reVoice - Vanguard New Music Guest Artists Series

Music by
Morton Feldman, John Cage, Stephen Greibling, Ricky Ian Gordon,
Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Keegan Meuris, and Philip Glass

PROGRAM

Only - Morton Feldman
Megan Elk

Ear for Ear - John Cage
Susan Fletcher and Megan Elk

Three Songs from “The Lamp and the Bell” - Stephen T. Griebling
Susan Fletcher and Lorenzo Salvagni

Summer - Ricky Ian Gordon
Susan Fletcher, Megan Elk, and Lorenzo Salvagni

Lullaby - Meredith Monk
Susan Fletcher

The Witness - Pauline Oliveros
Susan Fletcher, Megan Elk, and the audience

Far from the Tree - Keegan Meuris
Susan Fletcher and Megan Elk

Songs from Liquid Days - Philip Glass
Changing Opinion
Freezing
Liquid Days (Part One)
Susan Fletcher, Rachel Morrison, Megan Elk, and Lorenzo Salvagni

On Saturday, March 7 Kent State University’s Vanguard New Music Guest Artists Series will present a recital by the contemporary vocal ensemble reVoice. This will be the fifth concert of the 2014-2015 Vanguard Series. This recital, which will be held at the Carl F. W. Ludwig Recital Hall in the Center for the Performing Arts, will begin at 7:30 P.M. Admission will be free.

reVoice is an ongoing collaboration between critically acclaimed contemporary vocalists Megan Elk, mezzo-soprano, and Susan Fletcher, soprano. Elk and Fletcher aim to bring to life little performed vocal compositions from the late 20th century and early 21st century, while exploring fresh performing contexts that extend far beyond the concert hall.

The program will feature works by Morton Feldman, John Cage, Stephen Greibling, Ricky Ian Gordon, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Keegan Meuris, and Phillip Glass. Of particular interest are excerpts from Glass’s seldom performed song-cycle, “Songs from Liquid Days,” and Oliveros’s participatory, guided improvisation, “The Witness.” For this concert Elk and Fletcher will be joined by soprano Rachel Morrison and pianist Lorenzo Salvagni.

Soprano Susan Fletcher is praised for her versatility and comfort across many genres of vocal repertoire. Locally, she has appeared on stage with The Cleveland Orchestra, Opera Cleveland, Lyric Opera Cleveland, Opera Circle, the Kent Chorus and most recently as the soprano soloist in Mozart’s Coronation Mass with Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony Orchestra. In the summer of 2011 she was honored to perform under the baton of legendary conductor Lorin Maazel as a Castleton Festival artist. As a founding member of reVoice vocal ensemble, she specializes in new vocal repertoire and regularly collaborates with Northeast Ohio composers. She was honored to record “Some Hope Upon the Sky” for composer Frank Wiley of Kent State University. Her performance of this work aired on WCLV 104.9 FM. Susan was a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Traditions Competition, where she performed repertoire of strictly American composers spanning classical art song to jazz standards. Since 2012, she can most often be seen throughout the east coast performing her own brand of blues rock where her voice has been described as “a medusa, every note and words magnetizing as they lick the senses with inescapable potency on the way to enslaving ears and passions.” She holds a BM degree in Vocal Performance and a BBA degree in Business Finance from Kent State University. She was a student of Jane Dressler, Tim Culver, Mary Sue Hyatt and Rosa Vento. Susan lives in Cleveland and works throughout Northeast Ohio as a recitalist, lecturer and voice instructor.

Mezzo-soprano Megan Elk has performed professionally in opera, musical theatre, and experimental theatre, but is happiest pacing about her home studio in Ohio City and making weird noises. Her great love of the avant garde was fostered by her tenure with the internationally renowned New World Performance Laboratory, wherein she toured performances of her own original vocal compositions and facilitated voice and movement workshops throughout Europe and the United States. For the past eight years, she has served as a member of the voice faculty at the Aurora School of Music, though her own unique methods of vocal pedagogy continue to be shaped by key elements of breath and body work gleaned from her experiences in ensemble-devised theatre. Her cabaret alter ego/nom de plume, Miss Alexandra Huntingdon, can be found performing in venues throughout the country and on the recently released recording, Live at Survival Kit.