NewsRelease

(Posted 1-21-04)
Contact: Tiffany Aumann, 336-334-5371

World Premiere of “Yeats’ Love Songs” Feb. 13
 

Renee Janette Sokol

GREENSBORO — “Yeats’ Love Songs,” a new work by New York composer Joyce Hope Suskind, will make its world debut at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro Friday, Feb. 13.

The composition is set to four poems by Nobel Prize-winning poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) and scored for soprano, oboe, cello and piano. The vibrant 20th century American art songs explore varied perspectives on the passage of time and its affect on lovers, love, life and ultimately the “shadowy horses” of death.
The concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the School of Music Recital Hall. Admission is free.

The passionate work is part of an evening of song by vocalist Reneé Janette Sokol. A veteran of the UNCG opera, Sokol most recently sang the part of Meg in November’s North Carolina premiere production of “Little Women” and Mrs. Ford in last April’s “Merry Wives of Windsor.” Assisting the singer will be Gina Pezzoli (cello) Nancy Davis (piano), and UNCG music professor Dr. Mary Ashley Barret (oboe).

Sokol discovered Suskind’s work while preparing for her doctoral recital. Originally intending to prepare a program exclusively of works by contemporary female composers, the vocalist bought scores for nearly every piece in the music store. Her search came quickly to an end after rehearsing one of the Suskind works.
“It had such a mystical melancholy. Romantic and dramatic,” she said.

After traveling to New York this summer to meet Suskind, Sokol was granted permission to sing the love songs’ premiere, which will be attended by the composer and her husband. The New York Women Composers, along with two other composers, are working on a seed grant to produce a CD of their work. The collection of vocal chamber music will include “Yeats’ Love Songs” from the Feb. 13 recital performance.

 Also on the evening’s program are “Six Yeats Songs” and a collection of songs sung in Russian, Spanish and French, including works by Delibes, Rachmaninoff and Saint-Saëns.

Joyce Hope Suskind has enjoyed a varied and musical career as composer, singer, oboist, and pianist.  She was trained at the High School of Music and Art and The Julliard School.  Primarily a composer of vocal music, she has collaborated with contemporary poets and lyricists in musical comedy and songs in the popular style.  Her art song settings are to the poets Aiken, Auden, Hopkins, Stevenson and most of all, Yeats.  Her Six Yeats Songs (published in 1997) was published by The Casia Publishing Company, and may be heard on the CD Contemporary Women in Song on the Leonarda label.  Suskind lives and works in New York City.  She has a voice studio and is a co-founder of the American Center for the Alexander Technique. She started studying the Alexander Technique when she was 16 years old and has been teaching it for 47 years.

Vocalist Reneé Janette Sokol is a graduate student, performer and private voice teacher now residing in Bracey, Va.  She will complete a Doctor of Musical Arts degree (DMA) in vocal performance at UNCG in August 2004. She was featured as Meg in the North Carolina premiere of Mark Adamo's new opera, Little Women and Mrs. Ford in Otto Nicolae’s Merry Wives of Windsor. Other performances have included roles in Cavalleria Rusticana, Orpheus, Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Consul, and The Wise Women. Sokol sang with the internationally renowned tenor Marcus Haddock (premier tenor at the Met in NY, 2003) in a guest recital at Greensboro College, and she won the prestigious UNCG Concerto Competition last spring.  Favorite musical theater roles such as Maria in the Sound of Music, Evita in Evita and the narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat add colorful experience to her operatic career. She toured the U.S. in 1988-89 giving concerts with symphonies and various professional as a soloist in recitals, Pops concerts, and oratorios, including Handel's Messiah, Rossini's Messe Solenelle, and Mendelssohn's Elijah.

Pianist Nancy Davis received her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from UNCG.  Her teachers have included Marvin Blickenstaff and George Kiorpes. Offering a varied "palette of colors" and flair, she performs an average of 50 concerts a year. She has participated in master classes with Martin Katz, Jean Barr, Barbara Lister-Sink and most recently with Eugene Rousseau. She recently presented the “Trombone Sonata” by Dr. Eddie Bass in a North Carolina premiere performance with Daniel Rice. She has performed in New York with Phyllis Tektonidis, Dr. Edward Bach and locally with Dr. Randy Kohlenberg and other UNCG faculty, guest artists and students.  She has served as musical director of the Young Artist Opera Theatre and on the faculties of Greensboro College and Elon University, as guest lecturer for song repertoire at UNCG, UNCG Community Music School, and is a regular faculty member of the UNCG Summer Music Camp.

Cellist Gina Pezzoli is originally from Charlottesville, Va.  She will receive her Master of Music degree in cello performance at  UNCG this spring.  Her current cello teacher is Dr. Brooks Whitehouse.  Earlier teachers include Steve Feldman and Matt Wexler. Pezzoli received her Bachelor of Arts degrees in French and music from the University of Virginia in 1999.  During a semester in Paris, she studied at the Ecole Normale de Musique in the cello class of Jean Barthe. At UNCG, Pezzoli is a member of several performing ensembles, including the Gate City Camerata, the Contemporary Chamber Players and the UNCG Symphony Orchestra.

She has played with the North Carolina Symphony, the Winston-Salem Symphony, the Central Florida Symphony, the Dekalb Symphony, the Lynchburg Symphony, and the Charlottesville and University Symphony Orchestra.  For seven years she served as the assistant principal cellist for the Ash-Lawn Summer Opera Festival in Charlottesville, Va. In the summer of 2003, Pezzoli received the Repertory Training Fellowship to attend the Brevard Music Center.  She maintains a private cello studio and is a member of the Black Note String Quartet.

Oboist Mary Ashley Barret holds a B.M. from Eastman, an M.M. from Baylor and a D.M. with a certificate in the pedagogy of music theory from Florida State University. Her mentors have included Richard Killmer, Doris DeLoach and Eric Ohlsson. An active performer, Barret is currently a member of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra and is principal oboe in the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra. She has appeared as soloist with the Florida State Wind Orchestra, the UNCG Orchestra, and the Salisbury Symphony and has presented numerous guest recitals and master classes throughout the United States, Caribbean, New Zealand and Australia. Barret is a member of the EastWind Trio d'Anches and can be heard on the recent recording "Out of the Woods: Twentieth-Century French Wind Trios" with TreVent.

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