VOCAL

The Voice Studies Area is very active in chamber music performances at MSM. Students are invited often to premiere works by student composers, appear on instrumental doctoral chamber recitals, and frequently include instrumental obbligati or larger chamber works on degree recitals. We welcome the newest members of our voice faculty, soprano Cynthia Clayton and baritone Timothy Jones, as well as the operatic vocal coaches, Joanne Ritacca and Thomas Jaber.

Since 1995, Katherine Ciesinski has directed a vocal chamber institute for the Texas Music Festival called Close Encounters. Each year singers study and perform in a week-long intensive workshop, usually co-directed by a guest artist who has a particular expertise in vocal chamber repertoire. Graduate vocal students have performed classics of the 20th century chamber repertoire, such as Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Berio's Folk Songs with members of our New Music Ensemble AURA.

The MSM Voice Studies faculty listed below are all active, world-class performer-teachers. This unique team of artists has a vast combined repertoire of chamber works, featured in annual faculty recitals and other local performances. These span the centuries from pre-Renaissance to world premieres of contemporaries, traditional ethnic music to the avant-garde. Some recent examples include: Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children, Hindemith's Die Junge Magd, Clara and Robert Schumann's Lieder with a restored 1840 Bösendorfer piano, Bredin's Green, Brahms Two Songs with Viola, Britten's Canticle II, Sephardic music of the 15th-20th centuries, Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo Virtutis, and Handel's Acis and Galatea.