The Music Department at Pomona College presents two special programs the weekend of April 1-2. At 8 p.m. on Saturday, the popular Mojave Trio offers a program of trio piano sonatas. Then Sunday at 3 p.m., Grammy® award-winning soprano Melissa Givens, with pianist Shannon Hesse, will delight audiences in a recital by this soprano, whose “soulfulness …[and] singing can take your breath away.” Both performances will be held in Bridges Hall of Music, (150 E. Fourth St., Claremont) and are free and open to the public.
Members of the Mojave Trio are: Sara Parkins, violin; Maggie Parkins, cello and Genevieve Feiwen Lee, piano. Grammy® award-winning Sara Parkins has recorded with the Angeles Quartet and performed from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Russia in solo and chamber recitals. Her sister Maggie is also a very active performer and has been heard from Banff to Spoleto and as a prizewinner in the Fischoff National Chamber Music competition. Maggie teaches at Pomona College as does Grammy®-nominated pianist Genevieve Feiwen Lee, Everett S. Olive professor of music at Pomona College. Lee has performed from China to Brazil with orchestras, as a soloist and in numerous chamber recitals. The trio, a frequent performer at LA County Museum of Art’s “Sundays Live” broadcasts, is known for presenting a wide variety of classical music from the standard repertoire of the 18th-19th centuries to world premieres. This Saturday’s program brings together works by Hannah Lash, composed in 2015, Dmitri Shostakovich’s opus 67 written in 1944 and Robert Schumann’s Trio from 1847.
Sunday welcomes Grammy®-winning soprano Melissa Givens with pianist Shannon Hesse to the Bridges Hall of Music stage. Givens has been hailed as a singer whose music making is “consistently rewarding” and “a pleasure to hear,” by the Houston Chronicle. An extremely versatile artist, she can be found performing repertoire from the Baroque era through music of the 21st century. An Early Music America review of her performance in the 2011 Boston Early Music Festival Fringe Concerts praised her voice as “beautiful and rich, [singing] Baroque music with conviction.” Givens recently appeared as soprano soloist in a recreation of the historic Leipzig New Year’s concert of 1813 with Mercury: The Orchestra Redefined. Other recent performances include Mendelssohn’s rarely heard solo cantata Infelice with Symphony North, the title role in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Camerata Ventapane and the Baroque Music Festival of San Miguel de Allende, and Handel’s Israel in Egypt with the Houston Symphony. Givens also toured Europe and Africa in Pitié!, an adaptation of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, with the Belgian dance collective Les Ballets C de la B. She can be heard on the soundtrack recording on Cypress Records and is featured in a documentary film about the tour by ZDF/Arté.
Givens remains in demand on concert series throughout the United States and internationally, including recent recitals in Georgia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and at home in Houston. A champion of collaborative musical endeavors, she performs with various chamber music groups, including Grammy®-nominated Ars Lyrica Houston and Conspirare: Craig Hella Johnson and Company of Voices, the 2015 Grammy® winner for Best Choral Performance. Her solo appearances on major label releases from both groups have received enthusiastic reviews. She can also be heard on her solo CD, let the rain kiss you.
Her program, “Chiaroscuro: Light and Dark in Art Song” includes art songs that deal with darkness of the mind, with burning love, with light, love and whimsy, and a song cycle of stark darkness with texts based on poems identified with World War I. Givens serves on the faculties of Sam Houston State University and Texas Southern University. Givens is an alumna of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, and Davidson College.
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Saturday’s Program
with the Mojave Trio:
Hannah Lash............................... Around
Dmitri Shostakovich:................... Trio in E Minor, op. 67
Robert Schumann:....................... Trio in D Minor, op. 63
Sunday Program
Chiaroscuro: Light and Dark in Art Songs” with Melissa Givens:
Joseph Haydn:............................. She never told her love
Henry Purcell............................... Bess of Bedlam
Giuseppe Martucci:...................... Pagine sparse
Felix Mendelssohn....................... Das erste Veilchen
Richard Strauss........................... Die Nacht
W.A. Mozart................................ Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannt
Hugo Wolf................................... Ich hab in Penna einen Liebsten wohnen
Arthur Somervel.......................... There pass the careless people
John Duke.................................... The Rose did caper on her cheek
William Bolcum:.......................... The Song of Black Max
Francis Poulenc........................... La Courte Paille
Celius Dougherty......................... Love in the Dictionary
Duke:............................................ i carry your heart
Bolcum......................................... Amor