Wallis Giunta and the Artists of the Royal Conservatory, and a set of tangos for Isabel Bayrakdarian and the St. Lawrence String Quartet.
Originally from Saskatoon, Miles Newman began playing trumpet at age eleven, studying with Walter Garlick, Ken Sterling, and Maureen Patterson. After graduating from Walter Murray Collegiate Institute in 1977, he attended the University of Saskatchewan where he received Bachelor of Music Performance (1977-81) and Bachelor of Music Education (1981-83) degrees under Dr. Larry House. From 1982 to 1986 he was principal of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra.
During the 1986-87 academic year, Newman studied under David Hickman at Arizona State University, and from 1987 to 1989, he was enrolled in the Advanced Studies in Music program at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. He moved to Calgary in 1989 where he joined the section of the Calgary Philharmonic until 1991. During these same years he also served as principal of the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra and played with the Southern Alberta Brass Quintet. He taught at the University of Lethbridge Conservatory and played Broadway shows in Calgary, such as Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera.
Newman became principal of the Regina Symphony Orchestra in September of 1991. He has taught at the University of Regina Conservatory from 1991 to the present and in 2004, he began teaching at the University of Regina’s Department of Music. He is solo trumpet of the Regina Symphony Chamber Players and is a founding member of The Big Sky Brass. Miles is a Yamaha Canada artist.
Bibl.: “Miles Newman” (http://ca.yamaha.com/en/artists/brass_woodwinds/miles_newman); personal interview, May 16, 2011.
