Nancy Walker
soprano
Timothy Lindeman, piano
assisted by:
Alex Ezerman, cello
Sunday, March 22, 2015
3:30 pm
Recital Hall, Music Building
Program
Come in Speaking Silence of a Dream (2000) Jonathan D. Green
Ah! How Sweet it is to Love (b. 1964)
Echo
Those Eyes
Three Songs (1980) Val Patacchi
J'aime tes yeux (1920-1996)
Beau soir
Les papillons
Lauber Lieder (1994) Zae Munn
The Slowly Opening Rose (b. 1953)
I Have Washed and Buttoned Up
Geese Along the Flowage
The Sermon
Remember Me As I Was Then (2011) Tom Shelton
The Kiss (b. 1966)
After Love
Morning Song
Change (Remember Me As I Was Then)
The Dreams of My Heart
Sweet, Sad, "S"-oteric, Sentimental, Silly (2015) Jay Pierson
The Schumann's: Dinner for Two (b. 1959)
Giacomo
Cage the Rage
Can you Hear the Pain . . . .?
It's Hard to Find a Dog
Jonathan Green
Ah! How Sweet it is to Love
Text by John Dryden (1631-1700)
Ah, how sweet it is to love!
Ah, how gay is young Desire!
And what pleasing pains we prove
When we first approach Love's fire!
Pains of love are sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.
Sighs which are from lovers blown
Do but gently heave the heart:
E'en the tears they shed alone
Cure, like trickling balm, their smart:
Lovers, when they lose their breath,
Bleed away in easy death.
Love and Time with reverence use,
Treat them like a parting friend;
Nor the golden gifts refuse
Which in youth sincere they send:
For each year their price is more,
And they less simple than before.
Love, like spring-tides full and high,
Swells in every youthful vein;
But each tide does less supply,
Till they quite shrink in again:
If a flow in age appear,
'Tis but rain, and runs not clear.
Those Eyes
Text by Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
Ah, do not wanton with those eyes,
Lest I be sick with seeing;
Nor cast them down, but let them rise,
Lest shame destroy their being.
Ah be not angry with those fires,
For then their threats will kill me;
Nor look too kind on my desires,
For then my hopes will spill me.
Ah, do not steep them in thy tears,
For so will sorrow slay me;
Nor spread them as distract with fears;
Mine own enough betray me.
Echo
Text by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream:
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as
bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of (un)finished years.
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter
sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in
Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and
meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again tho' cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
Val Patacchi
J'aime tes yeux
Text by Armand Silvestre (1837-1901)
J'aime tes yeux, j'aime ton front,
Ô ma rebelle, ô ma farouche,
J'aime tex yeux, j'aime ta bouche
Où mes baisers s'épuiseront.
J'aime ta voix, j'aime l'étrange
Grâce de tout ce que tu dis,
Ô ma rebelle, ô mon cher ange,
Mon enfer et mon paradis!
J'aime tout ce qui te fait belle,
De tes pieds jusqu'à tes cheveux,
Ô toi vers qui montent mes voeux,
Ô ma farouche, ô ma rebelle!
Beau Soir
Text by Paul Bourget (1852-1935)
Lorsque au soleil couchant les rivières sont
roses,
Et qu'un tiède frisson sur les champs de blé,
Un conseil d'être heureux semble sortir des
choses
Un conseil de goûter le charme d'être au
monde,
Cependant qu'on est jeune et que le soir est
beau,
Car nous nous en allons comme s'en va
cette onde:
Elle à la mer, -- nous au tombeau!
Val Patacchi
Les Papillons
Text by Pierre-Jules-Théophile Gautier
(1811-1872)
Les papillons couleur de neige
Volent par essaims sur la mer;
Beaux papillons blancs, quand pourrai-je
Prendre le bleu chemin de l'air?
Savez-vous, belle des belles,
Ma bayadère aux yeux de jais,
S'ils me voulaient prêter leurs ailes, Dites,
savez-vous où j'irais?
Sans prendre un seul baiser aux roses, À
travers vallons et forêts,
J'irais à vos lèvres mi-closes,
Fleur de mon âme, et j'y mourrais.
I love your eyes
I love your eyes, I love your forehead
O my rebel, O my fierce one
I love your eyes, I love your mouth
Where my kisses exhaust themselves.
I love your voice, I love the strange
Grace of all that you say
O my rebel, O my Dear angel
My hell and my paradise!
I love all that makes you beautiful,
From your feet to your hair,
O you towards whom my wishes climb,
O my fierce one, O my rebel.
Beautiful Evening
When the rivers are pink sunset,
And a warm shiver runs over the
cornfields,
A plea of happiness seems to come out of
things
A plea to sample the charm of being in the
world,
But we are young and the evening is
beautiful,
For we are going as the wave goes:
It to the sea - we to the tomb!
The Butterflies
The butterflies, the color of snow
Fly, swarming over the sea;
Beautiful white butterflies, when may I
Take the blue path of air?
Do you know, fairest of the fair,
My dancing girl with the eyes of jet,
If they would lend their wings,
Tell me, do you know where I would go?
Without taking a single pink kiss, Through
valleys and forests,
I would go to your half-closed lips, Flower
of my soul, and there I'd die.
Zae Munn
Lauber Lieder
Text by Peg Carlson Lauber (b. 1938)
The Slowly Opening Rose
The slowly opening rose
has one place to go—
to fullness; and though this ends
in death, it knows no better
and keeps revealing leaf
and sudden petal that wheels
slowly in wind groundward
or in rain, bends down
ruined. It is like music
which choosing its tune, a fugue,
multiplies; the oboe
alone, sinuous,
I Have Washed and Buttoned Up
I have washed
and buttoned up
have made my bed
and gone to church
have set the table
and cleared afterwards
have worn the clothes
cut and sewn for me
Geese Along the Flowage
I heard the thrashing and honking—
hurried out to see the flock
airborne, except the chick
who was struggling across
once crowded water. She lifted
into the sky taking her place
in the asymmetrical V heading south.
The Sermon
We were like bricks.
Beneath the tumult of words
unleashed,
overwhelming,
like beasts upon their prey.
We were like bricks.
The words, spoken, took on touch,
becomes duet joined
by violins, foils
as are the opening flowers
to buds; they crowd
simplicity with a rare
opulence; one bears
it like this moment: cool,
the summer's end, room
here for things to finish,
for things to begin.
have worn my boots in the rain
and my snow pants in snow
have prayed every night
and at every meal;
am I not a good child,
Mother, and if I am
will you come and get me
finally and tell me so?
I stood remembering the ends
of things, the last times,
those fears of letting go,
always the same
painful starting out again.
became texture,
a blunt physical force.
We were white, we were shaken,
in this presence
of love and heaven.
Beneath the tumult of words
unleashed,
overwhelming,
We were like bricks.
Tom Shelton
Remember Me As I Was Then
Text by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
The Kiss
I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.
For though I know he loves me,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.
After Love
There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.
You were the wind and I the sea—
There is not splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore,
But thought the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.
Morning Song
A diamond of a morning
Waked me an hour too soon;
Dawn had taken in the stars
And left the faint white moon.
O white moon, you are lonely,
It is the same with me,
But we have the world to roam over,
Only the lonely are free.
Remember me as I was then
Remember me as I was then;
Turn from me now, but always see
The laughing shadowy girl who stood
At midnight by the flowering tree,
With eyes that love had made as bright
As the trembling stars of the summer night.
Turn from me now, but always hear
The muted laughter in the dew
Of that one year of youth we had,
The only youth we ever knew—
Turn from me now, or you will see
What other years have done to me.
The dreams of my heart
The dreams of my heart and my mind pass,
Nothing stays with me long,
But I have had from a child
The deep solace of song;
If that should ever leave me,
Let me find death and stay
With things whose tunes are played out and
forgotten
Like the rain of yesterday.
Performers
Nancy Walker, soprano, is Professor of Voice at the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro where she has taught for 30 years. She holds a DM in Voice from Indiana
University, the MM from the University of Colorado in Boulder and the BM in Music
Education and Performance from Hastings College in Nebraska. She taught in the
public schools of Nebraska and Colorado before returning to school to earn her
graduate degrees. She has also taught at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri,
and Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.
A frequent recitalist, she has been a District finalist in the Metropolitan Opera Council
auditions and was a national finalist in the National Association of Teachers of
Singing (NATS) Artist Awards. She has performed as a soloist in Carnegie Hall in
New York City and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
Active in the National Association of Teachers of Singing, she served as District
Treasurer, Regional Governor for the Mid-Atlantic Region and was Vice President at
the national level for the NATS Artist Awards for two terms. Her students regularly
win awards at all levels of the NATS auditions. Her students have been Regional
and National finalists in the MTNA competition for voice, and former students are
singing in Regional operas and Young Artist Programs around the country.
Dr. Walker received a Fulbright Research Grant to study the songs of Josephine Lang
in Munich, Germany in 1998, and a research leave in 2004-05 when she studied
German vocal pedagogy visiting voice teachers throughout Germany, Austria, and
Slovenia. She is frequently invited to give master classes and has given classes in
many states across the US.
Timothy H. Lindeman is Professor of Music at Guilford College, where he served as
Chair for more than 20 years. He teaches music theory, piano, music history, and
world music. He received the Ph.D. in music theory with minors in piano and art
history from Indiana University. He is well known as a writer, a scholar, a performer,
and a lecturer.
Dr. Lindeman’s most recent published writing was an invited review of Kenneth
Hamilton’s book After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance, which
was published Symposium of the College Music Society. He is a published author and
has presented papers at several national music conventions. For more than a two
decades he has written about the Triad music scene in both Triad Style, the News and
Record and for the on-line journal, Classical Voice of North Carolina. His most recent
reviews can read be at www.cvnc.org and in the News and Record.
In 2007 he was one of 23 critics from across the country to be accepted in the National
Endowment for the Arts sponsored “Reviewing Classical Music and Opera,” a 10-day
seminar housed at Columbia University in New York City.
His primary research interest is Beethoven. He was one of twelve scholars to
participate in an NEH seminar on Beethoven at Harvard University under the
tutelage of Lewis Lockwood. As an outcome, he designed an interdisciplinary senior
seminar, “Beethoven: The Age of Revolution.”
In his spare time, Tim likes to cook, exercise, and spend time with his two daughters,
24-year-old Kelsey (a bio major at Guilford) and 19-year-old Chloe (a physics major at
Haverford). (Both are musically inclined . . .)
Drs. Walker and Lindeman have performed recitals in Florence, Italy and Munich,
Germany. In 2012 they spent four weeks teaching voice and piano at the Inner
Mongolia University of the Nationalities in Tongliao, China, where they also
performed a recital. They recently taught a three-day workshop at the Louis Spohr
Musikakademie in Kassel, Germany. Beginning this fall the couple will be in Munich
where Walker will be researching the current climate for American singers in
Germany and Lindeman will lead a study abroad group for Guilford College
Alexander Ezerman, cello, comes from a family where the cello runs four generations
deep, including two former associate principals of the Philadelphia Orchestra. A prize
winner in national and international competition, he has appeared as a soloist and
chamber musician across North America, South America, and Europe. An active
advocate and performer of new music, he has been involved in numerous premiers,
and has performed all twelve of the "Sacher" pieces for solo cello in a single recital. He
has recorded on the New World, Centaur and Innova Labels. In the summer, he is on
the faculty of the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington Vermont.
He has previously been on the faculties of the Brevard Music Center and the
Killington Music Festival and Texas Tech University, where he was a founding
member of the Botticelli String Quartet. Ezerman holds a BM degree from Oberlin
College Conservatory and a Master of Music and Doctorate of Musical Arts from the
State University of New York at Stony Brook. His primary mentors include Timothy
Eddy, Norman Fischer, David Wells and his grandmother Elsa Hilger.
Composers
Jonathan D. Green, Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Illinois Wesleyan, is a
conductor and composer. He is the author of six music-reference books and has
received awards from ASCAP, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Virginia
Center for the Creative Arts for his compositions, which include numerous songs,
choral works, three piano concertos, and seven symphonies. He received degrees
from SUNY Fredonia, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro where he was a University Excellence Fellow. He was
previously Dean of the College and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Sweet
Briar College, where he received the 1999 Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has
given numerous presentations on a variety of topics in higher education for the
Council of Independent Colleges, the Annapolis Group, and the American Council on
Education. He is a member of ASCAP, the Conductors Guild, and Phi Mu Alpha, and
he serves on the boards of the Illinois Symphony and the Illinois Shakespeare Festival.
He presently resides in Normal, IL with his wife, Lynn Buck.
Val Patacchi had a outstanding and varied career as an entertainer, composer and
professor. As a singer he toured with many opera companies after his formal training
at the Academy of Vocal Arts in his native Philadelphia. He appeared throughout the
country as guest artist with numerous opera companies, festivals and theaters and
was regarded as one of the most versatile and experienced singer/actors of his day.
Patacchi costarred with television star Betty White in Rogers & Hammerstein's "The
King and I" and also performed in several Hallmark Hall of Fame telecasts. He was
head of the voice and opera departments at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri
until 1985 and was at the Brevard Music Center as musical stage director for many
years, retiring in 1995.
Zae Munn is Professor of Music at Saint Mary's College in South Bend, Indiana where
she teaches theory, composition, digital media in music, and
orchestration/arranging. She is the the Director and Resident Composer of
the Summer Composition Intensive at Saint Mary’s College. She has also taught at
Interlochen Arts Camp, Bowdoin College, Transylvania University, and Lehigh
University. Her DMA and MM degrees in composition are from the University of
Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and her BM in composition is from Chicago Musical
College of Roosevelt University. Born in 1953, Munn's early musical training was as a
cellist, with additional studies in piano, voice, and conducting.
Her works are published by Arsis Press, Balquhidder Music, Earthsongs, Frank E.
Warren Music, HoneyRock, JOMAR Press, Tempo Press, and Yelton Rhodes Music.
Recordings are available from Capstone Records, Centaur Records, and a number of
independent labels. A CD with Parma Records will be released in March 2015.
Tom T. Shelton is Assistant Professor of Sacred Music at Westminster Choir College.
He earned a Bachelor of Music in Music Education and a Master of Music in Choral
Conducting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has 22 years of
experience with youth choirs in school, church and community settings. He was
selected as Teacher of the Year by two separate middle schools, and in 1999 he was
awarded the North Carolina Middle School Music Teacher of the Year by the North
Carolina Music Educators Association. Choral groups under his direction have been
invited to perform for the North Carolina Music Educators Conference and the NC
American Choral Directors Association Conference.
An active composer and clinician, Mr. Shelton has conducted festivals and honor
choirs in 14 states and abroad. His compositions have been published by Colla Voce
Music, Heritage Music Press, Hinshaw Music Company, and Santa Barbara Music
Press. He has held leadership positions with the American Choral Directors
Association (ACDA) including Southern Division President (2011-2012), National
R&S Chair for Middle School/Junior High Choirs (2007-2009), North Carolina
President (2005-2007)
Before joining Westminster’s faculty, he was associate director of the music ministry
for children and youth at First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, N.C. and
conductor of the Greensboro Youth Chorus Chorale. Mr. Shelton is also associate
director of the Princeton Girlchoir and conductor of its Cantores ensemble.
Jay A. Pierson, bass-baritone, has had a successful and fulfilling career as an
educator, singer, conductor, pianist, harpist and composer, spanning over three
decades. He made his NY debut singing the role of Argenio in the premiere of
Handel's Imeneo at Merkin Hall with a subsequent solo recital in Weill Recital Hall at
Carnegie Hall with pianist, Robert Spillman. Jay has appeared as soloist with the
Rochester Philharmonic, Grand Rapids Symphony, Prince William Symphony.
Washington DC Bach Consort, Buffalo Philharmonic and the North Carolina
Symphony. He has also sung lead and comprimario roles with Austin Lyric Opera,
Rochester Opera Theatre, Opera Under the Stars, Coastal Carolina Opera, Brighton
Light Opera, Art Park Opera, White Iris Light Opera and Meredith Opera, and was on
the faculty of the Bach Aria Group at SUNY-Stonybrook. In 1992 he toured Greece
with soprano, Terri Rhodes and tenor, Stafford Wing, singing concerts of American
Music and teaching at the State Music Conservatory of Thessoloniki.
Former Head of the Voice Department at Bucknell University, and former Associate
Professor of Music at the School of Music at East Carolina University His students
have been accepted into the Curtis Institute, Eastman School of Music, Florida State
University and Cincinnati Conservatory. Some of his students are now teaching at
the university level and performing with regional, national and international
opera/theatre companies. Presently, Jay is Adjunct Voice professor at UNC-Chapel
Hill. An active and published composer, Pierson has enjoyed performances of his
choral works, solo songs and a concertino for harp and orchestra throughout the
United States and Canada. Jay's art song entitled Music is published by GIA in the
vocal anthology, Finding Middle Ground for Young Male Voices. His CD “Ah Love, But a
Day” with soprano Louise Toppin has received critical acclaim from the NATS
Journal and the American Record Guide.
Jay holds a BME degree from Olivet College, and the MM and DMA in Voice
Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music.
