"To an Alaskan Glacier" – A Night of Chamber and Vocal Masterpieces
Featuring the World Premiere of Henry Dehlinger’s To an Alaskan Glacier
Zuill Bailey, Emily Daggett Smith, Jessica Shuang Wu, Allison Bailey, Guang Wang, Danielle Talamantes, Kerry Wilkerson, and Henry Dehlinger
Friday, June 20, 7 p.m.
Harrigan Centennial Hall
Experience an unforgettable evening of chamber and vocal music, featuring works for strings and voice. The program opens with two virtuosic pieces for cello and quartet, followed by a world premiere that pays tribute to Alaska’s majestic landscapes. The second half of the program showcases a collection of vocal works—ranging from Irving Fine’s charming Childhood Fables for Grownups to beloved operatic highlights.
Program
François Couperin – Pièces En Concert for Cello and Quartet
Franz Schubert – Arpeggione Sonata for Cello and Quartet
— Intermission —
Henry Dehlinger – To an Alaskan Glacier for Soprano, Cello, and Piano (World Premiere)
Henry Dehlinger – Amore e ‘l cor gentil for Soprano, Bass-Baritone, and Piano
Irving Fine – Selections from Childhood Fables for Grownups for Bass-Baritone and Piano
Lenny the Leopard
Tigeroo
Polaroli
The Frog and the Snake
Opera Highlights:
Bei Männern – from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte
Toreador Aria – from Bizet’s Carmen
Quando m’en vo – from Puccini’s La bohème
Papageno Papagena – from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte
Artists
Zuill Bailey, Cello
Emily Daggett Smith, Violin
Jessica Shuang Wu, Violin
Allison Bailey, Viola
Guang Wang, Cello
Danielle Talamantes, Soprano
Kerry Wilkerson, Bass-Baritone
Henry Dehlinger, Piano & Composer
About the Artists
Zuill Bailey, Cello
Zuill Bailey, widely considered one of the premiere cellists in the world, is a Grammy Award winning, internationally renowned soloist, recitalist, Artistic Director and teacher. His rare combination of celebrated artistry, technical wizardry and engaging personality has made him one of the most sought after and active cellists today.
Mr. Bailey has been featured with symphony orchestras and music festivals worldwide. He won the Best Solo Performance Grammy Award in 2017, for his recording of Michael Daugherty’s Tales of Hemingway, with the Nashville Symphony led by Giancarlo Guerrero. His extensive discography includes his newest release – the world premier recording of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Cello Concerto with the Santa Rosa Symphony.
Mr. Bailey received his Bachelor’s Degree from the Peabody Conservatory where he was named the 2014 Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumni, and received a Master’s Degree from the Juilliard School. He performs on the “Rosette” 1693 Matteo Gofriller Cello formerly owned by Mischa Schneider of the Budapest String Quartet.
Emily Daggett Smith, Violin
Praised as playing “gorgeously” (The Boston Globe) and with “irrepressible élan” (The Seattle Times), violinist Emily Daggett Smith has performed across the United States, Europe, South America and Asia. Dr. Smith made her New York concerto debut playing the Beethoven Concerto with the Juilliard Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall, and has since performed with orchestras including Iris Orchestra, the Festival Mozaic Orchestra and the New York Classical Players. She has given solo recitals across the country at venues including the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater and Music in the Loft in Chicago. Dr. Smith has performed with renowned musicians including members of the Cleveland, Emerson and Juilliard String Quartets, and her performances have taken place at some of the world’s greatest halls including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Shanghai Grand Theatre and the Vienna Konzerthaus. As concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra she worked with conductors including Michael Tilson-Thomas and Leonard Slatkin, and has appeared as guest concertmaster of orchestras including Iris Orchestra, the Orlando Philharmonic, and The Knights. Equally passionate about performing old and new music, Dr. Smith has commissioned and premiered dozens of works, both as a soloist, chamber musician and as a member of The Knights Chamber Orchestra. Despite her busy performance schedule, Dr. Smith is dedicated to teaching and has served on faculty at the Bard Conservatory Pre-College, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Stony Brook University, and The Juilliard School, where she is assistant for Laurie Smukler. She holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University. Her teachers have included Soovin Kim, Philip Setzer, Joel Smirnoff, Laurie Smukler, and Donald Weilerstein. She plays on a Johannes Cuypers violin, generously donated by Dr. Marylou Witz.
Jessica Shuang Wu, Violin
As a founding member of the Vega Quartet, violinist Jessica Shuang Wu has performed extensively throughout Asia, Europe and North America. She regularly collaborates in chamber music concerts with today’s leading artists, including Zuill Bailey, Andrés Cárdenes, David Coucheron, William Ransom, Christopher Rex, Sara Sant’Ambrogio, and Richard Stoltzman.
A dedicated educator, Ms. Wu serves on the faculty of Emory University as violin and chamber music professor. Her private students have been accepted into leading music conservatories and universities such as the Manhattan School of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, and Northwestern University, and at music festivals such as the Bowdoin International Music Festival and the Brevard Music Center Summer Institute. Ms. Wu’s students have performed at Carnegie Hall and won numerous prizes and recognitions, including the Emory Youth Symphony Orchestra and Emory University Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competitions.
Ms. Wu holds a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music and a Bachelor of Music from the Harid Conservatory. As a child she attended the prestigious Shanghai Conservatory. Her teachers include Peter Winograd, Sergiu Schwartz, Lina Yu and members of the Amadeus, American, Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, Juilliard, Orion and Tokyo string quartets.
Allison Bailey, Viola
Allison Bailey began violin studies at the age of four, developed a love for orchestral playing, and became the youngest member of the Prince William Symphony Orchestra at age ten. Ms. Bailey attended Peabody Conservatory of Music, the University of Oregon, and the Manhattan School of Music. She holds a Bachelor’s degree, Graduate Performance Diploma, a Master’s degree in violin performance, and a Master’s degree in orchestral performance.
Prior to returning to Virginia in 1999, Ms. Bailey lived and worked in New York City, where she experienced a variety of performing engagements including frequent orchestral performances at Carnegie Hall, recording sessions at Sony studios for Quincy Jones Productions, performing on the soundtrack to the A&E Biography of Irving Berlin, and coaching actress Juliana Margulies in a violinist role for the NBC hit drama Homicide.
Ms. Bailey has served as guest conductor for All-County, District, and Regional Orchestras in Fairfax and surrounding counties in addition to serving as adjudicator for the New York Orchestra Festival at Carnegie Hall and state assessments throughout Virginia. She has also served as audition coach for Senior Regional Prep Day in Fairfax and Spotsylvania Counties, and faculty member of the Virginia Governor’s School for the Arts in Richmond.
In addition to her post as Concertmaster of the Manassas Ballet Theatre Orchestra, Ms. Bailey also serves as Associate Concertmaster of the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, Associate Concertmaster of the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, and is an active freelance musician in the Washington area. In recent years Ms. Bailey has been a featured soloist with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, and chamber musician at the Sitka Music Festival in Alaska and the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina.
Guang Wang, Cello
Chinese-born cellist Guang Wang began his cello studies at the age of eight. In 1994 he became one of the youngest titled players in the history of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, serving as Assistant Principal Cellist under world-renowned conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas and Christoph Eschenbach, and performing over 200 concerts throughout Asia before moving to the United States to continue his studies. Mr. Wang holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, an Artist Diploma from the Harid Conservatory, and a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music.
Mr. Wang is a founding member of the Vega String Quartet, which has been Emory University’s Quartet-in-Residence since 2006. He routinely gives both chamber music and cello masterclasses across the U.S, most recently at Kennesaw State University, the University of Alabama, the University of Alaska Southeast, and the University of Texas at El Paso.
Mr. Wang strongly believes in music education at all levels and regularly performs outreach at area schools as well as provides in-depth teaching to passionate adult amateurs. His students have won awards at several iterations of the American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition, as a result performing in Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, as well as at various young artist competitions in the greater Atlanta metropolitan area.
Danielle Talamantes, Soprano
“A velvety, dark-hued soprano that has a limpid seductiveness appropriate to this music!” noted of Mexican-American soprano, Danielle Talamantes. The 2024-25 season includes Haydn’s Creation with the New Dominion Chorale, a duo recital with husband, bass-baritone Kerry Wilkerson with Opera Roanoke, Close Encounters with Music, and the Sitka Music Festival, a featured recital with Lyric Fest of Philadelphia, and the Brahms Requiem at the National Presbyterian Church.
Recent season performances include a five-city Alaska recital tour (Sitka Music Festival and Juneau Jazz & Classics), with the Pensacola Symphony, an Opera Gala with the Meridian Symphony, Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle with the Washington Master Chorale, a recital at The American Church in Paris, France Verdi’s Requiem and Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileras No 5 with Pensacola Symphony and the NC Master Chorale, Britten’s War Requiem with Opera Roanoke, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass with Choral Arts of Washington, Orff’s Carmina Burana with the National Philharmonic, a world premier with Washington National Opera’s production of Written in Stone, a turn as Mimì in Puccini’s La bohème with Jacksonville Symphony and the Northern Lights Festival, and three world premiers: Mosaic for Earth by composer Dwight Bigler at her Alma Mater, Virginia Tech, the rhapsody written especially for Talamantes based on T.S. Eliot’s iconic poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock with the National Philharmonic, and the stunning oratorio Kohelet first with the Washington DC Master Chorale and then the Santa Clara Master Chorale; the latter two works by acclaimed composer Henry Dehlinger. Other recent performances include Frasquita in Bizet’s Carmen and Anna in Verdi’s Nabucco with The Metropolitan Opera, Beatrice in Catán’s Il postino with VA Opera, Marzelline in Beethoven’s Fidelio with Princeton Festival; Violetta in La traviata with Hawaii Opera Theater and Finger Lakes Opera, the title role of Susannah with Opera Roanoke; Donna Anna in Don Giovanni with Cedar Rapids Opera Theater; and a debut at Spoleto Festival USA as Sergente in Cavalli’s Veremonda.
Professional recordings include At That Hour: Art Songs by Henry Dehlinger on the Avie Record Label; Canciones españolas and Heaven and Earth: A Duke Ellington Songbook on the MSR Classics label.
Kerry Wilkerson, Bass-Baritone
A resonant singer with unique evenness in the register, bass-baritone Kerry Wilkerson has been described by the Washington Post as an ‘exuberant’ performer having the “amber tone of a lyric baritone with the imposing weight demanded by Handel’s low-lying writing”. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in June 2017 to rave reviews as a baritone soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Sancta Civitas.
The 2023/2024 season includes return recitals to Lewes DE and with the Washington Chamber Ensemble in addition to his role debut as Der Sprecher in Die Zauberflöte with Loudoun Lyric Opera. He will also return as a featured soloist with the Washington Master Chorale in Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle.
The 2022/2023 season was filled with recitals in Lewes DE, Greenville SC, Washington DC and Sarasota FL, as well as featured soloist in the world premiere of Henry Dehlinger’s Requiem with Choralis, a role debut with the Washington Concert Opera as Raleigh in Roberto Devereux, a debut in Handel’s Messiah with the Reston Chorale and also the featured bass-baritone soloist in Gerald Finzi’s In Terra Pax with the Choral Artists of Sarasota and Verdi’s Requiem with the North Carolina Master Chorale. The 2021/2022 season included his role premiere as Germont in La Traviata with Bel Cantanti Opera, recitals at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Roanoke VA, and Saint Andrews-Covenant Presbyterian Church in Wilmington NC, the Herald in Otello with the Pacific Symphony, Benoit/Alcindoro in La Bohème with the Jacksonville Symphony, featured soloist in two premieres of Henry Dehlinger’s Kohelet on the west coast with the Santa Clara Chorale and the east coast with the Washington Master Chorale, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the National Philharmonic, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem with the Washington Chorus at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
Prior to the Great Pause, Mr. Wilkerson performed as a bass-baritone soloist in Opera Roanoke’s gala concert, Handel’s Messiah with the National Symphony Orchestra, National Philharmonic, and La Jolla Symphony, Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs with American University, Rachmaninoff’s The Bells with Spokane Symphony, Kodály’s Te Deum with Oregon Music Festival, Bach’s Mass in B minor with The City Choir of Washington; Faure’s Requiem with Eugene Concert Choir, Mendelssohn’s Elijah with Choralis, Duruflé’s Requiem and Mozart’s Requiem with The Washington Chorus; as well as Einhorn’s Voices of Light with the National Philharmonic, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater with the North Carolina Master Chorale and Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem with the Air Force Symphony Orchestra at the acclaimed Kennedy Center.
Henry Dehlinger, Piano | Composer
“Dehlinger's music does wonders”
American composer Henry Dehlinger is hailed by Gramophone as “a master of myriad styles.” His vocal, instrumental and symphonic works are widely celebrated by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Barron’s, Gramophone, Agence France-Presse, Opera World, Journal of Singing, and more, standing out for their rich, tonal expression and modal harmonic language. “Dehlinger's music does wonders,” says The Washington Post, which praises his lush, orchestral soundscapes as “an unexpected emotional punch.” His vocal works, Gramophone adds, “are diverse in atmosphere and harmonic language, as befits the narratives, and the writing is rich, often rapturous.”
Dehlinger was born in San Francisco’s Mission District, where his mother, an immigrant from Nicaragua, and his father, a local union leader, first made their home before moving to Millbrae, just outside the City. During his formative years, he studied piano and sang in the San Francisco Boys Chorus. His mentors were piano virtuoso Thomas LaRatta, choral conductor William "Doc" Ballard, and voice teacher Edith Doe Ballard. All helped shape him as an artist and provided him with an aesthetic focus for his creative energies.
He earned an early reputation as a prodigious talent, performing in productions with the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Symphony under conductors including Kurt Herbert Adler, Riccardo Chailly, and Edo de Waart. He graduated from Santa Clara University where he studied piano with Hans Boepple. After meeting his wife Lauren, a native of Los Angeles, he moved to the East Coast in 2007 where they have since lived in the Washington, DC area.
Dehlinger’s extraordinary command of orchestral color and texture is on full display in his latest work, Cosmic Cycles, A Space Symphony (2023), an epic suite of seven symphonic poems commissioned by the National Philharmonic and composed in close collaboration with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Cosmic Cycles is paired with a stunning visual canvas of science imagery and data visualizations of the Sun, Earth, Moon, Planets, and Cosmos, many of them from the James Webb Space Telescope, projected in HD on a giant screen above the orchestra.
“You can have majesty, wistfulness, and ethereality coexist,” Dehlinger explains in “Looking for Art in the James Webb Telescope,” the September 2023 piece in The New Yorker that puts a spotlight on Dehlinger's composition of Cosmic Cycles. “You know you’re dealing with wonderful material when it can elicit more than one emotion.”
Cosmic Cycles drew a sellout crowd. “A grand seven-movement narrative arc emerges from the sequence of images and music,” said The Washington Post, which described it as “a harmonically rewarding wander through the stars.” Agence France-Presse called it “the ultimate blend of art and science.”
On March 17, 2022, Dehlinger’s Return to the Moon, A Fanfare to Artemis (2022) heralded a new era of human space exploration when it marked the Kennedy Space Center’s rollout of NASA's Space Launch System rocket, the main launch vehicle of the space agency’s Artemis lunar program. The Washington Postpraised the fanfare as a “triumphant-sounding skyward salute.”
Henry on “Scoring the Cosmos,” an episode of NASA Goddard’s StoryLab series.
Dehlinger also writes deftly for the voice. His Kohelet (2019), a cantata in five movements that premiered in March 2022, demonstrates his keen sense of pacing, drama and architecture within the context of large-scale musical form. Commissioned by the Washington Master Chorale, Santa Clara Chorale, and Santa Clara University Concert Choir, it is beautifully theatrical and an important new addition to the canon of extended choral works with Hebrew texts.
Likewise with Requiem (2021), Dehlinger’s seven movement setting of the Requiem Mass commissioned by Choralis for mixed choir, soloists and orchestra, which was inspired by the example of Duruflé. With an emphasis on divine aesthetic beauty, it is at once contemplative and jubilant.
Dehlinger’s rhapsodies reveal his improvisatory prowess. Emerging from the pandemic, the National Philharmonic’s 2021-22 season opened with the premiere of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (2017), a rhapsody for voice and orchestra with text by T.S. Eliot. Written for Metropolitan Opera soprano Danielle Talamantes, the composer’s friend and artistic collaborator, Prufrock has drawn comparisons to Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for its lyricism and mix of classical and vernacular styles.
In the second half of the Prufrock concert, violinist Gil Shaham took the stage for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major. In a backstage meeting, Shaham encouraged Dehlinger to write a work for solo violin. Composed for Shaham, Rhapsody for Solo Violin and Orchestra (2022) is replete with scalar runs, double stop trills, intricate cadenzas and a dramatic coda that celebrate Shaham’s improvisational virtuosity.
In spring 2021, Amore e’l cor gentil sono una cosa (2019) (“Love and the gentle heart are one and the same”) premiered during a concert broadcast on WETA-TV, Washington’s PBS station. A pièce d’occasion written for the Florence, Italy nuptials of two of the composer’s closest friends, Amore is a setting of the beautiful love sonnet from Dante’s La vita nuova. Opera News calls it, “a loving and clever duet, and a true gem of a song.”
Other important works include: Earth as Art (2023), a chamber arrangement of the third movement of Cosmic Cycles; Nocturno (2023), a setting of text by Rubén Darío for soprano and tenor, which draws on Dehlinger’s Nicaraguan heritage; City Dusk (2022), a chamber setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s beautifully noir poem for baritone and string quartet; Images (2021), a choral setting of Richard Aldington’s modernist love poem; and Preludes of T.S. Eliot (2020), a setting of Eliot’s four-part poem for soprano, cello and piano that explores themes of isolation in modern urban life and which Dehlinger wrote in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Dehlinger has also contributed a body of accessible Christmas songs to the choral canon. These include: Ring Out, Ye Bells (2021), a setting of African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar’s reverent Christmas hymn; I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day (2021), a new setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous Christmas poem that combines a memorable melody with splashes of color and an energetic tempo; Mistletoe (2021), a four-part round based on Walter de la Mare’s much loved Christmas poem; and Hodie! (2020) for mixed choir, percussion, harp and organ.
Henry with conductors Scot Hanna-Weir and Thomas Colohan, soprano Danielle Talamantes and bass-baritone Kerry Wilkerson at Kohelet's west coast premiere in Santa Clara, CA
Dehlinger’s sonatas for cello and piano are among his most significant works of chamber music. Inspired by familiar Los Angeles cityscapes, Fantasia in Groove: Three Impressions of L.A. (2021) is a concert suite of urban impressions for cello and piano that recalls the sound of classic noir films, while evoking the fast-paced, stop-and-go groove of big-city life. His Cello Sonata in C Minor (2020) loosely follows the traditional sonata form with contrasting themes developed in each movement. But there is also a cross-thematic unity that encompasses the entire work.
Dehlinger’s latest album is At That Hour: Art Songs by Henry Dehlinger (2020), released by AVIE Records in October 2020. “On Dehlinger’s newest disc, ‘At That Hour’,” Gramophone notes in its review, “he [Dehlinger] collaborates with [soprano Danielle] Talamantes and another dynamic singer, bass-baritone Kerry Wilkerson, in his recorded debut as a composer of art songs, whose verses he has transformed through disarming music.”
Equally celebrated are Dehlinger’s stylish jazz-classical arrangements featured in Heaven and Earth: A Duke Ellington Songbook (2016), which he wrote for Talamantes and released on the MSR Jazz label. “Just as impressive,” says Journal of Singing in its review, “is how Dehlinger weaves together those fragile pastel shades with the bold brassiness of stride piano. In lesser hands, the result would be musical chaos; Dehlinger makes it work perfectly.” His other recordings are Canciones españolas (2014), also with Talamantes, and Evocations of Spain(2011).
Dehlinger is a member of ASCAP and The Recording Academy. The official Henry Dehlinger website is www.HenryDehlinger.com.
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About the Sitka Music Festival
The Sitka Music Festival (SMF) inspires audiences, sparks creativity, and strengthens community across Alaska through live chamber music performances, music education, and training by artists of the highest caliber.
For over 50 years, SMF has presented classical music at the highest artistic standards. Throughout its history, SMF musicians have shared their music with Alaskans who would otherwise not have access to live chamber music of the highest caliber and, in turn, Alaskans have shared their music, traditions, and ways of life with the visiting musicians. These shared experiences have taken SMF musicians to more than 40 Alaskan communities, many of which are small, remote villages off the road system. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, SMF remains dedicated to bringing exceptional music experiences to communities statewide.