Juilliard Songfest

Baritone Dominik Belavy is a master’s student at Juilliard where he studies with Sanford Sylvan. At the school, he has been featured as L’horloge Comtoise and L’arbre in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and Conte Perrucchetto in Haydn’s La fedeltà premiata. With Juilliard415, he has sung Bach’s B Minor Mass led by Ton Koopman. Last season he made his professional and hometown debut in Detroit as Jim Larkens in Michigan Opera Theatre’s production of La fanciulla del West conducted by Stephen Lord. As a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, Mr. Belavy has sung Ravel’s Chansons madécasses, Schoenberg’s arrangement of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and premiered works by Alan Smith and Nathan Davis. He will return this summer to Tanglewood to sing Junior in Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place. Mr. Belavy is a Toulmin Foundation Scholar.

Sam Lilja is a New York-based actor and dialect coach. His stage roles include The Importance of Being Earnest (Two River Theater); Acolyte (59E59); Clarkston (Dallas Theater Center); The Winter’s Tale(Shakespeare Theatre Company, DC). His work on film includes Lincoln in the Bardo; The Drowning; I Didn’t Come Here to Make Love. He has also been seen on television on Billions and Almost There. He is an alumnus of Juilliard’s Drama Division (Group 43) and a proud member of the 52nd Street Project. (samlilja.com)

Soprano Felicia Moore is an Artist Diploma in Opera Studies student at Juilliard studying with Edith Wiens. Ms. Moore was most recently seen at Mrs. Grose in The Turn of the Screw at Opera Columbus. This past summer at the Merola Opera Program she sang Agathe in Der Freischütz and Elisabeth in Tannhäuser. Last year she sang the title role of Katya Kabanova with Juilliard Opera. Ms. Moore has been a young artist at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Des Moines Metro Opera, where she was the cover for Alice Ford in Falstaff, the title role of Tobias Picker’s Emmeline, and Madame Lidoine in Dialogues of the Carmelites. She is a winner of this year’s Sullivan Foundation Award, and previous awards include being a two-time semi-finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, as well as being awarded the top prize from the George London Foundation. Ms. Moore is from Princeton, N.J. Ms. Moore is a recipient of the Jerome L. Greene Fellowship and the Hardesty and Beverley Peck Johnson Fund.

Tenor Charles Sy is from Toronto, and is an Artist Diploma in Opera Studies student at Juilliard where he studies with Marlena Malas. He is a recent graduate of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio and completed his BM and MM at the University of Toronto. He is an alumnus of several leading training programs including the Music Academy of the West, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Opera as Theatre program at the Banff Centre, and the Britten-Pears Young Artist Program. Mr. Sy received first prize and audience choice awards in the Canadian Opera Company’s 2014 Centre Stage Competition. He is also the recipient of the 2013 Hnatyshyn Foundation Developing Artist Grant for Classical Voice after being nominated to represent the University of Toronto and competing at the national level. Mr. Sy is a recipient of the Philo Higley Scholarship, Hardesty and Beverley Peck Johnson Fund, and Max Dreyfus Scholarship in Voice.

Widely recognized as one of today’s leading collaborative pianists, Brian Zeger has performed with many of the world’s greatest singers including Marilyn Horne, Deborah Voigt, Anna Netrebko, Susan Graham, René Pape, Kiri Te Kanawa, Frederica von Stade, Piotr Beczala, Bryn Terfel, Joyce DiDonato, Denyce Graves, and Adrianne Pieczonka in an extensive concert career that has taken him to the premiere concert halls throughout the U.S. and abroad. Among his most recent recordings are All Who Wander, a recital disc with Jamie Barton; Preludios—Spanish songs with Isabel Leonard; a recording of Strauss and Wagner lieder with Adrianne Pieczonka; and Dear Theo: Three Song Cycles by Ben Moore with Paul Appleby, Susanna Phillips, and Brett Polegato, all on the Delos label. In addition to his distinguished concert career, he serves as artistic director of the Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts at Juilliard and recently completed an eight-year tenure as the executive director of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artists Development Program. (brianzeger.com)

Lauren Donahue, currently living in New York City, is a recent graduate of Juilliard’s Drama Division and a member of Group 46. Upon graduation, she appeared on Law and Order: SVU (NBC) and has guest starred on Bull (CBS). In her time at Juilliard she played a number of roles, including Patricia in Donald Margulies’ Sight Unseen, River in Branden Jacob-Jenkins’ Appropriate, and Mrs. Tarleton in George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance.