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ABOUT PROGRAM TWO | MEMORY & METAPHOR

Featuring eight new 21st C. Women composers, Program Two | Memory & Metaphor offers an inviting and evocative look at story-telling through the expressive genre of art song. Filled with sense-memory textures in the piano, poetry and vocal writing, these songs offer musical snapshots ranging from intimate to inspiring to ironic. This program will also include the Boston Premiere of Lauren Spavelko’s song “Courage” with text by author Elizabeth Gilbert from her book Big Magic. The composer/performer team of composer Lauren Spavelko, soprano Jennifer Sgroe and pianist Eric Sedgwick, developed and performed the World Premiere of “Courage” in the Sparks & Wiry Cries 2023 songSLAM competition this past January 2023 in NYC and won 3rd Place in the Live and Virtual Audience Voting.

Program Two Composers include Maria Thompson Corley, Rachel DeVore Fogarty, Edie Hill, Libby Larsen, Gilda Lyons, JL Marlor, Missy Mazzoli, Lauren Spavelko and Errollyn Wallen with poetry and text by AddieRose Brown, Emily Dickinson, Frederico García Lorca, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amy Lowell, Sara Teasdale and Errollyn Wallen.

– excerpts from BIG MAGIC by Elizabeth Gilbert. Copyright © Elizabeth Gilbert, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

About Program One | FROM ISOLATION to INSPIRATION

First performed in March 2022 in Boston & New York, this program offers a reflection of the performers experiences as we approached 2020 and have moved through the COVID-19 pandemic. Program One | From Isolation to Inspiration explores themes of solitude, community and connection, equality and reciprocity, spirituality, the lifecycles of human relationship in all forms, and the joys of creative endeavor. This program also includes the World Premiere of two songs by Nailah Nombeko, commissioned by the PROJECT 2020 Commission Initiative.

Selections from Program One have also been offered for the Federation of the Art Song Spark Event at the Zimmerli Art Museum.

Program One Composers include B.E. Boykin, Jodi Goble, Lori Laitman, Cecelia Livingston, Julia Meinwald, Nailah Nombeko, Luna Pearl Wolf, Paola Prestini, Shruthi Rajasekar, Jessica Rudman, Kamala Sankaram, Lauren Spavelko and Gwyneth Walker.

About PROJECT 2020: A View of 21st C. Women Composers

A song recital series highlighting the exceptional work of 21st Century women composers, PROJECT 2020 features 20 composers over 2 unique recital programs of relevant, engaging and accessible art song written within the past 20 years. Each program expresses contemporary viewpoints on modern life, including newly commissioned songs through the PROJECT 2020 Commission Initiative.

More than two years in the making, we are finally able to offer the first program in the series to live audiences! Originally planned for May 2020, but put on hold because of challenges due to COVID-19, Jennifer and Eric are finally able to return to in-person music-making after having recorded many of the pieces on this program at a distance. The recording project served as tool for preparation but not a substitute for real-time, organic collaboration but now we are back! During the past 18 months the PROJECT 2020 Commission Initiative also engaged Nailah Nombeko to write two new songs for the program and we are thrilled to premiere them on this first program. For that reason, and because 2020 has come to mean much more than an expression of our musical project, we will keep with the original project title, even if we are a few years behind schedule.

About the Performers

JENNIFER SGROE has performed across the US and at festivals in Finland, England and Austria in opera, recitals and on the concert stage at venues such as Jordan Hall, Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall, The Society for Ethical Culture and the United Nations. She specializes in contemporary American opera and repertoire of the Baroque and Classical eras and is a proponent of new works by women composers. Representative concert performances include Soprano Soloist for Barber Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (Boston Chamber Symphony), Mozart Requiem (University of Massachusetts Lowell), Poulenc Gloria (NEC – Jordan Hall), Handel Messiah (various), Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem (Dartington Festival - UK).  She recently made her Jordan Hall solo recital debut with Timothy Steele at the piano, sang the premiere of Susanna in Laura Schwendinger’s Artemisia with Center for Contemporary Opera (New York), was Soprano Soloist with Back Bay Chorale, Cambridge Symphony and made her Jordan Hall artist debut and recording on Navona records with The Shakespeare Concerts which included World Premieres of works by Summer and Pesetsky.  Additionally, in the past few years, she has performed the US premiere and multiple performances of Jessica Rudman’s Trigger, a one woman opera about domestic assault, with Hartford Opera Theater, Women Composers Forum, Milton Community Concerts and other venues. At the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic, she turned to practice as a tool to remain focused, bolster courage and wellbeing and remain connected to music. You can view all 100 days of her #100daysofpractice challenge on Instagram @jennifersgroe.  As a result of the challenge, she developed the “A Passion for Practice” Masterclass Series which defines and re-defines the purpose and intention of practice. It also offers tools and inspiration to empower other singers in their own practice. The first masterclass was offered in February 2021 for New England Conservatory’s School of Continuing Education and future offerings are being planned. She also works regularly as a professional actress in film and commercials, and teaches voice privately and for New England Conservatory Preparatory School and School of Continuing Education. Jennifer holds the Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Kentucky, the Master of Music in Opera from The Boston Conservatory and the Doctorate of Musical Arts, also from the University of Kentucky. She is also a National Association of Teachers of Singing Development Liaison for the New England Region.

ERIC SEDGWICK has performed with many of music’s top talents including Leona Mitchell, Sanford Sylvan, Marni Nixon, Nicholas Phan, Laquita Mitchell, Broadway leading ladies Sarah Rice, Carole Demas and Debra Monk, and English hornist Thomas Stacy of the New York Philharmonic. A frequent performer and collaborator in the NYC area, he is also a vocal coach at the Manhattan School of Music and the faculty collaborative pianist for the Tanglewood Music Center. He has served as rehearsal pianist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the batons of Michael Tilson Thomas, Bramwell Tovey, John Williams and Andris Nelsons. He is a regular pianist for events with the Metropolitan Opera Guild, and has worked for Carnegie Hall’s Music Education Workshops with Joyce DiDonato, as well as for the International Vocal Arts Institutes in New York and Montreal, and for Beth Morrison Projects. For ten years he was the music director for the Junior Opera Theater scenes program at Manhattan School of Music, directed by Catherine Malfitano. On the west coast, he was a longtime coach and music director for the OperaWorks training program in Los Angeles. Mr. Sedgwick is the official pianist for the Art Song Preservation Society in New York, a group whose regular masterclass series has included Dalton Baldwin, Thomas Grubb, Margaret Lattimore and Joan Dornemann. He performs regularly with local groups in New York including Opera Singers Initiatives, the Stonewall Chorale, La Forza dell’Opera, and the Halcyon chamber music series, and has been featured in the Center for Contemporary Opera’s concert series, the 2019 Ukranian Contemporary Music Festival and OmniARTS productions. He has appeared often with the Broadway Concerts Direct performances in upstate New York, in cabaret shows at 54 Below and the Metropolitan Room, and as music director/pianist for “The World According to Kurt Weill” and “Jarmila Novotná: Her Life in Song” at UrbanStages. He can be heard in the PBS series “The Heart of Art” as well as on the soundtracks for the prize-winning short films “Connection Lost (The Tinder Opera),” “Something Blue (The Bachelor Opera)” and “Someone Like Me (The Facebook Opera).” He has recorded for WQXR’s Greene Space and for Opera Omaha and LA Opera’s coproduction of David Hertzenberg’s “The Rose Elf.” He was a winner of the Boston Steinway piano competition, and has premiered new works by composers Seymour Barab, J. Mark Stambaugh, Joelle Wallach, and Louis Hardin. Mr. Sedgwick is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and Brown University. 
 For more info visit https://www.ericsedgwickpiano.com/