Soprano Jennifer Jakob to present intimate Liederabend Oct. 14

Soprano Jennifer Jakob will perform an intimate Liederabend for the Washington University Department of Music in Arts & Sciences.

The concert is free and open to the public and begins at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 14, in Graham Chapel, located immediately north of the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. For more information, call (314) 935-5566.

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.

The Oct. 14 program will open with nine songs from Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch (1892/96) followed by three songs by Johannes Brahms. The program will then continue with four “Mignon songs” — based on the character from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795) — which include compositions by Wolf, Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann. Concluding the program are four songs by Richard Strauss.

Jakob, a native of Kempten, Germany, received her Bachelor degree from Oberlin College, where she won the Senior Concerto Competition was chosen to participate in the Danenberg Honors Recital, performing a set of Strauss Lieder. She is currently pursuing her Masters degree at Indiana University and in February will sing the role of Rita Billingsley in the collegiate premiere of William Bolcom’s A Wedding (2004).

In 2005 Jakob debuted in Italy as Clarina in Gioachino Rossini’s La Cambiale di Matrimonio (1810), as part of the Oberlin in Italy program, and was chosen to sing for the famous Italian soprano Mirella Freni. For the past two summers she has been a Gerdine Young Artist for Opera Theatre of St. Louis, covering the role of Rose Maurrant in Kurt Weill’s Street Scene (1947) and the title role in David Carlson’s Anna Karenina (2007).

Last April Jakob won a prestigious Sara Tucker Study Grant, awarded annually by the Richard Tucker Music Foundation in New York. In December she will make her debut with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, performing Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate (1773) as well as selections form Handel’s Messiah (1741).