UT to present two concerts on the Toledo Museum of Art Great Performances in the Great Gallery Series – February 14 and 21

 

The Toledo Museum of Art Great Performances in the Great Gallery series will include two performances – one featuring University of Toledo students and another featuring UT faculty and internationally-acclaimed baritone, Ryan De Ryke.

Sunday, February 14 at 3 p.m. voice and piano students from the UT Department of Music will perform a range of selections from operas and favorite vocal music. The following Sunday, February 21 at 3 p.m., UT professor of piano, Dr. Michael Boyd and De Ryke will perform a program of art song. Highlights from the program include Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” and a cycle of songs by The Smiths arranged by Ryan. Admission to both concerts is free and open to the public.

Current professor of piano at UT – Dr. Boyd received his undergraduate degree from the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Eastman School of Music. Over the years he has given many solo recitals across the country and internationally.

Baritone Ryan De Ryke has studied at the Peabody Conservatory, the RAM, and the National Conservatory of Luxemburg. Aside from his recital career De Ryke is also a regularly traveling soloist in various oratorios. He has worked numerous operatic roles, and has had the opportunity to work with a variety of different groups such as the Haymarket Opera, El Paso Symphony Orchestra, and the Chamber of Chicago.

For more information on these events, visit the museum’s website at http://www.toledomuseum.org/calendar/

For information on other UT arts events, visit http://www.utoledo.edu/cocaevents/index.html

Source: Michael Boyd

Source: UT Department of Music

Dr. Michael Boyd, a University of Toledo professor, and violinist Merwin Siu of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, will perform a program of Stravinsky’s works for violin and piano, recreating a concert Stravinsky himself performed on the same stage 81 years ago with violinist Samuel Dushkin. The event is set to take place Saturday, January 23 at 2 p.m. in the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle. Admission is free.

The University of Toledo Department of Music has long collaborated with the Toledo Museum of Art, providing many performers for the TMA’s Great performances in the Great Gallery series. “I give a lot of credit to Scott Boberg [TMA Manager of Programs and Audience Engagement], says Dr. Boyd. “The concert was his brainchild, to recreate Stravinsky’s Peristyle concert. It was a great honor to be asked to play the Peristyle and I always enjoy the opportunity to perform with such a wonderful violinist as Merwin Siu”.

Dr. Boyd, a Steinway artist and renowned pianist, is a professor of piano at The University of Toledo. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Eastman School of Music. Dr. Boyd has played many solo recitals throughout the years. He has also had the honor of performing across the country and internationally as well, and has presented two music lectures in Spain.

Merwin Siu and Dr. Boyd perform regularly with cellist, Damon Coleman of the Toledo Symphony. The three comprise the Bezonian Trio, a chamber ensemble.

Source: Michael Boyd

Voice students Devon Desmond, Nadia Oselsky and Meridian Prall placed first, second and third, respectively, in this year’s Barbara Rondelli Perry Scholarship Competition for Superior Achievement in Voice Performance.

Devon Desmond (baritone) is a senior at The University of Toledo, majoring in Vocal Performance. He has been in many UT opera productions, appearing in the title role in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, as Toby in Menotti’s The Medium, Top in Copland’s The Tender Land, Bob in Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief, and Tom/John from Mollicone’s The Face on the Barroom Floor. Devon has also performed a junior recital and in many opera gala’s and choir concerts. Devon also performed at Bottom in the UT Theatre & Film Department production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for which he was nominated to compete in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) competition. Devon also competed at the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Ohio competition last spring in which he won 3rd place. Devon has studied voice under Carolyn Seeman, Don Bernardini, Dr. Denise Ritter Bernardini, Kim Buhler, and Micah Graber.

Nadia Oselsky (mezzo-soprano) is currently in her fourth year as a Vocal Performance major at The University of Toledo, studying under Dr. Denise Ritter Bernardini. For her junior recital, she performed songs that focused on Slavic Repertoire, as part of her degree requirement. Last summer Nadia studied in Sansepolcro, Italy for three weeks, where she performed the role of La Ciesca in Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi as well as participating in voice coachings and taking Italian lessons. After Italy, she traveled to Czech Republic for the Moravian Master Class and spent almost two weeks there. She worked with three different coaches on a daily basis on Antonín Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs. Nadia also had the privilege of studying Czech diction with Mirka Zemanová, the founder of the program. Nadia’s most recent performance was with The University of Toledo Opera Ensemble in Gianni Schicchi as Ciesca. Last fall, she was in An American Triptych: A Salute to American Opera, in which she played the role of Sally in A Hand of Bridge by Samuel Barber, and 2nd Barista in Seymour Barab’s A Game of Chance. Nadia’s previous operatic roles include Zita in Gianni Schicchi, and Jane in Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Meridian Prall (soprano) is currently a Freshman Vocal Performance major studying with Dr. Denise Ritter Bernardini at UT. She has previously been involved in different programs hosted at UT, including the Toledo Art Song Festival, and the Marilyn Horne Master Class which took place in October of 2013. Ms. Prall has been to Italy twice with different summer opera programs, including a program with The University of Toledo and North Carolina Young Artists Project over the summer of 2014 where she performed as Serpina in Cimarosa’s La Serva Padrona. In the fall of 2014, she played Knitter I in A Game of Chance by Seymour Barab with the UT Opera Ensemble, and most recently as Zita in its production of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. She is also active in classical singing competitions. In May of 2014, Ms. Prall placed third at the national Classical Singer Competition in San Antonio, Texas.

Nnenne Edeh, Voice Student at The University of Toledo

Nnenne Edeh, a junior majoring in voice at The University of Toledo won first place in the local 2015 Vocal Arts Competition for Emerging Artists. She will go on to compete in Detroit this summer at the regional finals, and if successful, to the national competition in New York in July.

Contestants had to perform an opera Aria, foreign-language Art Song, an Art Song in English, a selection from oratorio, and a Spiritual or piece by a black composer. The competition is presented annually by the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Inc.

Nnenne is a member of the UT Opera Ensemble and has performed roles in many of its productions. She was Zita in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi (Spring 2015), a role she also performed in the summer of 2014 in Italy during a study abroad experience. She was Mrs. Nolen in UT’s production of Menotti’s opera The Medium and Proserpina in its production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.

Midsummer Borrowings events on campus

The College of Communication and the Arts (CoCA) celebrated its annual Arts and Humanities Festival with a series of events in collaboration with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra (TSO) and its production of “Midsummer Night Mysteries,” March 27-28. UT students and faculty took part in the Symphony production at the Peristyle. Leading up to the performances, CoCA presented related lectures, a concert and a film screening on campus.

Friday film screening
On Friday, March 20 in the Haigh Auditorium of the Center for Visual Arts, a screening of the 1935 Max Reinhardt film A Midsummer Night’s Dream was introduced by Dr. Matt Yockey, Assistant Professor of Film in the UT Department of Theatre & Film.

Nominated for Best Picture, this film adaptation of Reinhardt’s successful Hollywood Bowl production of the Shakespeare play includes extensive use of Felix Mendelssohn’s music as re-orchestrated by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and ballet sequences choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska. The cast includes Mickey Rooney, Olivia DeHavilland and James Cagney, among many other familiar names and faces.

Sunday Great Gallery concert by Bezonian Trio
On Sunday, March 22, the Bezonian Trio featuring Antonina Chekhovskaya, soprano, performed in the Toledo Museum of Art’s Great Gallery. The concert featured pieces that recall two of Shakespeare’s most famous plays – Macbeth (Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D major, Op.70 #1 “Ghost”) and Hamlet (Ophelia’s Song by Dimitri Shostakovich). The Bezonian Trio is comprised of Merwin Siu (violin) and Damon Coleman (cello) of the Toledo Symphony, and Dr. Michael Boyd (piano), professor of piano at The University of Toledo.

Mendelssohn’s Music, Reinhardt’s Diaphanous Damsels, Shakespeare’s Fairies
On Wednesday March 25, Matthew Wikander, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of the UT Department of English, presented a lecture about fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“We are spirits of another sort,” the fairy king Oberon reminds Puck as Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dreamers awaken into morning. Puck has just been describing the dawn as a time when “damned spirits” return to their “wormy beds”—a kind of reverse zombie apocalypse. Oberon’s and Puck’s disagreements do not begin or end here, but this interchange raises the question of what kind of fairies the fairies in Shakespeare’s plays are, and, by extension, the further question of how to represent them. This talk focused on the problem of representing fairies musically, in Mendelssohn’s incidental score, cinematically, in Max Reinhardt’s film version of his famous stage production, and poetically, as the fairies appear in Shakespeare’s text.