Tuesday, July 30, 2013

WUGA - Hodgson Center Stage

Readers,

I just received great news!



Tomorrow, Wednesday July 31st 2013 at 3:30 - the pilot episode of Hodgson Center Stage with Allen Crowell will air.

I am the first featured Hugh Hodgson School of Music student to be interviewed on the show.

Tune in to WUGA Listen Online.

In the fall of 2012 Professor Emeritus Allen Crowell spent an afternoon with me at the WUGA radio station in Athens, Georgia chatting about music, Athens, UGA and my life.

You'll hear two recordings of me on this episode, my first Che Gelida and an aria from the Pirates of Penzance both from UGA Opera Theatre production at UGA.

It is a true honor to be selected and I am grateful to all of the people responsible.

If you have the time please check it out!

Best,
Joe

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Welcome

Dear Readers,

Welcome to my new blog.

I decided that after the success of the blog that I kept while I was singing Rodolfo in Italy last year, it would be nice to have a more permanent blog in which I can update regularly about my career and experiences unrelated to Italy.

I have also decided to keep the blog about Italy with the hope that in the near future I will be back in the country that I love so deeply.

To fill you in: I just returned home from singing with the Collegiate Chorale at the 20th annual Verbier Festival in Verbier, Switzerland. You can see the videos at Medici.tv You'll need to create a username and password to gain access but it is free.

A little back story explaining how this came about: I was invited by the Chorale after my performance of Hoffmann in Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) with the Martina Arroyo Foundation's Prelude to Performance program. Back stage after the performance I was greeted by Constantinos Tsourakis, a member of the Chorale and long time friend, who congratulated me on my performance and asked if I had any plans for the next two weeks. He explained that the Chorale was leaving in 3 days for the Verbier Festival and they needed a tenor. An offer that I couldn't refuse. 3 days later I was on a plane headed to Switzerland with a binder filled with Verdi, Beethoven, Schubert and the premier of Lera Auerbach's new composition.

We performed four incredible concerts.
The first was the festival opener conducted by Charles Dutoit and performed by the Verbier Festival Orchestra and the Collegiate Chorale. The soloist included Lisa Milne, Lilli Paasikivi, Matthew Rose and one of the Chorale's singers Joe Demarest. We premiered Lera Auerbach;s In Praise of Peace and sang Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

A shout-out to Ivy Wong who is a section player with the Verbier Festival Orchestra and a fellow graduate of the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, SUNY She and I both studied with Timothy Cobb. Ivy is still a student of Tim's and is a graduate student at Juilliard.

The other performances included Beethoven's Chorale Fantasy, again with Maestro Dutoit and the VFO; Schubert's Mass in Eb conducted by Christian Zacharias with the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra; finally Otello Act I conducted by Maestro Valery Gergiev with the full capacity of the VFO and the soloist: Aleksandrs Antonenko (Otello) - Anna Netrebko (Desdemona) - Alexey Markov (Iago) and Francesco Demuro (Cassio).

I am looking forward to the next two weeks before I head back down to south the Athens, in order to complete my final year as a Doctor of Music student at the University of Georgia. I've got Don Jose in my immediate future and looking forward to singing for Mr. Richard Leech before I leave.

Thank you for reading,
Keep the cards and letters coming
Joe