Special guest artists soprano LaToya Lain and pianist Margo Garrett explore the powerful collaborative relationship between pianist and vocalist.

PROGRAM

Undine Smith Moore: Love Let the Wind Cry . . . How I Adore Thee
Henri Duparc: L’Invitation au voyage
Henri Duparc: Le Manoir de Rosemonde
Henri Duparc: Au Pays où se fait la guerre
André Previn: Four Songs
Richard Wagner: Fünf Gedichte von Mathilde Wesendonk
John Daniels Carter: Cantata

MEET THE ARTISTS

Applauded for her “wonderfully rich,” “powerful,” and “captivating” voice, American singer LaToya Lain, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, studied voice at the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music, Florida State University, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is also a graduate of Chautauqua Opera’s Young Artist Program.

Lain’s most recent engagements include performances of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Hamburgische Oper, and the Köln Philharmonie. She recently presented solo recitals at the American Church in Paris, the Dutch Reform Church in Harare, Zimbabwe, and at the Reapertura de la Iglesia Santa Teresa in Cochabamba, Bolivia. She also presented recitals and master classes at Oberlin College & Conservatory of Music, the University of New Mexico, University of Delaware, Murray State University, SongFest in Los Angeles and The International Congress of Voice Teachers in Stockholm, Sweden. She continues to sing opera, oratorio, and perform solo recitals throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and Africa.

In June 2017, she made her Carnegie Hall debut as the soprano soloist in Ralph Vaughn William’s Dona nobis pacem, under the baton of Maestra Nina Nash-Robertson. She has also been a soloist in Mozart’s Requiem, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Verdi’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Magnificat and St. Matthew’s Passion.

Lain’s operatic roles include Brünnhilde in Die Walküre, Countess Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, Carmen, Suzuki in Madame Butterfly, Polinesso in Ariodante, La Principessa in Suor Angelica, Baba in The Medium, and Ježibaba in Rusalka.

Dr. Lain has served on the voice faculties of Central Michigan University, New York University, Oakwood University and this fall, she will begin her tenure as a member of the voice faculty at The University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She also currently teaches on the faculties of The Bay View Summer Music Institute in Bay View, Michigan, and The Montecito International Summer Music Festival in Los Angeles, California.

The large roster of artists with whom pianist Margo Garrett has long performing relationships include sopranos Kathleen Battle, Barbara Bonney, Elizabeth Futral, the late Judith Raskin, Lucy Shelton, Dawn Upshaw, Benita Valente, mezzo Shirley Close, tenors Anthony Dean Griffey and Paul Sperry, violinists Jaime Laredo and Daniel Phillips, violist Paul Neubauer, cellists Sharon Robinson, Matt Haimowitz, the late Stephen Kates, and clarinetist David Shifrin. With these and other fine artists, Garrett has premiered over thirty works. Her recordings can be found on Albany, CRI, Deutsche Grammophon (1992 Grammy for Best Vocal Recital, Kathleen Battle at Carnegie Hall), Delos, Dorian, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, Orion and Sony Classical.

A devoted teacher, Garrett headed the newly created Collaborative Piano Department at The Juilliard School from 1985 to 1991 at which time she became the first holder of the Ethel Alice Hitchcock Chair in Accompanying and Vocal Coaching at the University of Minnesota’s School of Music, the first privately endowed collaborative chair in the United States. In 2000, she returned to and remained a member of The Juilliard School’s collaborative piano faculty until this past May 2018. Garrett directed the Tanglewood Music Center vocal fellowship program for the last six of her nineteen years of teaching there (1979 to 1997) and has now returned to Tanglewood since the summer of 2015. She was awarded the 1989 American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) Most Creative Programming Award and, from 1999 through 2006, was Faculty Chair of The Steans Institute for Young Artist’s vocal and chamber music programs at Chicago Symphony’s Ravinia Festival, where she met the exceptional pianist, Ieva Jokubaviciute, and is delighted to be reacquainted with her now at Shenandoah.

Garrett has held residencies of late at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, Germany; at Vancouver International Song Institute, Taiwan Normal Teacher’s University, Soochou University in Suzhou, China, Music Academy of the West, Internationale Meistersinger Akademie (IMA) in Neumarkt, Germany, was a judge at the 15th International Schumann Vocal Competition (2008) in Zwickau, Germany, at the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition and Joy in Singing, both in New York, at dozens of American schools of music, where she thrills to the passion for classical music she finds wherever she goes, and to the high standards that are being achieved and held by talented faculty and students alike. It bodes most well for the future of music in our country and beyond.

Photos courtesy of artists