Pianist Margo Garrett is joined by sopranos Elizabeth Futral and Lucy Shelton in "Elizabeth, Lucy, Margo and More..." on Wednesday, January 23 at 8 PM in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater

World premiere performance of composer Philip Lasser’s "Nicolette et Aucassin": A Medieval Chantefable (sung fable) is highlight of Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital at Juilliard

Pianist and Juilliard faculty member, Margo Garrett, is joined by sopranos Elizabeth Futral and Lucy Shelton for an evening of song on Wednesday, January 23 at 8 PM in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater (155 West 65th Street), part of the School’s Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series. The recital features the world premiere performance of composer and Juilliard faculty member Philip Lasser’s Nicolette et Aucassin: A Medieval Chantefable (sung fable); Fauré’s La Chanson d’Eve, Op. 95 (poetry of Charles Van Lergerghe); Mr. Lasser’s six French songs entitled Les Visages de l’Amour; Poulenc’s Calligrammes (1948) (poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire); Poulenc’s Deux Poèmes de Louis Aragon (1942), Dans l’herbe (1939) (poetry of Louise de Vilmorin), and Priez pour paix (1938) (poetry of Charles d’Orléans); and Debussy’s Trois Poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1887-1889).

Mr. Lasser’s new work, Nicolette et Aucassin, scored for two sopranos, piano, and narrator, sets a text written by an anonymous author of the 13th century. The work depicts the struggle of two pure and innocent young lovers who seek to love each other freely and completely despite family loyalties prohibiting them to be together – a Romeo and Juliette story with curiously modern touches. The work was commissioned by Ms. Garrett and completed in 2007. Mr. Lasser’s Les Visages de l’Amour (The Faces of Love) uses verse from a wide range of poets and periods depicting various faces of love. The poets are P. Verlaine, G. de Nerval, P. Laurent, M. D’Arençon, and L. de Vilmorin. These songs were first performed in 2006 by Elizabeth Futral and Margo Garrett in North Carolina. All were composed between 1990 and 1998.

FREE tickets are available beginning January 11 at the Juilliard Box Office located at 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, west of Broadway. To get to the Box Office, walk west on 65th Street and take the escalator/elevator near Amsterdam Avenue to the plaza level. Box office hours are Mondays through Fridays from 11 AM – 6 PM. For further information, call (212) 769-7406 or visit Juilliard’s Web site at www.juilliard.edu.

American pianist and Juilliard faculty member, Margo Garrett, is well-known to audiences for her frequent performances in chamber, sonata and vocal recitals. The large roster of internationally-known artists with whom she has long performing relationships include sopranos Kathleen Battle, Barbara Bonney, Elizabeth Futral, Beverly Hoch, Lucy Shelton, Dawn Upshaw, Benita Valente, mezzo Shirley Close, tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, violinists Jaime Laredo and Daniel Phillips, violist Paul Neubauer, and cellists Sharon Robinson, and Matt Haimowitz. Her recordings can be found on Albany, CRI, Deutsche Grammophon (1992 Grammy for Best Vocal Recital), Dorian, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, and Sony Classical. Active for many years in the world of contemporary music, she has performed the premieres of more than 30 works.

Ms. Garrett is a dedicated leader among educators of collaborative pianists. After an 8-year absence, she returned in 2000 to The Juilliard School Collaborative Piano Faculty, which she headed from 1985 to 1992. At the Tanglewood Music Center she directed the vocal fellowship program for the last 6 of her 19 years of teaching there and oversaw the Center's return, after many years, to opera in the 50th anniversary performances of Britten's Peter Grimes, whose 1946 premiere was at Tanglewood. There she also worked closely with a large international roster of composers in preparation for performances of their music in the annual week-long Festival of Contemporary Music. From 1999 through 2006, Ms. Garrett was the Faculty Chair of The Steans Institute for Young Artist's vocal and chamber music programs at Chicago Symphony's Ravinia Festival, where she commissioned major works by leading American composers including Ned Rorem and Jake Heggie. She is a frequent consultant to universities and conservatories in their development of collaborative piano programs and travels the world adjudicating and teaching classes. In the past season Miss Garrett was in residence at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, on the faculty of the inaugural classes and recitals of the Vancouver International Song Institute (VISI), The Aspen School of Music, Vanderbilt University and the University of Michigan. This season finds her recording the works of Su Liam Tan, serving on the jury of the 15th International Robert Schumann Vocal Competition in Zwickau, Germany, appearing in residencies at Bowling Green and Florida State universities and returning, in the summer, to Aspen and VISI.

Soprano Elizabeth Futral has established herself as one of the major coloratura sopranos in the world today. With her stunning vocalism, vast dramatic range, and great beauty, she has embraced a diverse repertoire that includes Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Glass, and Previn. Of her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Lucia di Lammermoor, The New York Times wrote: “Her singing was sure, virtuoso and yet still light by humanity…” In 2008, Ms. Futral begins a tour of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice with stops in Long Beach, California and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Also in 2008, she joins San Diego Opera to star in I Pagliacci alongside José Cura and sings the title role in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Ft. Worth Opera. Last season, Ms. Futral appeared at the Metropolitan Opera for the world premiere of Tan Dun’s opera, The First Emperor, New York City Opera for the title role in Semele, Baltimore Opera for Pamira in Rossini’s L’assedio di Corinto, Michigan Opera Theatre as Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail and with Vienna’s Theater an der Wien as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. Ms. Futral has a long and close association with the Lyric Opera of Chicago where she began her career. Of the many roles she has sung there, it is of special note that she has performed both Gianetta and Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore, and Barbarina and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro.

Soprano Lucy Shelton - winner of two Walter W. Naumberg Awards, as chamber musician as well as solo recitalist – continues to enjoy an international career bringing her dramatic vocalism and brilliant interpretive skills to repertoire of all periods. Notable among her numerous world premieres are song cycles by Elliott Carter, Oliver Knussen, Louis Karchin, and James Yannatos; chamber works by Carter, Joseph Schwantner, Mario Davidovsky, Augusta Read Thomas, Bruce Adolphe, Alexander Goehr, Poul Ruders, Anne Le Baron, Thomas Flaherty, Warren Benson, Stephen Albert, Lewis Spratlan, and Charles Wuorinen; orchestral works by Knussen, Albert, Schwantner, David Del Tredici, Gerard Grisey, Ezra Laderman, Sally Beamish, Virko Baley, and Ned Rorem; and an opera by Robert Zuidam. An avid chamber musician, Ms. Shelton has been a guest artist with ensembles such as the Emerson, Mendelssohn, and Guarneri string quartets, the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, 21st Century Consort, Speculum Musicae, Da Capo Chamber Players, Sospeso, New York New Music Ensemble, Musica Viva, Da Camera of Houston, eighth blackbird, the Nash Ensemble, Klangform Wien, Schoenberg-Asko, Ensemble Moderne and Ensemble Intercontemporain. Ms. Shelton has participated in numerous festivals, including those of Aspen, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, Chamber Music Northwest, BBC Proms, Aldeburgh, Caen, Kuhmo, Togo, and Salzburg. Among the many activities in her 2007-08 season are a return to Turin, Italy to celebrate Elliott Carter’s 100th year, performances of Pierrot Lunaire in St. Petersburg and Moscow (with the Da Capo Chamber Players), an engagement with the Atlanta Symphony in Knussen’s Where The Wild Things Are, and a recording (on Naxos) of Ginastera’s String Quartet No. 3 with the Enso Quartet. Her solo recitals take place on both coasts: a program of Baudelaire settings (including the premiere of Carter’s La musique, an unaccompanied song written for her in June of 2007) at Brown University and concerts in the San Francisco Bay area with repertoire of Messiaen, Crumb, and Wuorinen. 
      
Philip Lasser is a composer, pianist, and a member of the Juilliard faculty since 1994 where he teaches composition, counterpoint, harmony and analysis. Dr. Lasser holds a B.A. summa cum laude from Harvard College, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a D.M.A. in composition from Juilliard, where he studied with David Diamond. He participated in Nadia Boulanger’s summer program in Fontainebleau, France for many years in the Boulanger tradition, studying harmony, counterpoint, and composition with Mlle. Boulanger’s closest colleague and disciple, Narcis Bonet. He also studied with legendary pianist Gaby Casadesus. He collaborated with Mr. Casadesus on a book for concert pianists entitled Ma Technique Quotidienne (My Daily Technique), published by Editions Max Eschig in Paris. Mr. Lasser’s works have been gaining ever-increasing recognition, and his works have been performed by the Seattle Symphony, the New York Chamber Symphony, the String Orchestra of New York City (SONYC), the New York Concert Singers, and the Whitman Quartet, and by such artists as Gerard Schwarz, Simone Dinnerstein, Elizabeth Futral, Margo Garrett, Cho-Liang Lin, Zuill Bailey, and Giora Schmidt. He has received numerous honors and commissions and has been composer-in-residence at Yaddo and the Camargo Foundation. In 2006, he received the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, which is awarded in collaboration with the C.F. Peters Corporation for the publication of an American composer. Mr. Lasser is also president of EAMA, the European American Musical Alliance, Inc.; a not-for-profit arts organization which offers summer programs taught in the tradition Nadia Boulanger brought to young American musicians at the historic École Normale de Musique de Paris. Mr. Lasser’s works are published by Editions Max Eschig in Paris, C.F. Peters, and Rassel Editions in New York and can be heard on New World Records, Crystal Records, and BMG/RCA/Red Seal labels.