New Art Songs project - Performers

Mirna Lekic (piano) is a Bosnian-American pianist, and currently a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician in the United States, Canada, England, France, and her native Bosnia, appearing in concert at Carnegie-Weill Hall, Symphony Space, World Trade Center, St. Martin-In-The-Fields in London, and Bosniak Institute in Sarajevo.  Critics have praised her playing for its “natural inventiveness and emotion” (Zena 21), “appropriate stylistic sense”, and for “eliciting  [music’s] haunting poetry" (The New York Concert Review), and her work has been recognized with several awards, including Eastman and Willard scholarships, New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Grant, Artists International Special Presentation Award, and CUNY Music Fellowship. Mirna holds a BM in Piano Performance from the Eastman School of Music and a MM from the Mannes College of Music, and is active as a piano and music instructor in New York City, where she serves on the faculty of Queensborough Community College, CUNY. www.sites.google.com/site/mirnalekic

 

David Friend (piano) is dedicated to  ensuring the continued relevance of the art of the piano in contemporary culture. Inhis programming, his special projects, and his philosophical approach, his mission is to connect the dots between an art form with a glorious but rusting history and the digitized, post-modern society around us.As a champion of new and experimental music, David Friend is taking piano performance in new directions. He has worked with the preeminent composers of our time (Steve Reich, Julia Wolfe, David Lang, Charles Wuorinen) and has performed at the world’s top venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Royal Festival Hall (London), the Chan Centre (Vancouver), the Belem Cultural Center (Lisbon) and the Reina Sofia Museum (Madrid). As a founding member of the TRANSIT collective, he also collaborates closely with emerging composers from around the world.David has performed with respected new music groups including the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Signal, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Red Light New Music, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. He also enjoys projects that go beyond the common stylistic or performance practices of classical music including cross-disciplinary projects with Dance Imprints, live sound installations at the Aspen Art Museum, the Corps Exquis project in NYC, and working with musicians from different traditions such as Bill Frisell (guitar innovator), Don Byron (clarinet rebel), and Ryuichi Sakamoto (Japanese pop icon).As a soloist, David Friend presents programs that seek to revitalize the experience of a piano recital for the 21st century. Rather than dressing up a Belle Epoque convention with modernist harmonies, he seeks out composers who are rethinking the vitality of the piano recital format and experimenting with new concepts in sound, technology, and performance practice. A core goal remains David’s dedication to making new and contemporary music meaningful and relevant to audiences today. www.davidfriendpiano.com


 Mary Hubbell, described in the New York Times as “a soprano with a sweetly focused tone,” holds degrees from Boston College; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.  She is active in a wide range of music, from early music to contemporary repertoire.  In the Netherlands, she was a frequent soloist with La Prunelle Ensemble, Praetorius Blokfluit Ensemble, and the Netherland Vocal Laboratory.  She has participated in the Steve Reich Festival at the Royal Conservatory, the annual Young Composer’s Festival in Apeldoorn, the Chamber Opera Festival in Zwolle, and the Gaudeamus Festival in Amsterdam.  In October 2005, Ms. Hubbell was a soloist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Louis Andriessen's Tao.  Other orchestral engagements include Robert Kapilow’s Green Eggs and Ham with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate with the Beaufort Symphony Orchestra.  As a recitalist, she has concertized in Boston, New York, North Carolina, and South Carolina, including Piccolo Spoleto’s Spotlight Series in Charleston.  In New York, she has appeared as a soloist with the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Musica Viva, Alphabet Soup Productions, and the Remarkable Theatre Brigade.  She is a faculty member of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and is also pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

 

David Salsbery Fry (Bass-Baritone) is the First Place winner of the 2011 Concurso Internacional de Canto Bidu Sayão. Last season, he appeared as Ogro in Montsalvatge’s El gato con botas with Gotham Chamber Opera. He also reprised Bass II (Goat) in Stravinsky’s Renard with the Mark Morris Dance Group for the Mostly Mozart Festival, a role he first performed at Tanglewood earlier this summer. Recent career highlights include Olin Blitch in Susannah with Opera at Rutgers, Il Commendatore in Don Giovanni with Nashville Opera and both Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte and Arkel in Pelléas et Mélisande in Tel Aviv for IVAI. He joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera for their production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler in 2008. Mr. Fry studied at The Juilliard School, the University of Maryland, and The Johns Hopkins University. Originally from Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, he currently divides his time between New York City and Boston. www.davidsalsberyfry.com

 

Lyric baritone Seth Gilman is currently freelancing in New York City, and frequently performs within the new and early music communities there. A graduate of the University of Michigan and the Mannes College of Music, he lists among his teachers Tim Hill, Stephen Lusmann, Susan Ormont, Arthur Levy, and Tom Goodheart.

Twice an alumnus of the Amherst Early Music Festival, in 2007 Mr. Gilman sang the role of Giove in Cavalli’s La Calisto and performed two roles in Campra’s L’Europe Galante in 2006. Other mainstage roles have included Chato in La Purpura de la Rosa, Liberto in the University of Michigan’s production of L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Starveling in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Past festivals at which Mr. Gilman has performed include The Aspen Music Festival, Opera Lirica di Orvieto, the Seagle Music Colony, and the Caramoor Festival Young Artists’ Program. Also experienced in operetta through engagements with the Comic Opera Guild of Ann Arbor, he can be heard in recordings supported by the Victor Herbert Society. In 2005, Seth sang the premiere of Osnat Netzer’s Three Animal Songs, and has since performed the premieres of Mu-Xuan’s Swimming the Hellespont zhi San in Boston, Robert Cuckson A Night of Pity, and of several works by James Barry, Ben Brody, Noam Faingold, Pat Muchmore, Kamala Sankaram, Eric Shanfield, and Alex Temple in New York. Seth’s 2011 activities included the premiere of Ms. Netzer’s The Wondrous Woman Within at Cambridge’s Oberon, more premieres with DETOUR at the Gershwin Hotel, and a concert performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Musica NYC. This year has brought the premiere of the revised version of Ambiguous Kafka by Ronnie Reshef and an evening of Charles Ives with the Brooklyn Art Song Society. He performs frequently with local ensembles such as Anti-Social Music, The Brooklyn Art Song Society, Extinct Anatomies, New Brew, and Opera on Tap.

Pianist Aaron Likness is an enthusiastic advocate of modern and contemporary music, an interpreter of "superb clarity and sensitivity" (CVNC) whose repertoire ranges from Bach to Boulez. He has appeared in solo and ensemble performances throughout the Boston area and in live broadcasts from WGBH Boston's Fraser Studio.

Likness has performed a wide variety of new and unusual music, from Cage's indeterminate masterpiece Concert for Piano and Orchestra to the premiere of a solo work for amplified toy pianos and electronics. He has worked with such composers as Christian Wolff and Tristan Murail, and collaborates regularly with young composers in workshops, performances, and recordings of new music. Likness has performed with the Callithumpian Consort, Sound Icon, East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, Discovery Ensemble, and Boston New Music Initiative.

A native of North Carolina, Likness attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received the David Arons Award for Excellence in Musical Performance and the Thelma Thompson Composition Award. He continued his studies at the New England Conservatory, where he was named winner of the conservatory's John Cage Award for his contributions to the Boston new music scene. He currently resides in New York, where he is enrolled in the DMA program at CUNY Graduate Center. His principal teachers have been Thomas Otten, Stephen Drury, and Ursula Oppens.

Performers

Mirna Lekic, piano
David Friend, piano
Aaron Likness, piano
Mary Hubbell, soprano
David Salsbery Fry, bass
Seth Gilman, baritone