Bass baritone Stephen Bryant will join forces with pianist Seth Carlin, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, for the Department of Music’s annual Liederabend at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 5.
The recital takes place in the Gallery of Art’s Steinberg Auditorium, located in Steinberg Hall, near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. Admission is $15, or $10 for seniors, students and Washington University faculty and staff; and $5 for Washington University students. Tickets are available at the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and at the door. For more information, call (314) 935-4841.
Literally translated as “evening of song,” Liederabend is a German term referring to a recital given by a singer and pianist, particularly of works by 19th-century Austrian or German composers such as Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms or Hugo Wolf. The Oct. 5 program includes lieder by Schubert and Brahms and arias by Beethoven and Mozart.
A native of Princeton, N.J., Bryant has been heard widely with orchestra and in opera. His debut with the New York Philharmonic came in Felix Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht, with conductor Kurt Masur, with whom Bryant also performed the work at the Israel Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He sang in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Philadelphia Orchestra; in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; and the role of Escamillo in Opera North’s Carmen.
Bryant sang and later recorded the role of Dante in the world premiere of Marco Polo, by popular Chinese-American composer Tan Dun. Other 20th-century opera performances include Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All at the Santa Fe Opera and Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk at the San Francisco Opera and New York City Opera.
This summer, Bryant sang the role of Capulet in Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at Chautauqua Opera. During the 2005 season, he will reprise the role for Opera Theatre of St. Louis.
Bryant is a member of the voice faculty at William Paterson University in New Jersey. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Michigan.
Carlin, director of the piano program in the Department of Music, has performed as a soloist with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, among others, working with such notable conductors as Leonard Slatkin and Roger Norrington. He has appeared in recital with musicians such as Pinchas Zukerman, Anner Bylsma and Malcolm Bilson, and at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy; the Newport Music Festival in Rhode Island; Lincoln Center’s “Great Performers” series; and New York’s Merkin Hall series “On Original Instruments.” In 1991-92, Carlin performed the complete Schubert fortepiano sonatas in New York City, and the concerts were broadcast nationally on National Public Radio. In 1989, he was one of only two recitalists to receive a full grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.