Originally performed on May 1, 2018
Franz Schubert: Ave Maria
Gabriel Fauré: Les Berceaux: La Chanson du pêcheur
Alan Berg: Sieben Frühe Lieder
Brazilian Art Songs: Jayme Ovalle; Hector Villa Lobos; Alberto Nepomuceno; Francisco Mignone
W.A. Mozart: Crudel, perchè finora ( from: Le Nozze di Figaro, Act III)
Pietro Mascagni: Ave Maria
Soprano Ann Moss is an acclaimed recording artist and champion of contemporary vocal music who performs and collaborates with a dynamic array of living composers and chamber ensembles. Her high, silvery, flexible voice has been singled out by Opera News for “beautifully pure floated high notes” and by San Francisco Classical Voice for “powerful expression” and “exquisite phrasing.” Mike Telin of Cleveland Classical writes, her “long fluid lines are exquisite.” In addition to working closely with well-known composers such as Jake Heggie, Kaija Saariaho, John Harbison, and Aaron Jay Kernis, Ann seeks out and performs music by emerging voices at forums and festivals across the USA.
Highlights of the 2019-2020 season include Mahler’s 2nd Symphony with UCBSO, concerts in tribute to singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell on the occasion of her 76th birthday, a presentation at NOA’s 65th Annual National Conference, and Guest Artist Residencies at the University of Texas-San Antonio and San Diego State University. Moss also makes solo appearances this season with San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Ninth Planet, and in recitals with guitarist David Tanenbaum, composer Ricky Ian Gordon, and pianists Cheryl Cellon Lindquist and Steven Bailey.
As co-founder and Artistic Director of new-music repertory group CMASH, Ann Moss has been personally responsible for the creation and premiere of over one hundred fifty art songs, vocal chamber music, and operatic works. She has been a featured soloist with San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Redwood Symphony, Orchestra Without Borders, UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra; West Edge Opera, Solo Opera, SF Lyric Opera, Berkeley Opera; San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Earplay, Eco Ensemble, Composers in Red Sneakers, Composers, Inc., Ninth Planet, Music of Remembrance; the Ives, Alexander, Lydian and Hausmann String Quartets; at FENAM, Other Minds Festival, CNMAT, Fresno New Music Festival, PARMA, Hot Air Festival, Bear Valley Music Festival, and Switchboard Music Festival.
Moss has released two solo albums, Currents (2013, Angels Share Records) and Love Life (2016, ASR), both produced by multi-GRAMMY® award winner Leslie Ann Jones at Skywalker Sound. Forthcoming commercial releases include Autumn Winds (2020, Ravello Records) and Chamber Music of Nancy Bachmann (2020, no label). She can also be heard on releases from Albany, Arsis, Navona Records, Naxos, and Jaded Ibis Productions labels. Ann Moss has lectured about vocal composition at institutions including MIT, UC Davis, NYU Tisch School For The Arts, Sacramento State University, and CSU Los Angeles, and has delivered vocal masterclasses at University of Houston Moores School of Music, Longy School of Music of Bard College, University of Texas-San Antonio, San Diego State University and Baldwin-Wallace University Conservatory, among others. A native of Boston and a graduate of Hampshire College, the Longy School of Music of Bard College, and San Francisco Conservatory, Ann Moss resides and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, jazz violinist / classical violist Justin Ouellet. Ann is a Reiki practitioner, enthusiastic Yogi, and pursues a lifelong interest in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Hailed by Opera News Magazine as “superb,” and “show-stealing,” and as “a triumph” by the San Francisco Chronicle, baritone Igor Vieira made his professional debut in his native Rio de Janeiro at age 17 singing the role of Dancaïre in Bizet’s Carmen.
Subsequent credits have included the title roles in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Debussy’s Pélleas et Mélisande and Verdi’s Rigoletto as well as Junius in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff, Lescaut in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Tonio in Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci, Germont in Verdi’s La Traviata, Alberich in Wagner’s Siegfried and most recently the title role in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.
Mr. Vieira has professionally performed 104 different operatic roles ranging from the Baroque to World Premiers with such companies as the San Francisco Opera, the Theatro Municipal of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil,) Opera Santa Barbara, Sacramento Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Teatro Solis (Uruguay,) New Jersey Opera Theater, Tacoma Opera, Phoenix Hall (Japan), Teatro Barakaldo (Spain,) West Bay Opera, Berkeley Opera, Left Coast Ensemble, Fremont Opera, Rimrock Opera, Festival Opera/Walnut Creek, Oakland Opera Theater, Teatro São Pedro (Brazil,) Palácio das Artes (Brazil,) Pocket Opera, Opera San Luis Obispo, Abilene Opera Association, Ars Minerva, Berkeley Chamber Opera, Hidden Valley Opera, Opera Parallele, Opera in Williamsburg, Opera Modesto and the Opera Festivals of Belem and Manaus in Brazil as well as the Tiburon Music Festival, the Mendocino Music Festival, Napa’s Festival del Sole and Napa’s Zarzuela Festival in the US.
In 2010, Mr. Vieira had the honor of making his San Francisco Opera debut in the role of Happy in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West. In the Fall of 2011, Mr. Vieira was invited back to that stage in the role of Gubetta in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia with Renee Fleming in the title role. This production was later released on DVD by the Euroarts Label to critical acclaim.
Mr. Vieira is a world finalist of the 1995 Luciano Pavarotti Voice Competition in Philadelphia, a recipient of the Margareth Tudor Award (Princeton) for two consecutive years and the Kaplan Foundation Award (Kansas City) for outstanding artistry. He was also awarded Second Place on the East Bay Opera League Voice Competition in 2006 and was a semi-finalist of the Competizione d’Opera in Dresden – Germany in 2008.
In the concert and oratorio fields, Mr. Vieira has performed the baritone solo part in Orff’s Carmina Burana with the National Symphony in Bogotá (Colombia,) the Marin and the Merced Symphonies in California (USA) as well as the Amazonas Philharmonic in Manaus (Brazil.) He has also performed Mozart’s Requiem with the Silicon Valley Symphony, Mozart’s Grand Mass in C minor and Saint-Saens’s Christmas Oratorio with the MasterWorks Chorale in San Mateo – California, the Durufle’s Requiem with the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra and the Marin Symphony, as well as Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Napa Valley Symphony. In Brazil, Mr. Vieira sang Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Guarulhos Youth Symphony, the Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira, the Campinas Symphony Orchestra and with the Brazilian National Symphony, as well as Villa-Lobos’ 10th Symphony in the 95th-anniversary celebration of the Theatro Municipal of Rio de Janeiro.
Recently Mr. Vieira toured Europe singing the soloist parts in Mozart’s Grand Mass in C minor in Hungary and Slovakia as well as the Dvorak’s Requiem at the world-famous Dvorak’s Hall in Prague – Czech Republic. He has also made his San Francisco Symphony debut at Davies Concert Hall singing the baritone solo in Orff’s Carmina Burana under Ragnar Bohlin and his Kennedy Center debut, singing the baritone solo in Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast with the Washington Chorus and Orchestra under Christopher Bell.
Mr. Vieira’s disco and videography include the role of Gubetta in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia with the San Francisco Opera under the EuroArts label, the title role in Barbieri’s El Barberillo de Lavapies with the Napa’s Zarzuela Festival under the Jarvis Conservatory label and the baritone soloist part in Ramirez’s Misa Criolla with the San Francisco Boy’s Choir.
Parallel to his singing engagements, Mr. Vieira also develops a successful career as a stage director having directed productions of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and La Boheme, Verdi’s Il Trovatore, Bellini’s Norma, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and Il Barbiere di Siviglia as well as Adamo’s Little Women with a variety of American companies such as the Tacoma Opera, West Bay Opera and Island City Opera to name a few.
Mr. Vieira holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music from the prestigious Westminster Choir College in Princeton – New Jersey, and a Master’s Degree in Voice Performance from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Karen Rosenak served as pianist and founding member of new music ensembles San Francisco-based Earplay, the Empyrean Ensemble at UC Davis, and performed with other Bay Area new music ensembles as well, including Left Coast and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Retired from full-time teaching, but currently administering piano instruction part-time at UC Berkeley, she has continued to maintain an active performance schedule. Recent performances include West Edge’s Snapshot in Berkeley and San Francisco, and a presentation on the Clementi fortepiano in the DeBellis Collection at San Francisco State University. She performed a Haydn piano concerto with the New Esterhazy Quartet in March and coaches fortepiano in conjunction with their summer classical music workshop offered through SFEMS (San Francisco Early Music Society). Highlights of the 2017-18 season are an all Brahms concert at the Freight and Salvage along-side violist Ben Simon and contralto Karen Clark, Kurt Rhode’s “Death and a Knight’ with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, as well as recitals with Soprano Ann Moss and Baritone Igor Vieira.
