School of Music
2024-25 Awarded Amount: $9,130
Title: Art Song in the Americas
Art Song in the Americas brought vocalist and mezzo-soprano Dr. Olga Perez Flora and pianist Dr. Louise Thomas to the School of Music for a residency in September 2024. An art song is a composition where a composer sets a pre-existing poem to music for solo voice and piano. The genre is typically associated with the Romantic Era, with a majority of standard repertoire written by white male composers active in Europe during the 19th century. However, art song is a living tradition practiced by composers and performers around the world. By focusing on recent American and Latin American art song, Drs. Flora and Thomas’s residency widened students’ perception of the genre and helped prepare them to more effectively engage with today’s multicultural musical landscape.
While in residence, Drs. Flora and Thomas presented a recital of Cuban song and American song, including Cinco Canciones Negras by Xavier Montsalvatge, Jurame by Maria Grever, and Paper Wings by Jake Heggie. They also premiered a new song cycle by Jessica Rudman titled Letters from the Anthropocene, which Dr. Flora helped to commission. The work explores an expectant parent’s anxieties about bringing a child into a world where climate change threatens their future.
Additionally, Drs. Flora and Thomas led three types of sessions with School of Music students. They presented a masterclass for the Opera Workshop. In this session, voice students performed songs in Spanish and other languages. The guests offered guidance to improve their execution and interpretation of the music. Second, Dr. Flora visited the Composition Seminar class to give students feedback on vocal works they were writing.
Lastly, Drs. Flora and Thomas coached student singers and pianists performing new art songs written for them by School of Music composition students. The composers wrote their songs in collaboration with their assigned student performers, who prepared them over the summer prior to the residency. After their coaching session with Drs. Flora and Thomas, the students premiered the works in a recital.
This collaboration resulted in the creation of six new songs in English, Spanish, French, and Russian—some of which have since been included on the performers’ student recitals and on a concert presented by the U’s Student Opera Guild. The participating students included undergraduates, MM students, and doctoral students. This project helped to build relationships between students in the composition, voice, and piano areas, contributing to a greater sense of community and planting the seeds for future collaborations.
