[Music & Landscape]

It was such a blast returning to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to perform on a program featuring works that tie music with landscape. I was delighted to sing The Log House by Anton Heinrich as well as the prologue to Lully’s Alceste. I’ve never been on such an eclectic program, featuring composers from Stravinsky to Gluck, to Caroline Shaw. So…. when can we do it again??

“Soprano Maggie Finnegan soared through “The thundering Fall! The bubbling stream…Nature’s whispers…trilling arpeggios.” One of the poet’s other lines could describe her singing “With wild sweet play,” and I would offer with dazzlement musically and virtuosically.”
— David Patterson, The Boston Music Intelligencer

[Zoo Volunteering]

When I’m not singing opera, I love to spend some of my time as a Zoo Ambassador Volunteer at the Stone Zoo (Zoo New England). This week, during April Break, we educated over 500 kids about pollination… Did you know that the chocolate midge is one of the main pollinators of the cocoa plant? Next time you eat a piece of chocolate, spare a thought for the humble chocolate midge.

After a morning out and about, I have to agree with the river otters that it’s nap time :)

[BASS debut]

I had a fantastic time making my Brooklyn Art Song Society debut, singing Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Kaija Saariaho, Hannah Kendall and Benjamin Attahir. Huge thanks to Michael Brofman for inviting me to join the program, and to Alexa Stier for her gorgeous piano playing and collaboration on this challenging program.

“Her voice was bright, with a rapier-like intonation. The bookends of the set were songs reacting to nature while full of foreboding about the future, and the shining quality of her singing balanced the music on the point between stability and disaster. Kendall’s dream-like setting was a complex psychodrama of landscape, myth, and death. This was intense, literary music, and while the narrative may not have connected to all listeners, one admired Finnegan’s strength and control.”
— New York Classical Review
“Finnegan and Stier returned with Attahir’s De l’ineffable. This was a vocalise, and no less expressive than the previous works. Finnegan’s soprano sound was compelling, siren-like, and her technique and intonation were excellent. The brightness of her sound was a fine fit for this music, which is lovely but with unsettling undercurrents, moving from a flowing opening section to a much darker, stentorian, dramatic second section.
”
— New York Classical Review

[Opera News Critic's Choice]

The GRAMMY®-nominated #AsToldBy release, Anthony Davis: X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X is a Critic’s Choice in the March 2023 issue of Opera News.

Fred Cohn writes of the recording, a collaboration with Odyssey Opera, “The present recording preserves the work as newly revised by its composer and librettist… Under Gil Rose, #BMOP’s orchestra and chorus offer a vivid rendering of the score, their efforts buttressed by an ‘improviser ensemble’ that helps connect X securely to the realm of jazz.” / https://operanews.com/.../A__DAVIS__X__The_Life_and_Times...

Stream and share the 2022 release on the #BMOPsound label / https://bit.ly/BMOPAnthonyDavis

#BMOP25 #BMOPmusic #newmusic