*Ticketholders are required to show proof of vaccination and wear masks during the concert.*
Yvette Keong, hailed as a “soaring soprano” of “clarity and promise” (Opera News) and award-winning pianist Nicole Cloutier, present a bold recital of living women composers for the opening night of EXTENSITY’s WOMEN NOW festival. The program will include Thea Musgrave’s Songs for a Winter’s Evening, Tonia Ko’s Smoke and Distance, Jocelyn Morlock’s Amore and Sarah Kirkland Snider’s How Graceful Some Things Are, Falling Apart.
*Ticket price includes a post-concert wine reception.
This concert is dedicated to the loving memory of Lou Rispoli.
PROGRAM
Tonia Ko - Smoke and Distance
Libby Larsen - Try Me, Good King
1. Katherine of Aragon
2. Anne Boleyn
3. Jane Seymour
4. Anne of Cleves
5. Katherine Howard
Thea Musgrave - Songs for a Winter's Evening (selections)
2. Summer's a pleasant time
3. O, whistle an' I'll come to ye, my lad!
4. Ca' the yowes to the knowes
5. Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon
Jocelyn Morlock - Amore
Sarah Kirkland Snider - How Graceful Some Things Are, Falling Apart
Originally from Sydney, Australia, soprano Yvette Keong is a unique performer who strives to unite the intimate emotionality of classical music with its ability as a modern force of change. Hailed as a “soaring soprano” of “clarity and promise” (Opera News), Ms. Keong was a 2020 recipient of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship, highlighting her Chinese-Australian heritage at the core of her artistic identity. She was the recipient of The Rohatyn Great Promise Award at the Eastern Region of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and was the recent Third Prize winner of The Gerda Lissner Foundation’s Lieder/Song Competition. Ms. Keong was selected as one of six singers to participate in SongStudio at Carnegie Hall, led by Renée Fleming. She performed as Adina in Juilliard Opera’s production of L’elisir d’amore, where she also sang as Henrietta M. in Thomson’s The Mother of Us All, in a collaboration the New York Philharmonic, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Juilliard School. This season, she made her Annapolis Opera debut as Clorinda in La Cenerentola and her Aspen Music Festival debut as the soprano soloist of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. Ms. Keong is a recent graduate of The Juilliard School, where she was a Gluck Community Service Fellow and the proud recipient of the Novick Career Adva
As a recent graduate of The Juilliard School, American pianist Nicole Cloutier has performed extensively at Lincoln Center in Paul Hall and as a part of Alice Tully Hall’s “Through the Looking Glass” recital series. Past engagements include a pianist position for the 2020 and 2021 Chautauqua Voice Institute, Music Director for Michigan Opera Theater’s 2019 and 2020 Operetta Workshops, an appearance with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra as first prize winner of their 2014 young artist concerto competition, and a conductor/coach role in Juilliard’s Opera Lab 2019-2021 seasons, which workshoped and premiered new works by Juilliard student composers. She has performed in public masterclasses with Craig Rutenberg, Susan Graham, and Roger Vignoles. Ms. Cloutier served as a pianist for the 2021 artistic residencies of Denyce Graves and Lawrence Brownlee at The Juilliard School, as well as performed in the filming of the upcoming documentary on the life of Simon Estes. She is currently a Vocal Arts Piano Fellow at The Juilliard School. Among other responsibilities, the position will include rehearsal pianist roles on the productions of The Rake’s Progress with Maestro Mark Shapiro and Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor with Maestro Christian Reif. Ms. Cloutier graduated in 2021 with a MM in Collaborative Piano from The Juilliard School, where she was a recipient of the Schwartz Scholarship and Irene Diamond Graduate Fellowship. Her primary teachers there include Lydia Brown, Jonathan Feldman, and JJ Penna. She holds a B.M. in Piano Performance from Michigan State University’s College of Music, where she was awarded the Spencer and Eleanor Maurer Memorial Scholarship for Piano to study with Artist-in-Residence Panayis Lyras. She graduated with highest honors, and was granted the prestigious Trustee Board Award for outstanding academic achievement