The next concert of the Masterworks Choir on Sunday April 21 will feature a premier of a new work by Dale Warland and Mozart’s great masterpiece “Requiem”. The performance will be held at the FMU Performing Arts Center starting at 5PM and is free to the public. Conducting the program will be the Choir’s Music Director Dr. Will Carswell.
A Coker College faculty member since 2002, Dr. William Carswell is an Associate Professor of Music, Director of Choral Studies, and Chair of the Department of Dance, Music & Theater. In addition to conducting the Coker Singers and Coker Chamber Singers, he teaches courses in choral literature, choral conducting and music education. Dr. Carswell was recently named Music Director and Conductor of The Masterworks Choir in Florence, SC after having completed five seasons as Music Director and Conductor of the Columbia Choral Society in Columbia, S.C. He has appeared as a clinician, guest conductor or adjudicator across the Southeastern US, as well as in Austria, Bulgaria, England, and France.
The Voices is a new composition commissioned by Chorus America’s Commission Consortium of 21 choruses to benefit Chorus America, an advocacy research and leadership development organization in the choral field. The Masterworks Choir is proud to be one of two South Carolina groups to take part in this consortium. The other ensemble is the Greenville Chorale. The text is by poet Michael Dennis Browne and the music is by acclaimed composer and conductor Dale Warland. It is written for SATB chorus and solo cello. This performance is the Southeastern U.S. premiere of this new work.
Mozart began work on the Requiem (K.626) in 1791 but died before completing this valedictory work; the standard performing version, heard at this performance, is that of the completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayer, a student of Mozart’s. Features soloist for this piece are Serena Hill-LaRoche, soprano, Jami Rhodes, mezzo soprano, Daniel Stein, tenor, and Alexander Elliot, bass.
Serena Hill-LaRoche is Assistant Professor of Music and Coordinator of Vocal Studies at Coker College, where she teaches applied voice, diction, vocal pedagogy and song literature. Hill’s recent performance and/or master class engagements include East Tennessee State University, Greenville Light Opera Works, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, South Carolina Philharmonic, University of South Carolina, Columbia College, Bechtler Museaum of Art, East Carolina University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Palmetto Opera, Columbia Music Teachers Association, University of Maryland, Central Florida Lyric Opera, Firenze Lirico, Columbia Museum of Art, and Abadía Benedictina de la Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos as well as other performances in both Spain and Italy. An award winning vocal artist, Hill was a 2003 finalist in the Southeast Regional Metropolitan Opera Auditions, a 2012 and 2008 NATS Artist Award Regional Finalist and the 2006 Artist of the Year with FBN Productions, Inc. In 2003, she was the Bizet Award winner for the Orpheus National Young Artist Vocal Competition and a Palmetto Opera Competition Finalist in 2005. Hill received a Doctorate in Musical Arts and a Master of Music from the University of South Carolina, both in Vocal Performance, and a Bachelor of Music from the University of North Alabama. Upcoming events include a performance of Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and the world premiere of the “Songs for My People” by David Clay Mettens. For more information, please visit www.serenahill.com.
A native of North Carolina, mezzo-soprano, Jami Rhodes is currently Assistant Professor of Voice at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. She holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in vocal performance and pedagogy from Louisiana State University, a Master of Music in vocal performance from the University of South Carolina, and a Bachelor of Music in music education from East Carolina University. Frequently seen on the operatic stage, she holds a number of favorite leading roles to her credit including Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, Baba inThe Medium, Jo in Little Women, Charlotte in Werther, Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia, and the title role in Bizet’s Carmen. Also a frequent of the concert stage, Dr Rhodes is an active recitalist and performs regularly in oratorio and other concert works. As a soloist, she has sung with Des Moines Metro Opera, Nashville Opera, Central City Opera, Lake George Opera, Opera in the Ozarks, the Ohio Light Opera, the Greenville Choral Society, the Concert Singers of Cary, the Choral Society of Durham, the Louisiana Sinfonietta, the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, Symphony of the Mountains, the Wilmington Symphony, and the Austin Symphony. Recent and upcoming appearances include performances of Dominick Argento’s critically acclaimed song cycles From the Diary of Virginia Woolfand Miss Manners on Music, Rossini’s cantata Giovanna D’Arco, Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden gesellen, the leading role in the world premiere of Salvatore Macchia’s opera Insectaphobia, and mezzo-soprano soloist in Corigliano’s Fern Hill, Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Magnificat, Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle, Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass, Mozart’s Requiem, Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
Tenor Daniel C. Stein, whose voice has been described as “ringing” and “warm and flexible”, opens the 2012-2013 season making his debut with Maestro Christopher Warren Green and the Charlotte Symphony as soloist for Mass in C-Minor (Mozart). Other upcoming engagements for the season include singing as soloist for Messiah (Handel) with the Greensboro Oratorio Society, and a recital of songs and arias by Handel, Fauré, Rachmaninoff, Rodgers, Weill, Bock, and Jason Robert Brown at Winthrop University (Rock Hill, SC). The season concludes with Stein performing J.S. Bach's Cantata No. 4: Christ Lag im Todesbanden with the York County Choral Society and Mozart's Requiem with The Masterworks Choir of Florence as well as at Providence Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC.
Baritone Alexander Elliott is an emerging young singer who is currently in demand across the United States. In the 2012-2013 season, Alexander performed with Tulsa Opera in mainstage performances of The Corporal in Donizetti’s The Daughter of The Regiment, and The Postman in Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella. As an apprentice in the 2012 season, Alexander made his debut with Des Moines Metro Opera as Perichaud in Puccini’s La Rondine, and as The Captain in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.
While there, he also covered the role of Eugene Onegin, a role that Alexander performed earlier in the season under special invitation from The Florida State Opera. Equally at home on the concert stage, recent performances have included Handel’s Messiah, with the Pensacola Symphony, and Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs with the Albany Chorale. Other concert engagements have included performances with the Tallahassee Symphony, and the Epiphany Concert Series in South Carolina.
As a member of Des Moines Metro Opera’s Opera Iowa troupe, Alexander participated in over 70 performances of Papageno in The Magic Flute and The Strongman in Sid The Serpent Who Wanted To Sing. Alexander was also an Apprentice Artist with Des Moines Metro Opera during the summer of 2011.
Alexander is a graduate of Florida State University, where he studied with David Okerlund. While there he performed the roles of Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Pish-Tush in The Mikado, among other roles. He is a native of Florence, South Carolina, and currently resides in New York City.
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