Tickets
About the Show
Classical
“I’ve been given quite a few CDs to evaluate and publicize in the past, and I’ve loved many of them, but none has moved me the way AN AIDS QUILT SONGBOOK: SING FOR HOPE has.” – The Huffington Post
A concert of art songs for voice and piano dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The project was begun in the early 1990s by baritone William Parker and first performed in Alice Tully Hall in 1992. Following a successful 20th anniversary concert at Cooper Union featuring several of the original performers on the first AQSB, pianist Thomas Bagwell and composer Gordon Beeferman co-curate an evening of selections from the first collection, songs from various regional versions of the songbook, and several new songs written for this evening reflecting the current realities of the HIV/AIDS situation in this country.
Among the songs to be premiered include:
—lyricist/composer Michael R. Jackson (new resident playwright at Lincoln Center Theater) speaks to the experience of gay black men, who are at especially high risk for HIV;
—lyricist Rachel Peters and composer Sam Davis reflect on the history of AIDS testing and political activism;
—lyricist/librettist Mark Campbell and composer Kevin Puts honor the accomplishments and legacy of writer/activist Larry Kramer in “You and Your Big Mouth.”
Special guest: Mahogany Browne of Nuyorican Poets Café and Urban Word NYC
Plus songs by Fred Hersch and Herschel Garfein; Gordon Beeferman and Charlotte Jackson; Paola Prestini and Royce Vavrek; Michael Djupstrom and Kenny Fries; Andrea Clearfield and Rafael Campo; and others.
About the Artists
Thomas Bagwell
Called by Marilyn Horne, “a pioneer for his age,” Thomas Bagwell served as assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera from 1997-2006. Other long term opera house affiliations include the Washington National Opera and the Santa Fe opera. He has been a participant at the Marlboro Music Festival and has collaborated in recital with such luminaries as Midori, Marilyn Horne, Susan Graham, Frederica von Stade, Denyce Graves and James Morris.
His career has taken him to such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Musikverein, the Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall and many others. Thomas Bagwell has had a long association with the Austrian Cultural Forum both in New York and Washington DC performing over twenty five recitals of Lieder with up and coming singers from the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera and others. The first project for the ACF in New York was a complete survey of Hugo Wolf’s Lieder, a seven part series which included the participation of twenty-eight singers.
Other projects have included a Mahler festival in which his piano four-hand arrangement of “Das Lied von der Erde” was premiered (featuring Kristine Jepson as mezzo soloist), an operetta program with Broadway star Christiane Noll, and most recently a series which combines Schubert Lieder with contemporary American art song. His performances in Washington DC at the Austrian Embassy include three recitals this spring in their Festival of Austrian Song and a lecture on Lieder for the Smithsonian Institute. Thomas Bagwell has also had a long association with the Marilyn Horne Foundation, performing numerous recitals and galas in New York and this season a national broadcast of the “Saint Paul Sunday” radio program from Minnesota Public Radio.
He is also involved with the Lotte Lehmann Foundation and recently joined fellow advisory board member Marni Nixon to record a Schoenberg song for a commemorative CD on the Arabesque label. This coming season, Thomas Bagwell will be involved in a new project with soprano Arisa Kusumi and several guest artist singers called “Art Song Now.” This ensemble will take programs of art song with commentary and spoken poetry to audiences across the country in an effort to revitalize the vocal recital and the understanding of the song literature. Their first concerts have been at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York and at the Poetry Conference at West Chester University In addition to his performing schedule, Mr. Bagwell is an active teacher in New York and elsewhere. His association with the Mannes College of Music began in 1998 as a vocal coach, then adding classes for singers and now as private teacher of accompanying in their Master’s degree program for Collaborative Piano.
He has taught masterclasses in such schools as Portland State University, Simpson College and for the Santa Fe Opera, the New Jersey Opera Theater, the first Astoria Music Festival in Oregon, and will this fall be a guest faculty member for a week at the Conservatorio de Musica de Puerto Rico. His teachers have included Warren Jones, Graham Johnson and Edna Golandsky. New York Magazine critic Peter G. Davis has written of him,” Thomas Bagwell’s bejewelled playing showed that the art of the accompanist is alive and well.”
Gordon Beeferman
GORDON BEEFERMAN is a composer, pianist, and improviser based in New York City. An eclectic and omnivorous musician who straddles numerous genres, he has created and performed innovative opera, chamber and orchestra music, avant-jazz, and numerous collaborations with choreographers, writers, and video artists. His varied projects include bands that perform his compositions: an Organ Trio; Other Life Forms, a quartet; and Music for an Imaginary Band, a septet—“a commanding avant-jazz ensemble” (Time Out New York). “Four Parts Five,” an extended work for his new quintet, was released on Innova Recordings in 2015 – “Packed with humour, mischief, and an urge to dance” (The Wire).
Since 2003, Beeferman has composed two operas with librettist Charlotte Jackson: “The Rat Land,” praised as “complex and daringly modern” by The New York Times, and “The Enchanted Organ: A Porn Opera,” scenes of which have been performed to sold-out theater and nightclub audiences in downtown Manhattan. Notable commissions and/or performances of his compositions have come from the New York City Opera orchestra, Momenta Quartet, Minnesota Orchestra, Albany Symphony, California EAR Unit, St. Urban Concerts, Talea Ensemble, Quartet New Generation recorder collective, and others. He has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the BMI Foundation, and Concert Artists Guild, three BMI Student Composer Awards, a Tanglewood fellowship, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Copland House, and Ucross.
An active member of the New York music scene since 1998, Beeferman has performed at venues and series including Roulette, MATA, and the Vision Festival, and his recordings have been acclaimed by magazines including The Wire, Jazz Review, and Cadence. In 2016 he performed his first solo concerts in Europe, and original and improvised music with ensembles in Germany and Amsterdam. He has also performed as a pianist/keyboardist in Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach” and Taylor Mac’s “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” and has co-curated concerts of the AIDS Quilt Songbook in New York City and Philadelphia. Beeferman’s recordings are available on Clang, Innova, OutNow, Generate, Genuin, and Summit Records. He is a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow.
Mahogany L Browne
Cave Canem, Poets House & Serenbe Focus alum, author, organizer & curator, professor Mahogany L Browne is a part of the BLMPratt department, Artistic Director for Urban Word NYC and facilitates lectures, performances and workshops. Her new collections Black Girl Magic (Macmillan) & Kissing Caskets (Yes Yes Books) are due to be released in Winter 2018.
Adrienne Danrich
Adrienne Danrich is an EMMY® award winning soprano who has performed and covered at Lyric Opera Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Carnegie Hall, & the Kennedy Center. In addition to performing operas and recitals, she has written a number of one-woman shows, which she performs across the country. Visit www.adriennedanrich.com.
Jarrett Ott
Jarrett Ott (baritone) was recently named one of twenty-five “Rising Stars” by Opera News and will make many important role debuts this season at Opera Philadelphia, Lyric Opera Kansas City and will return to Santa Fe Opera, appearing in Ariadne auf Naxos and Candide. Mr. Ott will join the Ensemble of Staatsoper Stuttgart beginning in the 2018-19 season.
Michael Slattery
Michael Slattery has been a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the French National Orchestra in Paris, BBC Symphony in London, and the Akademie für Alte Musik at the Staatsoper in Berlin. His new, English translation of Bach’s St. John Passion was performed this season at Carnegie Hall.
Mary Testa
Mary Testa: Broadway: Wicked, Guys and Dolls, Xanadu, Chicago, 42nd St, Marie Christine, On the Town, Forum. Off-Broadway: The Government Inspector, Orange Julius, First Daughter Suite, Queen of the Mist, See What I Wanna See. Film: Big Stone Gap, The Mother, Eat Pray Love, The Bounty Hunter. Television: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Bull, Two Broke Girls, Nurse Jackie, and Whoopi.
Ariana Wehr
Brazilian-born soprano Ariana Wehr, originally from Batesville, Indiana, is a recent graduate of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program at Washington National Opera. Upcoming performances in the 2017-2018 season include singing Konstanze in The Abduction from the Seraglio with Brava! Opera Theater in Ashland, Oregon in March 2018.
Howard McGillin
His record-setting performance in the title role of “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway aside, Howard’s leading roles on Broadway and London’s West End: “Gigi”, “The Kiss Of The Spider Woman”, “She Loves Me”, “The Secret Garden”, “Anything Goes” (Tony, Drama Desk nominations), “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (Tony, Drama Desk nominations, Theatre World Award), and “Sunday in the Park with George”. In London “Mack and Mabel” and ,“Anything Goes”. Nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his New York theatrical debut in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s “La Bohème” with Linda Ronstadt. Stephen Sondheim/Harold Prince’s “Bounce”, Goodman Theatre and Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., (Helen Hayes nomination).
