NEC Announces Four New Faculty Appointments
Karen Holvik as Konstanze
For Immediate Release:
April 17, 2008
New England Conservatory has announced the appointments of soprano Karen Holvik and baritone Michael Meraw to the vocal faculty, music historian and keyboard player Rebecca Cypess to the music history staff, and Kati Agócs to the composition faculty. Their appointments take effect beginning in September.
Karen Holvik, who earned both a master’s degree and performance certificate in opera at the Eastman School of Music where she currently teaches, has pursued an eclectic musical path and established herself as a performer in a wide range of musical styles. Highlights of her work in regional opera include appearances with Houston Grand Opera's Spring Opera Festival, Skylight Opera, Opera Festival of New Jersey, Opera Illinois, Anchorage Opera, Texas Opera Theater, and Western Opera Theater. Her singing roles have included Konstanze, Lucia, Juliet, Adina, Micaela, and Baby Doe. She has toured extensively in the United States, and has appeared in Canada and Western Europe singing both popular and classical repertory. Holvik recently appeared in Eastman’s Women in Music Festival during which she sang a song cycle by Marta Garcia Renart, La Mandrágora (The Mandrake), on a text by N. Machiavelli, as well as a tribute to jazz great Marian McPartland.
Having begun her singing life in the world of popular music and jazz, Holvik has long been a champion of contemporary American song as well as opera and has premiered works by Ricky Ian Gordon, Aaron Kernis, John Musto, James Sellars, Stewart Wallace, Tom Cipullo, and Richard Wilson. She has appeared on television, radio, and in concert with the popular recital series, New York Festival of Song. She appears with William Sharp and pianist Steven Blier on an NYFOS recording released by Koch International Classics, Zipperfly & Other Songs by Marc Blitzstein.
Baritone Michael Meraw will join NEC from the voice faculty of McGill University, the school where he received his B.M. in Early Music Performance and his M.M. in Vocal Performance. He began his musical studies early as an instrumentalist, playing the double bass and French horn for over fifteen years. After beginning his vocal studies in Edmonton with Eva Bostrand, he moved to Montreal where, as part of his early music performance training, he worked with counter-tenor Alan Fast. As a candidate for the Masters in Voice Performance, he studied with William Neill and coached extensively with Dixie Ross-Neill.
Meraw made his professional operatic debut with Pacific Opera Victoria as Harlekin in Ariadne auf Naxos, and since that time has sung with opera companies in Canada and the United States such as Toronto Opera in Concert, Opera Atelier, Missausauga Opera, Opera York, Edmonton Opera, Pacific Opera Victoria, Virginia Opera, Seattle Opera, the Ashlawn-Highland Summer Festival, and the Des Moines Metro Opera. His eclectic and wide ranging repertoire ranges from Handel’s Garibaldo to Mozart’s Count, from Strauss’s Harlekin to Szymynowski’s King Roger. The baritone is also an active performer and advocate of new works by such composers as Adamo, Estacio, Stanley, Jones and Babukis. His concert repertory includes Beethoven Symphony No. 9; Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, the Requiems of Faure and Brahms, Bach’s St. John Passion, Handel’s Messiah and Israel in Egypt, Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death and others.
At McGill, Meraw has not only taught studio voice, but is also the teacher of Vocal Styles and Conventions and is French and Italian diction coach.
Prize-winning composer Kati Agócs comes to NEC from the School of Music, Memorial University of Newfoundland, the largest conservatory in Atlantic Canada, where she taught composition and theory. Born in Windsor, Canada, of Hungarian and American parents, she holds the D.M.A. and M.M. from The Juilliard School, and is an alumna of the Aspen Music School, Pearson College of the Pacific, and Sarah Lawrence College, all of which she attended on full scholarship.
Among awards Agócs has won are a Leonard Bernstein Composer Fellowship to the 2007 Tanglewood Music Center, a Fulbright Fellowship, Charles Ives Fellowship (American Academy of Arts and Letters), Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, Presser Foundation Award, and honors from ASCAP (Morton Gould Young Composer Awards). Her principal composition teachers have been Milton Babbitt, Robert Beaser, and George Tsontakis. She has also worked with Joan Tower, John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Christopher Rouse, and James McMillan during summer festivals.
Recent commissions include the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Da Capo Chamber Players, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Duo Concertante, pianist Fredrik Ullén, New York City Ballet's Choreographic Institute, Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, New Juilliard Ensemble, and The Juilliard School (for its annual Irene Diamond Concert). Her music has been broadcast nationally on National Public Radio and, in Canada, on the CBC.
Rebecca Cypess, is both a performer and scholar, who will receive her PhD from Yale University this spring. She has specialized in 17th Century Italian string music but with an additional area of inquiry into sacred and secular Jewish music. Her dissertation, completed last year, was entitled Biagio Marini and the Meanings of Violin Music in the Early Seicento.
Cypess graduated with a B.A. in Music History and Performance from Cornell University. She then went on to receive a Master of Music in harpsichord performance from the Royal College of Music in London where she studied with James Johnstone and Robert Woolley. In addition, she studied at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education in New York and received an M.A. in Bible at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University. Besides harpsichord, she also plays piano and fortepiano.
Recipient of numerous prizes and fellowships, Cypess has taught at Yale and Southern Connecticut University. While a student at Cornell, she founded and directed the Jewish Choral Music Group.
For further information, check the NEC Website
ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY
Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.
The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.
NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year, many of them in Jordan Hall, its world- renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.
NEC is co-founder and educational partner of “From the Top,” a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by National Public Radio and is heard on 250 stations throughout the United States.
Contact: Ellen Pfeifer
Public Relations Manager
New England Conservatory
617-585-1143
epfeifer@newenglandconservatory.edu