WEDNESDAY DATE – Free Courtroom Concert featuring Georgia Jacobson, mezzo-soprano and Bradley Greenwald, baritone
Wednesday, April 27, 12:00PM
Landmark Center, Cortile
Please Note: This concert was originally scheduled for April 28 but had to be moved to Wednesday, April 27. It will be held in the Landmark Center Cortile (1st floor).
About the Artists
A native of Duluth, Minnesota, French-born mezzo-soprano Georgia Jacobson’s recent engagements in 2021 include her premiere of the role Virginia Woolf in a workshop of the new opera, The Hours by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Gregory Pierce in collaboration with Opera Fusion: New Works, The Metropolitan Opera and The Philadelphia Orchestra. She covered Mary Johnson (Fellow Travelers) as an Apprentice Artist at Des Moines Metro Opera in the summer of 2021. In January of 2021, Jacobson was a Metropolitan National Council Encouragement Award winner in the South Carolina district. Additionally, Ms. Jacobson won 1st Place in the National Opera Association’s 2020 Carolyn Bailey and Dominick Argento Vocal Competition. Jacobson has a special affinity for French repertoire, and she was proud to make her debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in their production of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges as Maman/Tasse/La libellule under the baton of Maestro Louis Langrée. A consummate musician and lover of new music, she workshopped the roles of Ruth (Awakenings) and Vesta (Fierce) with Opera Fusion: New Works and Cincinnati Opera. Her other recent roles include Zweite Dame (Die Zauberflote) with CCM Opera, Endimione (La Calisto) with CCM Opera, as well as Giannetta (L’Elisir d’Amore) with Lyric Opera of the North. In 2021/22, She will cover Orfeo in Kentucky Opera’s upcoming production of Orfeo ed Euridice, and sing Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory (CCM). She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Voice Performance from University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and Master’s of Music (Voice) from University of Cincinnati – College Conservatory of Music, where she is finishing her studies as an Artist Diploma (Opera Performance) candidate under the tutelage of Professor Elliot Madore.
Bradley Greenwald has performed opera, theater, music-theater, concert and recital repertoire with several Twin Cities’ arts organizations, including Jungle Theater, Theater Latté Da, Open Eye Figure Theatre, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Guthrie Theater, Children’s Theatre Company, 10,000 Things Theater, Nautilus Music-Theater, Minnesota Dance Theatre, James Sewell Ballet, VocalEssence, Frank Theatre, and Skylark Opera. He adapted Madeleine L’Engle’s novel A Wrinkle in Time into a libretto for Libby Larsen’s opera, and wrote the book and lyrics for C.,an adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac (Robert Elhai, music), produced by Peter Rothstein and Theater Latté Da. Bradley is the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in music, the McKnight Fellowship for Theater Artists, and a 2006 Ivey Award. Bradley lives in South Minneapolis with his husband, John Novak, the ever-resourceful stage manager and props designer of the Jungle Theater.
At home collaborating with both vocalists and instrumentalists, Dr. Carson Rose Schneider is a versatile pianist who works as a duo partner, coach, music director, and rehearsal pianist with opera companies, chamber groups, and choirs. Based in Minneapolis, MN, she has worked for companies around the Midwest including Lyric Opera of the North, AOT, Skylark Opera Theatre, Really Spicy Opera, Bay View Music Festival, Lakes Area Music Festival, and Fargo-Moorhead Opera. Most recently, she was the Music Director and pianist for Skylark Opera Theatre’s December 2021 production of Amahl and the Night Visitors. During the pandemic, she collaborated with various companies on a variety of programs including outdoor concerts, a children’s virtual show in collaboration with Lyric Opera of the North, a new music workshop with Really Spicy Opera, tracks for Social Distance Opera, virtual recitals featuring underrepresented composers, and a variety other recording projects. Up next, she returns this March as Skylark Opera Theatre’s Music Director and pianist for their English adaptation of Eugene Onegin. In June 2022, she will join the coaching faculty for her first summer at Taos Opera Institute. She has a D.M.A. in collaborative piano and coaching from the University of Minnesota, where she studied with Timothy Lovelace. She has also been a young artist at Virginia Opera, Opera North, Bay View Music Festival (Mainstage), La Musica Lirica. Her opera repertoire includes Carmen, Cosi fan tutte, La belle Hélène, L’elisir d’amore, Les contes d’Hoffman, Alcina, and The Rape of Lucretia. Additional summer study includes Source Song Festival, Tibor Varga Music Academy in Sion, Switzerland and Aspen Music Festival. She has been on the faculty of Bay View Music Festival’s S.O.A.R.S. program as a collaborative pianist and on the music staff as a repetiteur at Lake Area Music Festival.
About the Composers
Jeremy Walker is a composer and pianist. His album of original jazz art songs, Haunted Blue (heard on APM’s Composers Datebook and MPR’s New Classical Tracks), features award-winning mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski. (Their Edna St. Vincent Millay project will be released in 2022.) Walker’s suite 7 Psalms, performed at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, launched American Public Media’s Radio Choir conducted by Tesfa Wondemagegnehu. Other works include the oratorio The Rage of Achilles—for classical voice and jazz ensemble, and Alma Gentil—five pieces commissioned by Consortium Carissimi for chamber choir with early baroque and jazz ensembles. In 2014, Walker founded the Jazz at Orchestra Hall in the Target Atrium series where he served as Artistic Director until 2019.
Linda Kachelmeier (b. 1965, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA) is a composer, conductor, and professional singer with a special passion for choral music and art song for their capacity for conveying emotion through the human voice. Her music has been described as having “luscious counterpoint, deliberate dissonances, and assertive vocal interaction.” She has received numerous grants and commissions and in 2017 she was awarded the prestigious McKnight Fellowship for Composition. Linda’s music has been performed by professional ensembles such as VocalEssence and The Rose Ensemble, as well as many school and church choirs across the United States and Europe. She is the founder and artistic director of the women’s vocal quartet LUMINA. Since 1991 she has been the Director of Music at First Presbyterian Church in South St. Paul. Her vast experience as a singer and conductor has helped make her a uniquely sensitive and gifted composer when writing for the voice, from children’s choirs to professional singers and all levels in between.
Carol Barnett (b. 1949) creates audacious and engaging music, both for traditional instrumentation, and for cross-pollinations such as a mass accompanied by a bluegrass band or a duet for steel pan and organ. A force in the Minnesota music scene since 1970, her work has been funded by multiple regional and national organizations, and published through major houses. Carol is a charter member of the American Composers Forum and a graduate of the University of Minnesota. She was composer in residence with the Dale Warland Singers from 1992 to 2001, and taught composition at Augsburg College from 2000 to 2015.
About the Poet
Louis Jenkins was one of the contemporary masters of the American prose poem. Born in Oklahoma in 1942, Jenkins lived in Duluth, Minnesota, for over 30 years. The author of many books of poetry, his last two collections, Where Your House is Now and The Mad Moonlight, were published in 2019, the year of his death.
His brief, accessible prose poems use humor and wry observation to tease out the absurdity of everyday life, using deliberately flat language to comic and often heartbreaking effect. Louis Jenkins appeared several times as a guest on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and in 2007 was a featured poet at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in England.
Jenkins’ fans included stage and screen actor Mark Rylance. Twice at the Tony awards, Rylance recited a Jenkins poem in lieu of an acceptance speech. Rylance also created an entire play, Nice Fish, from Jenkins’ prose poems. Just before the play’s premiere at the Guthrie Theater in May 2013, Rylance praised Jenkins’ talent “for finding beauty in the mundane.”
For more on Louis Jenkins, visit www.louisjenkins.com
About the Host:
Composer Abbie Betinis writes music called “inventive, richly melodic” (The New York Times), “superb, whirling, soaring” (Tacoma News Tribune), and “the highlight” of the program (Boston Globe). With over 50 commissioned works for ensembles such as Cantus, the New England Philharmonic, and The Rose Ensemble, Abbie is also a two-time McKnight Artist Fellow, and has won grants from the American Composers Forum, ASCAP, and Jerome Foundation, and at age 31, was listed in NPR Music’s Top 100 Composers Under 40. Abbie has been a Composer-in-Residence with New York State School Music Association, The Rose Ensemble, The Singers-Minnesota Choral Artists, and Schubert Club. In 2019, she will be the American Composers Forum’s ChoralQuest composer, visiting schools around the U.S. to write new choral music with middle school singers.
Originally from Wisconsin, Abbie is a graduate of St. Olaf College (B.A.), the University of Minnesota (M.A.), and holds a diplôme from the European American Musical Alliance Institute in Paris, France. She lives in Minnesota, where she is Adjunct Professor of Composition at Concordia University-St Paul and executive director of Justice Choir.
View the Frequently Asked Questions about the Courtroom Concerts.
Seating is limited and first come first served. Please plan on arriving early.
Schedule & Programs Subject to Change