SUNBURY — The Susquehanna Valley Chorale, Orchestra and Soloists, conducted by William Payn, will present J.S. Bach’s “Mass in B Minor” on Saturday and Sunday at Zion Lutheran Church, Fifth and Market streets, Sunbury.
Bach is considered to be one of the greatest composers of all time, and the “Mass in B Minor” is considered to be the crowning achievement of his life and is a tour-de-force of the choral repertoire. Featured guest soloists for this performance are:
n Soprano Elaine Goldsmith, associate conductor of The Children’s Festival Chorus of Pittsburgh. A member of the artistic staff since 1990, she is an accomplished guest conductor for children’s chorus festivals throughout Pennsylvania, and a former elementary music teacher in West Virginia and Texas. As a professional choral musician and soprano soloist, Goldsmith performed with the late Robert Shaw in France and New York’s Carnegie Hall. In Pittsburgh, she is the soprano soloist for the Bach and the Baroque concert series in Heinz Chapel.
n Soprano Candace Erb, vocalist, teacher, conductor and keyboardist in the Pittsburgh area. She holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Duquesne University. Erb has performed as soloist with the Eastman Rochester Chorus, the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Symphony Brass. She has also been a member of Capella Antiqua in Rochester and Bach and the Baroque in Pittsburgh. Her recent soloist appearances have included Mozart’s Requiem and Mass in C minor, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Haydn’s Paukenmess, Vivaldi’s Gloria and Faure’s Requiem. Erb is currently an elementary music teacher and choral director in the Fox Chapel Area School District.
n Mezzo-soprano Kristen Dubenion-Smith, who enjoys an active performance career in oratorio, opera and recital. A native of Michigan, she is a graduate of Alma College in Michigan and the Peabody Conservatory of Baltimore, Md. Recent engagements include performances with the Catacousic Consort of Cincinnati, Ohio, the Handel Choir of Baltimore, Magnificat of San Francisco, the Berkeley Early Music Exhibition, the Bach and Baroque Ensemble of Pittsburgh, the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble and Baltimore’s Shakespeare Festival. Dubenion-Smith has performed more than a dozen opera roles in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York City, Bloomington, Indianapolis and Princeton with the New Jersey Opera Theater and American Opera Theater. Upcoming engagements include playing the role of Coridon in American Opera Theater’s version of Handel’s Acis and Galatea and performances at the Indianapolis Early Music Festival.
n Tenor Scott Mello hails from Newton, N.J., and enjoys a diverse career on the operatic, concert, recital and musical theater stages. He has appeared in the U.S. and Europe with such ensembles as Akron Symphony, Apollo’s Fire (the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra), Oberlin Baroque and Chamber Orchestras, Cleveland’s Trinity Chamber Orchestra, the West London Sinfonia and the New England Symphonic Ensemble at Carnegie Hall in works ranging from Monteverdi and Mozart to Vaughan Williams and Britten.
This season’s engagements include performances of Early Music New York’s program Colonial Capers, staged productions portraying the Second Prince in The Play of Daniel, a new production co-produced by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Gotham Early Music Scene, and the Sailor in Dido & Aeneas with Apollo’s Fire and recitals in the NY metropolitan area. He serves on the voice faculty of Seton Hall University and maintains a private studio in New York City. He holds degrees from Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and New York University.
n Mischa Bouvier, baritone, who was born in Alabama and holds degrees from Boston University and the University of Cincinnati. An avid singer of opera, oratorio and song, Bouvier’s past performances have included the role of Jigger in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel with Keith Lockhart and the Boston POPS; a collaboration with the Mark Morris Dance Group for performances of Brahms’s Liebeslieber-Walzer at the Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival; the world premier of Charles Fussell’s Venture at Tanglewood; and concerts of Songs from the Labyrinth with Sting and the Concord Ensemble in Los Angeles; Einhorn’s Voices of Light with Anonymous 4 in Dayton; and Bach’s Christ lag in Todesbanden with the Long Island Philharmonic.
Recently he sang Weihnachts-Oratorium with Pittsburgh’s Bach and Baroque Ensemble; the role of Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale for Opera in the Heights; Moravec’s Songs of Love and War with the Long Island Masterworks Chorale and Orchestra. He has sung Bouncer and Dandy in The Ballad of Baby Doe; the Officer in Il barbiere di Siviglia; and this past summer, the role of Bill in Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny under the direction of Maestro James Levine at Tanglewood.
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Susquehanna Valley Chorale to sing Bach
Concerts are this weekend
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