THE VOCAL RECORD COLLECTORS' SOCIETY

PRESENTS


CONSIDERING THE FORGOTTEN SINGER

By
THOMAS BAGWELL


It is with the greatest pleasure that we welcome back to the V.R.C.S. a most distinguished visitor, Thomas Bagwell, who will be presenting a very special April program for us.

Called by Marilyn Horne, ÒA pioneer for his ageÓ, Thomas Bagwell is well-known as a pianist in song recital and chamber music. His appearances as a collaborative pianist have taken him to such venues as New YorkÕs Carnegie Hall, LondonÕs Wigmore Hall, the Musikverein, the Concertgebouw, and to numerous halls across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and Japan. Mr. BagwellÕs activities as a coach and teacher have led to invitations to give master classes for colleges and apprentice programs in opera companies. He was an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera for nine seasons, and has served in the same capacity for many seasons at the Washington National Opera, the Santa Fe Opera, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

Thomas Bagwell has partnered in recital such singers as Marilyn Horne, Renee Fleming, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Frederica von Stade, Andrea Rost, Kristine Jepson, James Morris, Roberta Peters and Lucine Amara. His recital partnerships with the rising generation of singers include Elaine Alvarez, Eric Cutler, Gregory Turay, Rinat Shaham, Thomas Meglioranza and Jesse Blumberg. In the field of chamber music, Mr. Bagwell has been a participant at the Marlboro Music Festival and has performed recitals with violinists Midori, Miranda Cuckson and Scott St. John, with whom he made a critically acclaimed CD of works by Antonin Dvorak on the Marquis Classics label (now available on itunes). Miranda Cuckson and Mr. Bagwell performed the ten Beethoven Sonatas for Violin and Piano in a three-part series at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in the spring of 2009.

Thomas Bagwell has received degrees from the Mannes College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, and he has studied with Warren Jones, Graham Johnson and Edna Golandsky. After his formal studies, Mr. Bagwell pursued additional training with Elly Ameling and Rudolf Jansen at the Academie Villecroze.

Mr. Bagwell organized and performed several concert series in New York at the Austrian Cultural Forum, including a seven-part Hugo Wolf festival, a three-part Gustav Mahler festival (which included the premiere of his piano four-hands arrangement of ÒDas Lied von der ErdeÓ), a Schubert festival, and many individual concerts. He was co-artistic director for an Austrian Lieder festival in Washington, D.C. at the Austrian Embassy, where he has performed many times.

His performing schedule for the 2010-2011 season includes three recitals with the Lotte Lehmann Foundation in New York, of which he is an advisory board member, featuring six young singers hand-picked by the Foundation for their abilities as recitalists. He will perform at Zankel Hall in conjunction with the American Opera Projects. Recent performances include a concert at the Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center with soprano Elaine Alvarez, sponsored by the Vocal Arts Society, a recital of songs and piano pieces by Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Hensel in New York (including two world premieres), and a recital with internationally famous soprano, Renee Fleming, at the State Department in Washington, D.C. for Hillary Clinton. Other collaborations with Renee Fleming have included preparing her for performance of MessiaenÕs nine-part song cycle, ÒPoemes pour MiÓ, with the New York Philharmonic, a performance that was broadcast live on television and radio.

As a teacher of opera and art song, Thomas Bagwell has been on the faculty of Yale University, and he currently teaches collaborative piano as well as classes for singers in operatic repertoire at the Mannes College of Music. He has taught master classes at the Santa Fe Opera, New Jersey Opera Theater, Simpson College and Portland State University, and he was the keynote teacher at the Oregon chapter of NATS (the National Association of Teachers of Singing) at the Lewis and Clark College in January, 2008. In the summer of 2009 he taught and performed at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, and will teach at the New Jersey Opera studio program and the CoOPERAtive programs in the summer of 2010, both in Princeton, New Jersey.

Mr. BagwellÕs prior VRCS program, CONSIDERING THE ACCOMPANIST, was one of the best-received programs in our long history, and he has chosen to follow it up with CONSIDERING THE FORGOTTEN SINGER, a subject dear to most collectorsÕ hearts. Great singers are sometimes remembered best for their long and illustrious careers. However, there are a huge number of recorded singers who can truly be considered great that time has completely forgotten. We at the VRCS are all too familiar with this conundrum, and many of us have personal favorites among the scores of great singers that we wish could still make the headlines. Mr. BagwellÕs program will be a selection of some of the singers he considers great who have slipped down the proverbial rabbit hole of time. He mentions only three up-front Ð sopranos Marta Fuchs and Sara Mae Endich, and contralto Eula Beal Ð which can only whet our membersÕ appetites for the many others he plans to introduce us to, or re-familiarize us with. From all of the foregoing, it is obvious that Mr. BagwellÕs credentials are second to no oneÕs in this area, so you will surely need little encouragement to mark your calendars to be with us for this very special presentation.




DATE: FRIDAY, APRIL 9, 2010
TIME: 7:30P.M. SHARP
PLACE: CHRIST CHURCH BASEMENT AUDITORIUM
PARK AVE. & 60TH STREET
N. Y. C.


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