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12th Season Guest Artists
Feel the Swing Saturday, November 1, 2008 8pm Community Center Theater
 | The Sacramento State Latin Jazz Ensemble was founded in 2001 by director Steve Roach, and has since been invited to perform at a variety of different events including the annual Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, The California State Fair, The Latin American Heritage Festival, The Golden State Museum, The Music in the Mountains concert series, the Vallejo Jazz Festival, the Hutchins Street Square concert series in Lodi, and the prestigious Mondavi Center located in Davis, California. The ensemble is also called upon to perform for campus related events as well as private and corporate functions in the Sacramento area. Prominent guest artists who have recently appeared with the Sac State Latin Jazz Ensemble include Mark Levine and the Latin Tinge, The John Santos Quintet, and trombonist Wayne Wallace. This exciting twelve-piece ensemble plays a wide range of Latin musical styles, including merengue, samba, cha-cha-cha, mambo, Afro-Cuban, and rumba. In addition to Latin-Jazz standards by Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, Eddie Palmieri, Mario Bauza, Mongo Santamaria, Mark Levine, Poncho Sanchez, and others, the band plays original compositions as well. The Sacramento State Latin Jazz Ensemble has released three CD recordings: Con Sentimiento (2002), Pasando El Tiempo (2004), and Havana (2008). The CD's are available by contacting Steve Roach. www.csus.edu/music/jazz |
 | With a long list of both opera and concert performances in the U.S. and Europe, Soprano Marnie Breckinridge has been called "a showstopper." Her pure and supple voice, excellent musicianship, effervescent personality and dramatic intesity have rapidly established her as a rising young artist. She recently made her company deput with the English National Opera performing the role of Cunegonde in Candide. She made her European debut in the same role with the Prague State Opera last season, about with the Prague Post declared, "Breckinridge was note perfect." Ms. Breckinridge received rave reviews when she stepped in for an ailing Isabel Bayrakdarian to sing opposite Patti LuPone in the Chicago premiere of Jake Heggie's To Hell And Back at the Ravinia Festival. Of her performance reviewer John Von Rein noted, "She sounded as gorgeous as she looked, achieving both lyrical poignancy and dramatic power" (The Chicago Tribune). Upon special invitation, she recently performed the role of Lucia in The Rape of Lucretia conducted by Lorin Maazel at his Chateauville Foundation Estate Theatre. A winner of numerous prestigious competitions, Ms. Breckinridge is a Regional Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and the winner of the IIE International Travel Award, a Loren L. Zachary National Grand Finalist, a MacAllister Awards Regional Finalist, and Mu Phi Epsilon Winner. She received her Bachelor's Degree from Pacific Union College and her Master's Degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. |
Beethoven's Back Saturday, January 17, 2009 8pm Community Center Theater  | Gregory Mason has performed and taught across the US and abroad. Among many recitals in teh US and abroad, he has performed in Barcelona, Madrid, Hamburg, Lisbon, Vienna, tours of South and Central America, at the United Nations, the Yale Collection of Historic Instruments, the Casals Festival, Festival International de la Cultura, Wildwood Festival, OFAM, the Festival of the Millennium and a PBS recital with baritone William Warfield. As an accompanist and coach in New York City, Mason was pianist for the American Music Competition at Carnegie Hall, the Vincent La Selva opera classes at Juilliard and a master class with Placido Domingo at the Metropolitan Opera. New York Times critic Will Crutchfield praised his "characterful and interesting playing" after a Carnegie Recital Hall performance. Mr. Mason coached actress Linda Lavin for the Emmy-winning NBC movie, Lena, My Hundred Children, was a coach at Virginia Opera for two seasons including Mozart's Magic Flute with Renee Fleming, and has given master classes at Universities in the US and oversees. Mason has also taught at teh University of Central Arkansas, Millikin University, the College of William and Mary, and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. Mason holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Michigan where he studied with Eugene Bossart and the legendary Bartok pupil, Gyorgy Sandor, and a MM and DMA from the University of Illinois where he studied with famed coach accompanist John Wustman and piano with Ian Hobson. Mr. Mason returned to Weill Hall in 1999 for a recital with Grammy-winning soprano Susan Dunn. His collaboration with Miss Dunn includes many concerts, as well as musical preparation for operatic roles and orchestral concerts including a concert and Telarc CD of Wagner's Die Walkure with Pittsburgh Symphony and Lorin Maazel, Verdi's Ballo in Maschera for San Francisco Opera, a Luciano Pavarotti stadium concert tour, Schoenberg's Gurrelieder for Zubin Mehta's farewell as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, Mendelssohn's Elijah with Music of the Baroque at Chicago's Orchestra Hall, the Strauss Four Last Songs at the Saint-Denis Festival in Paris, Verdi's Requiem at the Berkshire Choral Festival and the London Proms at Royal Albert Hall, Mahler's Resurrection Symphony in London with Lorin Maazel and the Philharmonia, Verdi's Simon Boccanegra with Australian Opera, the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala for a PBS broadcast concert at Avery Fisher Hal and Rossini's Petite Messe Solonnelle for the Cincinnati May Festival. Mr. Mason performs numerous recitals every year. Recent highlights include the Stravinsky and Khachaturian piano concertos, the Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion and recitals for the Oregon Mozart Players and on teh Music Today Festival. Future concerts include a performance of Rhapsody in Blue, a concerto premiere, the US premiere of the Landini Piano Sonata No. 3 and masterclasses at the University of New Mexico and UC Davis. He is currently on the faculties of Consumnes River College and American River College and works with the Sacramento Opera, California Musical Theater, the San Francisco Choral Society, and the San Francisco Symphony. |
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