Ava Pine, soprano, drew raves for her portrayal of the ethereal Youth inAfter Life and as the young Krystyna in Out of Darkness. Equally at home with opera, oratorio and recital, and accomplished in works ranging from baroque to Mina Miller, Artistic Director contemporary, she brings great vocal and dramatic range to her work. Karen Early Evans, soprano, performs frequently with Seattle Opera and sings regularly throughout the Northwest. With Seattle Opera she has sung the Artist Sponsorship Program roles of Anna in Nabucco, the Mistress of Novices in Suor Angelica, and Annina in La Traviata. Evans was a finalist in the Metropolitan National Vocal Competition and in the Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition. She was chosen as the 2018-19 audience favorite in both the Eleanor Lieber and the Bella Voce competitions. MOR core instrumentalists | $1,000 Natasha Zart Susan Bazhanov Dombourian Gulkis Assadi Violin Eby Flute Viola

Jessica Choe Walter Gray Mikhail Piano Cello Shmidt Violin

Laura DeLuca Jonathan Clarinet Green Double bass

2018-19 MOR’s 20th Anniversary Season 20th Birthday Celebration Concert November 4, 2018 | 4:00 p.m. Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall | Benaroya Hall, Seattle Banned, Exiled, Murdered! January 27, 2019 | 7:00 p.m. Music at Kohl Mansion | Burlingame, CA The Parting | World Premiere Commissioned by Music of Remembrance a new chamber opera by composer Tom Cipullo and librettist David Mason May 19, 2019 | 7:30 p.m. Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall | Benaroya Hall, Seattle Music of Remembrance owes its achievements to many people, but most of all May 23, 2019 | 7:30 p.m. to the extraordinary performers who bring our music to life at every concert. The unrivaled artistry of our stellar core ensemble and world-class guest artists is Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall | San Francisco Conservatory of Music matched by their loyal dedication to our mission. It’s a unique musical family, and through our Artist Sponsorship program you can become an intimate part of it. Erich Parce, director for The Parting, has brought his imaginative stagecraft o become an Artist Sponsor for our 20th birthday season in 2018-19, to MOR productions for over a decade, including Hans Krása’s Brundibar, Viktor simply look at the list of amazing artists and choose the ones you’d like to Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, Hans Gál’s What a Life!, and the world premieres sponsor. Artists can be funded by more than one sponsor, so there’s no exclusivity of Tom Cipullo’s After Life and Jake Heggie’s Out of Darkness. As an operatic baritone, or limitation. Parce has performed with opera companies such as the Metropolitan Opera, San As an Artist Sponsor, you’ll have the opportunity to attend rehearsals, meet Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, L’Opéra de Nice and L’Opéra de Montréal. He has your sponsored artist, and come to behind-the-scenes events. Throughout the been a frequent soloist with MOR, performing the premieres of new works by Paul Schoenfield season, we’ll keep you posted on your sponsored artist’s work, and we’ll recognize and Lori Laitman. your sponsorship in our programs. Alastair Willis, conductor, makes his first appearance with MOR inThe Your contribution helps us continue bringing these incomparable talents to Parting. His career highlights include guest conducting around the world, working the MOR stage. This support goes directly to their performance fees, and for the with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Esemble, and a Grammy nomination for Best Classical housing and travel costs for out-of-town artists. As an Artist Sponsor, you’ll be an Album in 2009 (Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortileges with Nashville Symphony and Opera active participant in our work, and build a relationship with a gifted artist. on Naxos). He is currently Music Director of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra. MOR Guest Artists | $1,500 Artistic Leadership | $10,000 Catherine Cook, mezzo soprano, has excelled in a wide range of roles with leading opera Mina Miller, Founder | Artistic Director | Pianist companies throughout the US, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera Mina founded Music of Remembrance in 1998, and through her visionary of Chicago, LA Opera and Houston Grand Opera. Recently, audiences around leadership MOR has grown into an organization whose unique mission, the world saw her in the Metropolitan Opera’s HD broadcast of Thomas Ades’s imaginative programming and inspiring performances are admired around the Exterminating Angel. A distinguished musical educator and mentor, Cook holds country and the world. Through Mina, MOR has brought audiences a repertoire the Frederica Von Stade Endowed Chair at the San Francisco Conservatory of over 200 works honoring a precious legacy. Through her, it has commissioned of Music and has served as chair of its vocal program. She has appeared with over 30 new works by today’s leading composers, remembering the Holocaust and recalling MOR as Gertrude Stein in After Life, and as Zosha in Out of Darkness, and has delivered stirring its lessons to tell stories of others who have faced exclusion and persecution. Mina’s passionate interpretations of art songs at MOR concerts. commitment to this vision has made all of this possible, and much more. She also is a noted Michael Mayes, baritone, portrays the poet Miklós Radnóti in The Parting. He first appeared pianist and has performed in many of MOR’s most memorable works. with MOR as Manfred in the world premiere of Out of Darkness. Mayes is known for his consummate portrayals of emotionally complex characters in the operatic Artistic Team | $2,500 repertoire, and those who saw his riveting portrayal of Manfred in MOR’s premiere of Out of Darkness will surely know why. On the world stage, Mayes has Tom Cipullo, composer of The Parting, has been hailed by the American been acclaimed as Joseph DeRocher in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, including Academy of Arts and Letters for his operas’ “inexhaustible imagination, wit, in Washington National Opera’s production with Susan Graham, and alongside expressive range and originality.” With librettist David Mason, he created After Joyce DiDonato at Madrid’s Teatro Real and London’s Barbican Centre. Life for MOR in 2015. That dramatic depiction of a confrontation between Laura Strickling, soprano, joins MOR for the first time as Fanni, the poet Miklós Radnóti’s wife the ghosts of Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso received the National Opera in The Parting. Praised by The New York Times for her “flexible voice, crystalline Association’s prestigious Domenick Argento Chamber Opera Award. Cipullo is diction, and warm presence,” Strickling has performed at Carnegie Hall, Avery drawn to stories with topical relevance. His breakout opera Glory Denied (2007) was based on the Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Ravinia true story of the Vietnam veteran who was America’s longest-held prisoner of war. Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, the Afghanistan National Institute of David Mason, librettist for The Parting, created remarkably insightful Music, and Liederfest in Suzhou, China. A champion of Tom Cipullo’s music, she libretti for two of MOR’s earlier commissions. In Tom Cipullo’s After Life, he recently recorded a complete CD set of the composer’s songs. crafted the intense confrontation between the ghosts of Gertrude Stein and Robert Orth, baritone, returns in the role of Picasso that he introduced — and defined — inAfter Pablo Picasso over the role of the artist in a troubled world. For Lori Laitman’s Life. Since then, he has brought MOR audiences an unforgettable depiction of Gad oratorio Vedem, his libretto captured the inner lives — the dreams and fears — Beck in Out of Darkness, and a powerful delivery of Paul Schoenfield’s dramatic of the teenage boys who dared produce a clandestine magazine every Friday Sparks of Glory. A rare vocal talent, and one of the world’s great singing actors, Orth for two years in the Terezín concentration camp. Mason has published several collections of has performed over 135 roles in opera and musical shows around the world. He poems and essays, and his verse novel “Ludlow” was named best poetry book of the year by has been named “Artist of the Year” by both New York City Opera and Seattle Contemporary Poetry Review. Mason’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Opera, and Opera News has called him a “fixture of contemporary opera.” Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement and many other major publications.