Press Contacts:
Patricia K. Johnson | patricia.johnson@curtis.edu | (215) 717-3190
Ryan Scott Lathan | ryan.lathan@curtis.edu | (215) 717-3145
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PHILADELPHIA, PA—February 2, 2023—Internationally acclaimed pianist, master teacher, chamber musician, conductor, and vocal coach Warren Jones, comes to the Curtis Institute of Music, February 13–17, 2023, for a highly-anticipated artist residency featuring a private master class in collaboration with Curtis’s distinguished vocal studies and piano studies departments led by Miloš Repický, Hirsig Family Chair in Vocal Studies and Amy Yang, associate dean of piano studies and artistic initiatives. Throughout the week, students will have individual coaching sessions with Mr. Jones, offering a wealth of invaluable instruction, feedback, and insight for each young artist. On Friday, February 17, at 8:00 p.m. in Field Concert Hall, Mr. Jones will accompany six vocal students, Emily Damasco, Sarah Fleiss, Evan Gray, Hannah Klein, Ben Schaefer, and Katie Trigg, in a public recital featuring beloved works by Gioachino Rossini, Franz Schubert, Gabriel Fauré, Paolo Tosti, Hugo Wolf, Giuseppe Verdi, and Giacomo Puccini.
Warren Jones enjoys a notably eclectic career that has taken him to virtually every corner of the musical world. He performs with some of today’s best-known artists such as Stephanie Blythe and Anthony Dean Griffey, and he is the principal pianist for the exciting California-based chamber music ensemble, Camerata Pacifica. In the past he has partnered with such great performers as Marilyn Horne, Håkan Hagegård, Kathleen Battle, Samuel Ramey, Christine Brewer, Barbara Bonney, Carol Vaness, Judith Blegen, Salvatore Licitra, Tatiana Troyanos, Thomas Hampson, James Morris, and Martti Talvela; and he has appeared in concerts with both the Juilliard Quartet and the Borremeo Quartet. Recently, Mr. Jones has appeared in recital with baritone Sidney Outlaw at The Atlanta Opera and San Francisco Opera and led masterclasses at Merola Opera Program and Source Song. The 2022–23 season includes master teacher residencies and master classes at the Curtis Institute of Music and Toronto’s Glenn Gould School.
Mr. Jones is a longtime faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music (MSM) and a former faculty member at the Music Academy of the West, and recently finished an appointment as artist in residence in music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. In 2017, Mr. Jones was invited by the National Association of Teachers of Singing to be the inaugural master teacher in their intern program for young collaborative pianists at the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto; and later in that year, he served as artist in residence in opera at New England Conservatory and at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Mr. Jones has received the Achievement Award from the Music Teachers National Association of America, their highest honor; and has been selected as Collaborative Pianist of the Year by Musical America. In the summer of 2018, he launched an innovative vocal workshop program at the Manchester Music Festival in Vermont for young singers and pianists. His schedule in 2019 also included a residency at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he taught and performed alongside members of the Takacs Quartet.
As an invited guest at the White House, Mr. Jones has performed for state dinners in honor of the leaders of Canada, Russia, and Italy; and three times he has been the guest of the Justices of the United States Supreme Court for musical afternoons in the East Conference Room at the Court. As a musical jurist, he has participated in judging the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the Montreal International Vocal Competition, the Metropolitan Opera National Auditions, and the Naumberg Awards. He joined the jury of the prestigious First China International Piano Competition in Beijing in May 2019.
A graduate of both New England Conservatory and San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), Mr. Jones was honored with the Doctor of Music degree from SFCM, and recently was selected as a faculty member of the board of trustees at MSM. His discography contains 31 recordings on every major label in a wide range of classical, romantic, and contemporary repertory. Most recently, he recorded Lament, live at Brevard Music Center, alongside baritone Sidney Outlaw. His conducting appearances are similarly varied: he has led sold-out critically acclaimed performances of Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz, Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti. In 2014, he conducted the world premiere of a new operatic version of A Christmas Carol at the Houston Grand Opera.
About the Curtis Institute of Music
The Curtis Institute of Music educates and trains exceptionally gifted young musicians to engage a local and global community through the highest level of artistry. For nearly a century Curtis has provided each member of its small student body with an unparalleled education alongside musical peers, distinguished by a “learn by doing” philosophy and personalized attention from a faculty that includes a high proportion of actively performing musicians. With admissions based solely on artistic promise, no student is turned away due to financial need. Curtis invests in each admitted student, ensuring no tuition is charged for their studies and they enter the profession free from educational debt. In a typical year, Curtis students hone their craft through more than 200 orchestra, opera, and solo and chamber music offerings in Philadelphia and around the world. Learn more at Curtis.edu.
Visit Curtis.edu/Calendar to view Curtis’s entire season of performances and events.
Warren Jones Residency Recital
Friday, February 17, 2023, at 8 p.m.
Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, 1726 Locust Street, Philadelphia
Admission is complimentary but requires advance registration.
PROGRAM
| GIOACHINO ROSSINI | La Regata Veneziana Katie Trigg, soprano Warren Jones, piano |
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| FRANZ SCHUBERT | Selections from Schwanengesang, D. 957 “Herbst,” D. 945 Ben Schaefer, baritone Warren Jones, piano |
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| GABRIEL FAURÉ | Cinq mélodies, Op. 58 Hannah Klein, mezzo-soprano Warren Jones, piano |
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| FRANCESCO PAOLO TOSTI | Canzoni d’Amaranta for Voice and Piano Emily Damasco, soprano Warren Jones, piano |
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| HUGO WOLF | Michelangelo-Lieder Evan Gray, bass-baritone Warren Jones, piano |
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| GIUSEPPE VERDI | “Stornello” “La seduzione” “Deh, pietoso, oh Addolorato,” from Seste Romanze Sarah Fleiss, soprano Warren Jones, piano |
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| GIACOMO PUCCINI | “Morire?” Sarah Fleiss, soprano Warren Jones, piano |
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“Music of the Earth” centers on compositions inspired by the natural world,” says Nick DiBerardino (Composition ’18), Ensemble 20/21 director, acclaimed composer, chair of composition studies, and senior associate dean of performance studies at Curtis. “Tate, Saariaho, Frank, León, and Messiaen all have something distinctive to say about our environment. For me, the program as a whole is an alluring invitation to reflect on the ways we engage with the world—and also an encouragement to protect and appreciate it more meaningfully than before. This musical celebration is a platform from which Curtis can start contemplating its next all-school project, in which our entire community will investigate music and scholarship connected to our planet.”
The program continues with a riveting performance of Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout by Gabriela Lena Frank, Latin Grammy winner, pianist, and recent composer-in-residence with The Philadelphia Orchestra. This complex and imaginative six-movement suite, performed by a string quartet, is a fascinating collection of miniature tone poems. Inspired by the “idea of mestizaje as envisioned by Peruvian writer José María Arguedas, where cultures can coexist without the subjugation of one by the other,” Frank’s captivating work explores aspects of ancient Peruvian civilization with modern musical influences.
Following intermission, Ensemble 20/21 presents the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, conductor, pianist, and educator Tania León’s In the Field, returning to Curtis this season following her role as 2021–22 composer-in-residence. Commissioned by the McCollin Fund and the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia in celebration of the organization’s landmark bicentennial, this highly anticipated song cycle for voice and piano quintet features Spanish and English text by Cuban American writer, playwright, and award-winning poet Carlos Pintado, recipient of the prestigious Paz Poetry Prize. Ensemble 20/21 and captivating Curtis student, soprano Sarah Fleiss, breathe life into León’s exquisite score and Pintado’s nuanced poetry, a meditation on the beauty, mythology, and historical complexity of Philadelphia’s iconic landmarks and its symbols of patriotism and justice.
A passion for birds and music collides in the final selection of the evening with French composer, organist, and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen’s dazzling 1956 piece for piano and small orchestra, Oiseaux exotiques. Based on the recorded songs of 47 exotic species of birds throughout China, India, Malaysia, and North and South America, this chirping, squawking celebration of life is full of colorful noises, both strident and shrieking, cheerful and richly sonorous. The virtuosic musicians of Ensemble 20/21 invite the audience to witness a feathered frenzy inside an imaginary aviary as they play this delightfully jittery, cacophonous score, with percussive Indian and Greek rhythmic patterns scattered throughout.
The highly-anticipated spring 2023 calendar of upcoming performances for the