Happy New Year! It’s #twentygreatteen, and as you might have guessed from the title, it’s still very much winter in the frozen climes of Adirondack Park. Temperatures over the last few weeks have barely crawled above freezing, but lots of beautiful snow has made Schroon Lake look magnificent (from indoors with a cup of tea and a blanket, of course). The ice on Schroon Lake is thick enough for ice-fishing, and now and then you see trucks driving out where in summer only boats would tread. Town is verrrrry quiet – the yearlong population of Schroon is only about 1,700, a fraction of what it can grow to in the height of summer.

Even though it’s the off-season, our full-time staff (Darren, Tony, and Jim Koehnle, technical director) are hard at work doing all the things that keep Seagle up and running. This includes drumming up financial support for future seasons through in-person appeals and grant writing, designing next summer’s productions, hiring directors, production staff, and musicians for the coming season, and maintaining the Colony’s presence in town as well as upkeep of our home on Charley Hill. But (perhaps) most importantly – it’s audition season!

Every January, Darren and Tony embark on their annual trip to hear auditions around the country in search of the 32 talented young artists who will be engaged at Seagle in the summer. Before these auditions take place, a few other steps have to happen. First, the season is announced via YAPTracker, a website that is well-known and love-hated by those of you pounding the audition pavement. Seagle’s advertisement for 2018 went up mid-fall. Next, applications are submitted by aspiring “pumpkins.” An application consists of a current resume, a headshot, and prescreening recordings that give us an idea of a singer’s voice and stage presence. Finally, after many hours of listening and reading and evaluating applications, a number of singers are selected to appear for live audition. In the audition singers are asked to provide a list of 3-5 arias and musical theater songs they are prepared to sing. They choose their first piece, and then the panel selects a second piece, usually one that contrasts with the first number. A door monitor, usually a Seagle alumna/-us, is at the door to escort singers in and out and to manage the flow of singers in the waiting room, and singers take heed – the door monitor hears everything you say! 😉 Seagle has already received 244 applications and counting for the 2018 season – applications will continue to be accepted through February 2.

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It’s the holiday season, and that means music is happening all over the place. Many of our Seagle singers are performing in gigs (some holiday related, some not) all around the country. There are quite a few Messiahs, but look a little closer and you’ll find an interesting cornucopia of festive holiday treats. Here is a completely random chronological sampling of some of the performances you might want to add to your December calendar!

DEC 9 @ 8:00PM – Messiah // Handel
Cobb Theater, Wharton Center – East Lansing, MI

David Anderson, tenor and Kyle White, baritone will be featured soloists for Michigan State University’s annual performance of Handel’s Messiah. If you can’t make it to Michigan, this performance will also be live-streamed. Tickets and further information can be found here.

 

DEC 9 @ 8:00PM AND SUNDAY, DEC 10 @ 2:30PM – Christmas Oratorio // Saint-Saens
Belleville Congregational Church – Newburyport, MA

Megan Callahan, mezzo-soprano, Colin Campbell, tenor, and Michael Miller, baritone, are featured soloists with the Newburyport Choral Society for its annual Winter Concert. The central piece of the program is Saint-Saens’ Christmas Oratorio. It looks like Sunday’s performance is already sold out, but you can still get tickets for Saturday night. More information can be found here.

DEC 8, 9, 16 @ 7:30PM & DEC 17 @ 2:30PM – Home for the Holidays
Wayne and Kristine Lueders Florentine Opera Center – Milwaukee, WI

Nate Hill, baritone, appears with his fellow Florentine Opera Studio artists in a program of winter tunes and carols. Tickets and information here.

DEC 11 @ 8:00PM – La Liberazione di Ruggiero // Caccini
Hatch Recital Hall, Eastman School of Music – Rochester, NY

Kevin Bryant, tenor, will sing the role of Ruggiero in a concert performance of Francesca Caccini’s La Liberazione di Ruggiero with Eastman’s Collegium Musicum. This rare treat was the first opera ever composed by a woman, and the free concert will be conducted by Paul O’Dette, music director of the Boston Early Music Festival. More information can be found here.

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Hi Seagle family! It’s been a while since you’ve heard from us here at the blog. But rest assured, the blog is BACK, and we’re so excited to share what’s been going on for the last few months!!

Seagle’s 2017 season was a huge success, featuring two works never before produced by the Colony. The season opened with Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza, a lushly lyric Tony-winning musical set in Florence, Italy in the 1950s. With this production we warmly welcomed stage director Jay Lesenger, formerly of the Chautauqua Festival and Northwestern University, to Seagle for the first time. And while our productions are usually performed with two pianos, this show was made even more magical with the presence of harp, played expertly by Karlinda Caldicott, which Guettel used to illustrate the romantic Italian sunlight.

This summer also featured the piano-vocal premiere of Herschel Garfein’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, based on the comedic play by Tom Stoppard. The singers had their work cut out for them with Garfein’s complicated score, but conductor Andrew Bisantz and music director Jennifer McGuire did a masterful job of enabling our emerging artists in bringing the score to life. This show was also a bit of a low-voice lovefest, with two baritones, a bass-baritone, and a mezzo-soprano forming the core principal roles. At turns silly or serious, “R&G” was an exciting project and we look forward to hearing about the work’s future successes. [Read more…]

WELCOME TO OUR NEW SMC ARTISTS! 

Happy March, everyone!! Spring is hopefully just around the corner, and spring means new beginnings. We have a lot of exciting news and things to look forward to! If you haven’t seen the shining new faces we are welcoming for 2017, you are seriously missing out. Check them out HERE. We couldn’t be more anxious for June to get here, and not just because we’re sick of snow! It’s going to be a wonderful season, and we’re thrilled to have all of our 2017 artists lighting up the hill.

So, what comes first; choosing the artists, or choosing the season repertoire? It’s a bit of a puzzle to put together. Some of the things we consider when choosing the next season are:

1. Which of last year’s artists will probably be returning? We know this by asking each individual artist in their exit interview. And we want to be able to feature as many returning artists as possible in roles that are a good fit for them.
2. What would be a good, balanced combination of shows? We always choose two operas and two musicals, to keep things fun and interesting, as well as to help our artists be versatile! These shows must have enough parts to feature each of the 32 Young Artists in at least one role, particularly between the two middle shows of the season and the children’s opera – we want everyone to have something in one of those three shows and typically do full company shows at the beginning and the end.
3. What shows can we choose that we know our audience will like, or at least appreciate? Of course in recent years we’ve also tried hard to incorporate new or recently premiered late 20^th or 21^st century operas and will continue that in the future, because new opera is something we have a certain love for, and believe in.

So, to answer the above question — the repertoire is indeed chosen before we start recruiting singers.

Would that make the repertoire the chicken or the egg? Hmmmm. Well, we definitely don’t think any of our singers are chicken — they have so much courage!  [Read more…]