This performance is a Work In Progress presentation of a work that is being developed as a part of National Sawdust’s Artists In Residence program. We invite you to come support these world class artists and experience new art in its earliest stage. The evening will consist of performance, followed by a Q&A with the lead artists, Vivian Fung, Andrea Núñez, and Royce Vavrek. 

Vivian Fung: Composer 

Andrea Núñez: Creator and Performer

Royce Vavrek: Librettist

Han Chen: Pianist

Katie Jenkins: Music Assistant

Praised for her "blinding brilliance," Canadian Soprano Andrea Núñez is establishing herself as a versatile young artist. Upcoming this season, Núñez looks forward to returning to Opéra de Montréal for Puccini’s La bohème (Musetta) and Pacific Opera Victoria for Portman’s The Little Prince (Water). Recently, Andrea marked several role and company debuts, including Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Edmonton Opera, and Elvira in Verdi’s Ernani with Voicebox: Opera in Concert.

The 2022/2023 season saw Andrea make her debut with Pacific Opera Victoria, singing Frasquita in their production of Bizet’s Carmen, and a return to Toronto Operetta Theatre for Adele in Die Fledermaus, where she was praised for her “sexy, funny” characterization (OperaRamblings) and “brilliant colouratura” (BarczaBlog). She also debuted Juliette in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette with Opéra du Royaume and Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata with Brott Opera in the Spring/Summer season of that year.

Ms. Núñez is an alumna of l'Atelier Lyrique de l'Opera de Montréal, where she performed the roles of the Page in Rigoletto, Woglinde in Das Rheingold, and Alice B. Toklas in Ricky Ian Gordon's 27. She also performed the roles of the Governess in The Turn of the Screw in collaboration with the Orchestre de l'Agora and Giulia in La Scala di seta in collaboration with the Orchestre symphonique de la Vallée-du-Haut-Saint-Laurent. andreanunezsoprano.com.

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JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung has a unique talent for combining idiosyncratic textures and styles into large-scale works, reflecting her multicultural background. NPR calls her “one of today’s most eclectic composers” and The Philadelphia Inquirer praises her “stunningly original compositional voice.”  This is supported by many of her works, including Clarinet Quintet: Frenetic Memories, a reflection on her travels to visit minority groups in Yunnan, China; Earworms, commissioned by Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, which musically depicts our diverted attention spans and multi-tasking lives; and The Ice Is Talking for solo percussion and electronics, commissioned by the Banff Centre, using three ice blocks to illustrate the beauty and fragility of our environment. 

Fung has received numerous awards and grants, including the 2015 Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award for achievement in new music from the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), a Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Gregory Millard Fellowship, and grants from ASCAP, BMI, American Music Center, MAP Fund, American Symphony Orchestra League, American Composers Forum, and the Canada Council for the Arts.  She is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre and served on the board of the American Composers Forum. vivianfung.net.

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Royce Vavrek is a Canada-born, Brooklyn-based librettist and lyricist who has been called “the indie Hofmannsthal” (The New Yorker) a “Metastasio of the downtown opera scene” (The Washington Post), “an exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times), and “one of the most celebrated and sought after librettists in the world” (CBC Radio).  His opera “Angel’s Bone” with composer Du Yun was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Royce was recently appointed Artistic Director of Toronto’s experimental opera company Against the Grain Theatre.  He holds a BFA in Filmmaking and Creative Writing from Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Montreal and an MFA from the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at New York University.  He is an alum of American Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist Development Program.

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A fearless performer with seemingly limitless imagination and possessed with uncanny energy, pianist Han Chen plays scores old and new with rare rigor and insight. 

Alex Ross, classical music critic of The New Yorker, who selected Mr. Chen’s Naxos disc of the Ligeti Études and Capriccios as a “Notable Classical Recording of 2023,” characterized him as follows: “The Taiwanese pianist Han Chen, a noted interpreter of the Ligeti Études and other modernist repertory, has made a blistering album of the [Liszt] opera transcriptions.” –The New Yorker, September 4, 2023 

Attending Mr. Chen’s recent traversal of the 18 Ligeti Etudes and 18 accompanying world premieres, George Grella titled his review: Han Chen’s remarkable playing equal to the genius of Ligeti’s Etudes and went on to exclaim: “he is astonishing, with some of the finest pianism one has ever witnessed.”   —New York Classical Review, September 25, 2023 

Gold Medalist at the 2013 China International Piano Competition and a prizewinner at the 2018 Honens International Piano Competition, Mr. Chen has also been praised by Gramophone as “impressively commanding and authoritative” and further cited by The New York Times for his “graceful touch,” “rhythmic precision” and “hypnotic charm.”  

Mr. Chen’s musical vision is manifest in his four solo Naxos CDs focusing on Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Thomas Adès, and György Ligeti’s Complete Piano Études. He has appeared as soloist with the Calgary Philharmonic, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Lexington Philharmonic, Hong Kong Phil harmonic, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, China Symphony Orchestra, and Xiamen Philharmonic. Mr. Chen has performed as solo recitalist internationally. He is a core member of Ensemble Échappé while regularly collaborating with The Metropolis Ensemble. In 2021, Chen launched Migration Music, an ongoing series of performances and interviews with immigrant composers.

Han Chen has studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky, Wha Kyung Byun, and Ursula Oppens at The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, and CUNY Graduate Center. 

He is represented by Black Tea Music.

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‍Katie Jenkins is a multi-award-winning Welsh composer and music producer, now based in New York City. She is renowned for her strength in collaborative work and her ability to form supportive environments where she works closely with fellow artists to maximize their creative output. Her music can be found on both stage and screen and her sheet music is available under concert works.