Mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski and pianist Erika Switzer premiere a new work by songSLAM commission prize-winning composer Laura Nevitt. Read more at Sparks & Wiry Cries.
National Sawdust, Brooklyn
Violinist Helena Baillie has been hailed by The Strad magazine for her “brilliance and poignance,” and stands apart for a rare ease on both violin and viola. American Record Guide praised her “gorgeous singing tone” in an album that “from the opening flourish will be a special recital”. A prizewinner in international competitions including Munich ARD, Banff and Tertis, Helena has performed throughout Europe and the United States, with broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and Performance Today for American Public Radio. Pianist Erika Switzer performs regularly in major concert settings around the world, including at New York’s Weill Hall (Carnegie), Geffen Hall, Frick Collection, Bargemusic, and at the Kennedy Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Spoleto Festival in Charleston. Renaud Machart of Le Monde described her as “one of the best collaborative pianists I have ever heard; her sound is deep, her interpretation intelligent, refined, and captivating.”
These exciting musicians return to Downtown Music with a program which includes the Sonata in C Minor, Opus 45 of Edvard Grieg, and Three Romances, Opus 22 of Clara Schumann.
Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies
Paulina Swierczek, soprano and Erika Switzer, pianist
Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 4 p.m.
A return appearance of acclaimed soprano, Paulina Świerczek, featuring famous songs from Central Europe composed by Moniuszko, Chopin, Brahms, Dvorak, Bretan, and others. She will be appearing with pianist Erika Switzer.
Free and open to the public.
Cultural icon Alma Mahler-Werfel's life intersected with some of the greatest artists of the late-19th and 20th centuries. A fascinating character, her intelligence, taste, and power (not to mention her romantic appeal) make her the subject of continuing intrigue. While her own composition career was reportedly stifled by her first husband, Gustav, Alma was entrenched in multiple artistic communities as life took her from Vienna to New York and Los Angeles. Soprano Jardena Gertler-Jaffe and pianist Erika Switzer explore her life and impact in this recital featuring works by Gustav Mahler, Berg, Schoenberg, Korngold, Britten, and Alma Mahler, herself.
Downtown Music at Grace
Program Four traces the evolution of a uniquely British sound through songs by the once-hugely-popular Maude Valérie White, Liza Lehrmann, and Roger Quilter; tragic figures George Butterworth and Ivor Gurney; occult-obsessed Peter Warlock; BBC music director Arthur Bliss; Vaughan Williams’s woefully underrated students Elizabeth Maconchy and Ina Boyle; and scions of the next generation Benjamin Britten and Gerald Finzi, whose Shakespearean song cycle, Let Us Garlands Bring, was written as a gift to the older composer. Vaughan Williams himself is represented by settings of verse by poets including his second wife, Ursula.
Bard Music Festival
Launching the 33rd Bard Music Festival, Program One harnesses Bard’s unusual ability to integrate orchestral, choral, vocal, and chamber works within a single event. This concert offers an overview of Vaughan Williams’s long and prolific career, from his early songs and Piano Quintet to his neo-classical D-minor Violin Concerto and famed Tallis Fantasia, which marries folk modality with Elizabethan themes in a stirring evocation of Englishness.
A program celebrating the inspiration born of Ludwig van Beethoven’s iconic An die ferne Geliebte in Robert Schumann’s Fantasie Op. 17 and Jeffrey Ryan’s Everything Already Lost with baritone Tyler Duncan.
Cellist Raman Ramakrishnan has given solo recitals in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., and has performed at Caramoor, Bargemusic, with the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and at the Aspen, Bard, Charlottesville, and Vail music festivals. He has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has performed, as guest principal cellist, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a guest member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, he has performed in New Delhi and Agra, India and in Cairo, Egypt. Pianist Erika Switzer performs regularly in major concert settings around the world, including at New York’s Weill Hall (Carnegie), Geffen Hall, Frick Collection, and Bargemusic, at the Kennedy Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Spoleto Festival in Charleston. Renaud Machart of Le Monde described her as “one of the best collaborative pianists I have ever heard; her sound is deep, her interpretation intelligent, refined, and captivating.” The program includes the Britten and Shostakovich Cello Sonatas.
A program of Robert Schumann and Hugo Wolf settings for the residents of Kendal at Hanover with baritone Tyler Duncan.
CSI’s seventh season opening embarks on a journey of love separated by distance. Songs in Italian, German, and English guide the way through the emotional highs and lows, ultimately leading to peace and contentment with an experience understood by so many in this world.
Ludwig van Beethoven An die Ferne Geliebte and Jeffrey Ryan Everything Already Lost with baritone Tyler Duncan.
As Bard’s Scholar-in-Residence, Philip Ross Bullock, discovers in a concert with commentary many of the composer’s songs were inspired by women. He dedicated them variously to Vera Skalon, his teenage sweetheart; Anna Ladyzhenskaya, with whom he became infatuated; Natalya Satina, the cousin he would defy the church to marry; Mariya Olferyeva, his brother’s common-law wife; and Antonina Nezhdanova, the great soprano who not only premiered his famous Vocalise, but collaborated closely on its creation. Rachmaninoff also set songs to texts by distinguished Russian female poets, including Marietta Shaginyan, who likewise inspired songs by the composer’s lifelong friend and correspondent Nikolai Medtner.
10 am Performance with commentary by Philip Ross Bullock; with Rebecca Ringle Kamarei, mezzo-soprano; Tyler Duncan, baritone; Erika Switzer, piano; and others. Songs by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943); Nikolai Medtner (1880–1951); and others
Tyler Duncan and Erika Switzer invite you to join their journey through Schubert’s masterpiece Winterreise. Immerse yourselves in the icy landscape of Wilhelm Müller’s stark poetry as Schubert’s music evokes loneliness and longing.
Franz Schubert’s Winterreise on the poetry of Wilhelm Müller
with baritone Tyler Duncan
Beall Concert Hall, 7:30pm PST
Oregon Bach Festival
The Wadsworth Concert returns just in time for Mother’s Day at the Wadsworth Auditorium. Soprano Courtenay Budd returns to her hometown as Artistic Director and Host. She brings with her a group of world-class musical artists: violinist Chee-Yun, pianists Henry Kramer and Erika Switzer, cellist Wendy Sutter, and violist Masumi Per Rostad in his Wadsworth debut. We welcome this year’s artists to Newnan and to the Wadsworth.
Tickets
Cellist Raman Ramakrishnan is joined by pianist Erika Switzer on this program featuring music of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Raman Ramakrishnan has given solo recitals in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., and has performed at Caramoor, Bargemusic, with the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and at the Aspen, Bard, Charlottesville, and Vail music festivals. He has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has performed, as guest principal cellist, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a guest member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, he has performed in New Delhi and Agra, India and in Cairo, Egypt.
The Lyndon Woodside Oratorio Solo Competition finals
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall
The Cornell Concert Series, in partnership with ONEcomposer, presents a celebration of our country’s legacy of Black women composers in a concert that combines the incredible talents of soprano Karen Slack, the Miró Quartet, and collaborative pianist Erika Switzer. On the heels of Black History Month and in the lead-up to International Women’s Day, these artists will present arrangements of art songs, spirituals, and other works by two of the foremost Black women composers to impact the musical field: Florence Price and Margaret Bonds.
Cornell Concert Series
Featuring music by Rachel DeVore Fogarty, John Glover, Reinaldo Moya, Andrew Staniland, and artist performers Jessica Care Moore, Martha Guth, Myra Huang, LaToya Lain, Michael Kelly, Erika Switzer, Howard Watkins, Sparks & Wiry Cries celebrates stories of identity through song.
The songSLAM competition follows on January 15th.
http://www.sparksandwirycries.org
Bohemian National Hall, New York
Winterreise traces the stark psychological journey of a solitary protagonist, someone isolated and alienated from society. The anonymous wanderer, we learn in the opening song, arrived in town a stranger and now departs one as well. The inexorable journey through the winter landscape, ending with the despairing ‘Der Leiermann’ (‘The Organ Grinder’), reflects far more than the dismayed musings of a jilted lover – these devastating songs register life at the limits.
Tyler Duncan, baritone
Illustrated talk by Christopher Gibbs
Martha Guth, soprano and Erika Switzer, piano offer works of Aaron Copland, Robert Schumann, Roberto Sierra, and Leslie Uyeda. Nominated for Juno and Latin Grammy awards, Martha Guth has appeared at Wigmore Hall, Lincoln Center, The National Cathedral, and with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Philharmonic, and Voices of Ascension. Her recitals have been broadcast by CBC Radio/Radio Canada, the BBC Radio in the U.K and the WDR in Germany.
https://www.dtmusic.org/2021-2022-season
Hugo Wolf made his genius known to the world with his first major work, the Mörike Songbook. Composed at age 28, these songs are teeming with youthful energy, passionate drama, and slapstick humor.
Program Eight draws inspiration from Boulanger’s groundbreaking approach to programming through recreations of some of her own idiosyncratic yet inspired groupings.
Presented as a performance with commentary, Program Six explores French music’s lighter side through vocal excerpts from operettas, comic operas and popular songs and chansons.
Program Two traces Nadia Boulanger’s early musical relationships, coupling songs she wrote in her teens with chamber works by then-preeminent Debussy, her composition teacher Fauré, and renowned classmates George Enescu and Ravel.
Anchored by TŌN, and exploiting Bard’s unusual ability to integrate orchestral, choral, solo and chamber works within a single event, this opening concert pairs several of Nadia Boulanger’s own compositions—her Mussorgskian piano piece Vers la vie nouvelle, selected songs and Lux aeterna, her brief tribute to her sister, Lili—with music by some of her most distinguished female students.
“Tyler Duncan is the perfect singer, spinning his lines magically over Switzer’s exquisitely delivered accompaniments” (Classical Explorer). The duo offers OBF audiences a specially crafted performance of Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte” – often considered the first song cycle by a major composer. This performance is free and open to the public.
Professor Mackenzie Pierce analyzes one of the earliest operas that commemorates the Holocaust, The Annointed (1951) by Tadeusz Zygfryd Kassern, featuring special recordings made by Erika Switzer and Tyler Duncan.
