CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The Bernstein Mass Project

United Palace Theater
Saturday, October 25th, 2008 at 3:00 PM

The United Palace Theater
4140 Broadway, at 175th St.
New York, NY

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Marin Alsop, Music Director and Conductor
Kevin Newbury, Director
Jubilant Sykes, Celebrant
Asher Edward Wulfman, Boy Soprano
Ryan Kiernan, Acolyte
Street Chorus
Morgan State University Choir
Eric Conway, Director
The Brooklyn Youth Chorus
Dianne Berkun, Founder and Artistic Director
Leslie Stifelman, Music Supervisor
Seán Curran, Musical Staging
Alan Adelman, Lighting Designer
Acme Sound Partners, Sound Design
Jessica Jahn, Costume Consultant
Casting by: Pat McCorkle, CSA
Assistant Director to be announced
Set Coordinator to be announced

The Bernstein Mass Project is generously underwritten by Bob and Martha Lipp.

Major funding for Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds has been provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Alice Tully Foundation, American Express, Bob and Martha Lipp, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, Nash Family Foundation, and Mr. and Mrs. A. Alfred Taubman.

Additional funding provided by GWFF USA Inc., and Linda and Stuart Nelson.

Generous support has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Bernstein Mass Project is also made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for choral music established by S. Donald Sussman in memory of Judith Arron and Robert Shaw.

Program Notes:

LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918–1990)
Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers

Mass received its only complete Carnegie Hall performance to date on November 19, 2002, with the Collegiate Chorale conducted by Robert Bass. The first performance at Carnegie Hall of any part of Mass took place on March 30, 1975, with Mstislav Rostropovich, cello, and Samuel Sanders, piano, who performed the “Two Meditations.”


In November 1963, Leonard Bernstein was busy orchestrating the final movement of his Third Symphony, “Kaddish,” when he learned of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. An admirer of his politics, as well as his vigorous personality and his openness to high culture, Bernstein and his wife, Felicia, had become personal friends of the president and Mrs. Kennedy. Stunned by the tragedy, he dedicated “Kaddish,” with its theme of mourning, “to the beloved memory of John F. Kennedy.”

Five years later, with the building of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, well underway, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis approached Bernstein with a commission for the Center’s opening performances in 1971. After a difficult gestation, it would become the longest, most ambitious, and ultimately most controversial piece this protean composer-conductor ever created. Mass was Bernstein’s most intimate, self-revealing work; yet, paradoxically, it would require more than 200 musicians and dancers to perform. In honor of Kennedy’s Catholic faith, it was a setting of the traditional Roman Mass, and yet it was filled with anti-establishment songs set to contemporary rock and blues beats that called the tenets of Catholicism—and by extension all religions—into question. It was a work for a classical concert hall with all the theatrical trappings and glitz of Broadway, where Bernstein had enjoyed so many triumphs. Its mélange of musical languages defined eclecticism: rhythm-and-blues nestled up to serial tone rows, Latino dances mingled with Lutheran chorales, American folk ballads shook hands with Beethoven and Stravinsky. For some listeners at its Washington premiere on September 8, 1971, it was a deeply moving spiritual experience; for others, it was an outrageous sacrilege. The critics, too, were bitterly divided. The Washington Post’s Paul Hume called it “the greatest music Bernstein has ever written.” But the New York Times’s redoubtable Harold C. Schonberg dismissed it as “cheap and vulgar,” adding, “It is a show-biz Mass, the work of a musician who desperately wants to be with it.”

Bernstein’s Attraction to the Catholic Mass
“What’s a Jewish boy like you doing writing a mass?,” Maurice Peress—who took over conducting Mass’s premiere after it became clear that Bernstein was stretched too thin completing the work to assume that responsibility—once asked the composer. Bernstein’s youngest child, Nina Bernstein, has written that her father—grandson of a rabbi and son of a Talmudic scholar—“had always been intrigued and awed by the Roman Catholic Mass, finding it (in Latin) moving, mysterious and eminently theatrical.” Bernstein himself explained: “I’ve always wanted to compose a service of one sort or another, and I toyed with ecumenical services that would combine elements from various religions and sects, of ancient or tribal beliefs, but it never all came together in my mind until Jacqueline Onassis asked me to write a piece dedicated to her late husband.”

In Mass, however, the solid beliefs of Catholicism are continually assaulted by songs set in contemporary popular styles and using irreverent words, mostly written by Bernstein himself. Nina Bernstein likens them to “the particularly Jewish practice of occasionally addressing God in confrontational terms.” But beyond that, the decidedly anti-establishment tone of Mass is rooted in the highly charged era in which it was written: the late 1960s and 1970s. The Vietnam War was at its height, and so too were the anti-war protests. Culminating in Woodstock in the summer of 1969, the hippie culture of rock music, drugs, and “free love” was taking over the Baby Boom generation. Though now in his 50s, Bernstein too had enjoyed a fashionable flirtation with the flower children. In The Infinite Variety of Music, he extolled rock: “Pop music seems to be the only area where there is to be found unabashed vitality, the fun of invention, the feeling of fresh air.” And he clearly intended Mass to be, at least partially, an anti-war statement and an indictment of the Nixon administration.

During periods at the MacDowell Colony snatched from his international conducting career, Mass fitfully took shape, but by June 1971, it was still far from ready. Beyond the immense scope of the piece, Bernstein had set himself the task of writing the words for all the non-liturgical numbers. Finding her brother “terribly depressed and searching desperately for a collaborator to work on the song lyrics,” Shirley Bernstein, a theatrical agent, took him to see Godspell, the hit Broadway musical based on the Gospel of St. Matthew; Stephen Schwartz, the show’s composer and lyricist, was one of her clients. Schwartz and Bernstein hit it off immediately, and the younger man was pressed into service to collaborate on Mass’s music as well as its lyrics.

The Mass as “Theatre Piece”
Bernstein gave Mass the subtitle “Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers,” and it is indeed a thoroughly theatrical conception, drawing on all the composer’s Broadway experience as well as his encyclopedic knowledge of the classical repertoire. He called it “an entirely new concept,” yet it is heavily indebted to Britten’s 1962 War Requiem, which interpolated Wilfred Owen’s anti-war poetry into the Requiem Mass for the Dead, as well as to the contemporary rock musicals Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar.

The whole drama of the work pivots around the Celebrant, a figure many commentators see as an alter ego for the composer himself. Bernstein described the meaning of this role: “The ritual is conducted by a young man of mysterious simplicity (called the Celebrant) who throughout the drama is invested by his acolytes with increasingly ornate robes and symbols, which connote both an increase in the superficial formalism of his obligation and of the burden that he bears. There is a parallel increase in the resistance of his Congregants—in the sharpness and bitterness of their reactions—and in the deterioration of his own faith. At the climax of Communion, all ceremony beaks down, and the Mass is shattered. It then remains for each individual on stage to find a new seed of faith within himself through painful Mediation, enabling each individual to pass on the embrace of peace to his neighbor.”

Listening to Mass
Mass opens with the “Kyrie” of the Mass, sung by a quintet of singers who have been pre-recorded—music that is elaborately contrapuntal and basically non-tonal. When it has reached a peak of complexity and cacophony, it is abruptly silenced by the live sound of the Celebrant’s acoustic guitar. His A Simple Song is Mass’s most famous number: a beautiful, fluid ballad in American folk-song style, whose musical means are as simple and straightforward as its words. At this moment in the drama, the Celebrant is an innocent, unencumbered being, whose faith in God is joyous and trusting.

The happily raucous street band, replete with kazoos, accompanies the chorus of Street People onto the stage. This is followed by percussive and pungently colorful dance music in Middle Eastern style for the procession of the sacred objects used to celebrate the Mass. The “Prayer for the Congregation” is the chorus’s Almighty Father, in sturdy Lutheran chorale style, which will return at the end of the work. This opening portion of the Mass closes with “Epiphany,” a pre-recorded solo for oboe in the style of a Japanese shakuhachi melody.

Confiteor, the Confession of Sins, opens with violently dissonant twelve-tone music for chorus in the fashionable non-tonal style that Bernstein opposed throughout his career. This leads into a new world—the world of rock and blues—for “I Don’t Know” and “Easy,” the first of the confrontational, questioning songs sung by the Street People.

The Meditation No. 1 for Orchestra is one of Mass’s most important musical segments. Deeply indebted to Shostakovich’s anguished slow movements, even to the sting of xylophone, it is music that seems to yearn desperately for faith, for answers. Twice, the violins lead a beautifully consoling descending theme that Bernstein marks “peacefully”; this theme will also play a prominent role at the work’s conclusion.

After the “Gloria” of the Mass and the lovely song for soprano soloist “Thank You” comes the Meditation No. 2, which uses a non-tonal sequence of notes from the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as the basis for four brief variations and a coda. Fleetingly, we also hear a dissonant snatch of the “Ode to Joy.”

The Epistle, The Word of the Lord, intersperses fragments from the epistles of St. Paul with a Vietnam-era protest song, sung by the Celebrant in Pete Seeger folk style. Members of the Street People also read excerpts of letters from those imprisoned for opposing the draft. This is followed by the Gospel Sermon, God Said, a song that provides a bit of comic relief along with savage criticism of how contemporary humans have twisted and despoiled God’s creation for their own needs and desires; the Preacher here seems to be a younger brother of Gershwin’s irreverent Sportin’ Life.

The words of the Credo are presented in a chillingly impersonal, rote manner: the pre-recorded chorus chanting angular, non-tonal phrases over barbaric percussion in a hierarchical style reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. Unconvinced voices from the present keep interrupting to question the articles of faith (“Non Credo,” “World without End,” “I Believe in God”). The congregation is beginning to grow restive.

The boys’ choir temporarily restores the mood of innocent trust and faith with the joyful dance of the Sanctus. Gradually, the Celebrant joins in an ecstatically soaring song, breaking into the Hebrew words for “Sanctus” and “Benedictus”: “Kadosh Adonai”; here Bernstein links the words of the Mass to his own religious tradition.

The Agnus Dei propels the work to its crisis. To a driving beat, the chorus takes the words “Dona nobis pacem” and turns them into an angry anti-war protest. The Celebrant struggles against the rebellion of his flock, his voice becoming weaker and more desperate.

The Celebrant silences the frenzy with his own cries of “Pacem,” and then, in Mass’s most controversial moment, smashes the Communion sacraments. He suffers a complete emotional meltdown: a crisis of faith (Things Get Broken). In this operatic mad scene, he calls into question all the aspects of the sacred rite he has been performing and dances insanely on the altar. Fragments of many of the earlier musical numbers mingle in a crazed recapitulation. The closing and most poignant section wistfully recalls the music of the First Orchestral Meditation. Having relinquished his sacred office, the Celebrant leaves the scene.

How to find a way out of this terrible impasse? A single flute breaks the painful silence with a reprise of the oboe’s “Epiphany” solo. Then, the boy-soprano acolyte takes up the Celebrant’s “A Simple Song” and transforms it into a new, sweetly flowing melody, “Lauda, Laude,” over the rippling accompaniment of the harp and the flute. A man from the Street People joins him in duet, and the song of praise spreads gradually in canon throughout the entire cast as they embrace. They have now taken on the role of priest and celebrant for themselves. As the boys’ choir shares the Peace with the audience, the choir reprises the chorale “Almighty Father.” In Bernstein’s words, “The chain of embrace grows and threads through the entire stage, ultimately with the audience and hopefully into the world outside.”

Copyright © 2008 Janet E. Bedell

More Information:

The United Palace Theater
4140 Broadway, at 175th St.
New York, NY

Tickets: $15

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Marin Alsop, Music Director and Conductor
Hailed as one of the world’s leading conductors for her artistic vision and commitment to accessibility in classical music, Marin Alsop made history with her appointment as the 12th Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. With her inaugural concerts in September 2007, she became the first woman to head a major American orchestra. She also holds the title of Conductor Emeritus at Bournemouth Symphony in the United Kingdom, where she served as the principal conductor from 2002 to 2008.

In 2005, Ms. Alsop was named a MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive this prestigious award. In 2007, she was honored with a European Women of Achievement Award, and in 2008 she was inducted as a fellow into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ms. Alsop is a regular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She also appears frequently as a guest conductor with many distinguished orchestras worldwide. After a highly successful 12-year tenure as music director of the Colorado Symphony, Ms. Alsop continues her association as conductor laureate; she also continues as music director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California.

Ms. Alsop attended Yale University and received her master’s degree from The Juilliard School. In 1989, her conducting career was launched when she became a prizewinner at the Leopold Stokowski International Conducting Competition in New York.

Kevin Newbury, Director
Kevin Newbury is a theater and opera director based in New York City. Recent opera credits include Falstaff (Santa Fe Opera), The Marriage of Figaro (Minnesota Opera), The Magic Flute (Opera Colorado and Houston Grand Opera) and Nixon in China (Chicago, Portland, Cincinnati, Minnesota, and Colorado operas). Recent New York theater credits include Candy and Dorothy (GLAAD Media Award Winner, Drama Desk Award nominee), The Second Tosca, Kiss and Cry (GLAAD Nominee), and The Eumenides, as well as concerts at Joe’s Pub, Birdland, Ars Nova, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.

In 2007 nytheatre.com named Mr. Newbury one of the 15 Most Influential People in Downtown NYC Theatre. Mr. Newbury is a resident director at New York University’s MFA Dramatic Writing Program, a member of the Lincoln Center Theatre Director’s Lab, and a former member of the Directors-in-Residence Program at Ensemble Studio Theatre. He has directed readings and workshops for companies including the New Group; Rattlestick Playwright’s Theatre; Young Playwrights, Inc.; and the Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Upcoming projects include the off-Broadway re-opening of Candy & Dorothy; Roberto Devereux, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Il trovatore at Minnesota Opera; La Cenerentola at Glimmerglass Opera; Eugene Onegin at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis; and a new production with the Wexford Opera Festival in Ireland.

Jubilant Sykes, Celebrant
Jubilant Sykes has received acclaim from the world’s finest conductors, symphony orchestras, and opera companies. Mr. Sykes’s repertoire includes works such as Copland’s Old American Songs, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Brahms’s German Requiem, and Mozart’s Requiem. He has performed concert versions of Bizet’s Carmen (Escamillo) with the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra and Cavalli’s Calisto with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. In addition, Mr. Sykes was a featured soloist for the premiere of Michael Torke’s Four Seasons with the New York Philharmonic as well as the premiere of Libby Larsen’s Coming Forth into Day for baritone and orchestra (to a text by Jehen El Sadat, the widow of Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat).

Mr. Sykes’s career highlights include performances with such noted conductors as Christoph Eschenbach, Marvin Hamlisch, Raymond Leppard, Andrew Litton, Keith Lockhart, Lorin Maazel, John Nelson, John Williams, and David Zinman. He has performed with the London, Chicago, Baltimore, and Boston symphony orchestras; The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; The Cleveland Orchestra; The Philadelphia Orchestra; and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. In addition, Mr. Sykes has appeared at festivals throughout the US including the Grant Park Music Festival, the Chautauqua Festival, and Tanglewood. His recital engagements have taken him to the Van Cliburn Foundation, the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts in Tacoma, California Institute of Technology, Houston Society for the Performing Arts, and the University of Arizona.

Asher Edward Wulfman, Boy Soprano
Asher Edward Wulfman, age 11, is a sixth-grade grade student at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey. Asher began singing at the age of five with the Boston Children’s Opera in Belmont, Massachusetts, under the direction of David Budgell. Before becoming a student at the American Boychoir School, he performed with the Boston University Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, and Harvard University’s Lowell House Opera. He is also an accomplished violinist.

Ryan Kiernan, Acolyte
Twelve-year-old Ryan Kiernan is making his professional debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Ryan is a regularly featured soloist and member of the world-renowned Philadelphia Boys Choir, under the direction of Jeffrey R. Smith. He has appeared in numerous concerts throughout the greater Philadelphia area, including at Philadelphia Phillies games and on television programs such as Backstage with Barry Nolan, as well as internationally in Greece, Turkey, Spain, and the prestigious Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Demmin, Germany.

Street Chorus
Sarah Uriarte Berry performed on Broadway as Franca in The Light in the Piazza, (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle award nominations), Nicola in Taboo, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Eponine in Les misérables, the title role in Cinderella at New York City Opera and City Center Encores!, The Boys from Syracuse, and Tenderloin. Her national tours include Carousel, Sunset Boulevard, and Les misérables. Regionally, she has appeared in A Little Night Music at Baltimore’s CenterStage and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Guys and Dolls and The Sound of Music in San Jose; West Side Story and White Christmas at MUNY; Jekyll and Hyde at Casa Manana; and Thoroughly Modern Millie in La Jolla.

A native of Minnesota, Matt Boehler has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Public Theater, and the Prague Estates Theater. He has appeared recently with the New York Festival of Song, Hawaii Opera Theater, Chicago Opera Theater, Festival de Belle-Île, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Upcoming engagements include performances with Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Minnesota Opera, and Oratorio Society of New York. Matt trained at The Juilliard School and Viterbo University.

Susan Derry has appeared on Broadway in Wonderful Town (Eileen) and regionally in Othello (Desdemona), Crimes of the Heart (Meg), My Fair Lady (Eliza), The Importance of Being Earnest (Gwendolyn), and Phantom of the Opera in Germany (Christine). She has also performed as a guest soloist with The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall. Susan attended Northwestern University and the Manhattan School of Music.

Celisse Henderson has appeared on television in a recurring role on The New Electric Company and FX’s Rescue Me. Her national tour credits include Wicked and The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Central American tour). She also appeared in Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall. Regional credits include Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon. Recordings include Rent: The Movie Soundtrack and Stephen Schwartz’s Captain Louie. Celisse has performed numerous times with the San Francisco Symphony and is a proud member of the Broadway Inspirational Voices.

Leah Horowitz most recently played Claire in the world premiere of Ordinary Days at Pennsylvania Centre Stage. Her Broadway roles include Les misérables (Cosette), The Woman in White, Fiddler on the Roof, La cage aux folles, and Thoroughly Modern Millie. Her off-Broadway and regional work includes Emma: A New Musical, Les misérables, Pirates of Penzance (Mabel), West Side Story (Maria), and readings and recordings of Ethan Frome (Mattie) and Ordinary Days (Claire). Leah holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Morgan James appeared in workshop performances of The Addams Family and Godspell. Regional credits include Pirates! at the Paper Mill Playhouse, The Human Comedy at Barrington Stage Co., The Pirates of Penzance (Mabel) at the Kansas City Rep and Arizona Theatre Co., and The Tragedy of Carmen (Micaela) at Two River Theater Co. Upcoming engagements include Cowboys for Christ with Christopher Lee and Sheila in Hair at Arizona Theatre Company. Morgan received her bachelor’s degree in music from The Juilliard School.

Amy Justman’s Broadway credits include Susan in Company (cast recording and PBS’s Great Performances) and White Christmas. She appeared in Show Boat at Carnegie Hall and regionally in Of Thee I Sing (Bard SummerScape), A Little Night Music (Centerstage), and Follies (Maine State Music Theatre). Amy has performed as soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra and is a winner of the Kurt Weill / Lotte Lenya Competition. Jodie Langel’s Broadway and national tour credits include Les misérables (Cosette), Martin Guerre (Bertande), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (narrator), and Cats (Grizabella). Regional and off-Broadway credits include I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change; Sessions; Evita (Eva Perom); Funny Girl (Fanny); Smile; Chess; and The Thing About Men. In addition, she has performed as soloist with the Colorado Springs Symphony Orchestra and at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, has appeared on Rescue Me on FX, and is the co-author of Making It on Broadway: Actors’ Tales of Climbing to the Top.

Telly Leung’s Broadway and national tour credits include Rent, Wicked (Boq, Chicago company), Pacific Overtures, and Flower Drum Song. His regional credits include M. Butterfly (Song Liling, Philadelphia Theater Company); Godspell (Paper Mill); Hello, Dolly! (Barnaby, MUNY); and Jesus Christ Superstar (Simon, Music Circus). Telly holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from Carnegie Mellon University.

Max Perlman worked on the recent indie film Junkyard Dog (2009 release) and has guest starred on the hit show Monk and appeared in many commercials. He has appeared on Broadway in Kiss Me, Kate; Jekyll & Hyde; and Chess in concert, and has toured nationally in productions of Jekyll & Hyde and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Internationally, he was seen in Jesus Christ Superstar (directed by Baayork Lee). Regional credits include work at The Guthrie, Arena Stage, Bay Street, Paper Mill Playhouse, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, New York Stage and Film, and New York Music Theater Festival.

Janet Saia recently appeared in the Broadway production of The Phantom of the Opera (Carlotta, Mdm. Giry understudy). She recently performed the role of Maxine Faulk in The Night of the Iguana, directed by Terry Schreiber. A California native, Janet has toured Europe as Grizabella in Cats and as Lorraine in 42nd Street. National tours include the Royal National Theatre’s production of Carousel (Mrs. Mullin understudy) and the US premiere of Martin Guerre (Catherine understudy). She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Boston Conservatory.

Caesar Samayoa’s theater credits include leading roles in plays and musicals on Broadway, off Broadway, and in regional theater companies around the country including the Hilton Theatre on Broadway, Yale Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Le Freres Corbusier, Primary Stages, Urban Stages, The Play Company, Paper Mill Playhouse, Prince Music Theatre, Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Sundance Theatre Lab, and HB Playwrights Foundation. Film and television credits include Absolutely Fabulous, As the World Turns, Guiding Light, and the independent feature Si’ Laraby. Caesar has appeared as soloist in various concert tours throughout Italy, Scotland, Japan, and Taiwan.

Timothy Shew appeared on Broadway in Wonderful Town (Lonigan), Les misérables (Jean Valjean), Guys and Dolls, Sunset Boulevard, and Disney’s King David and the Scarlet Pimpernel. He performed for eight years as Santa Claus at Radio City Music Hall. National tours include Les misérables, Whistle Down the Wind, Evita, and Show Boat. Film and television credits include The Producers, Law & Order, and Guiding Light, as well as the movie soundtracks for Chicago and Shaggy Dog and the recording of Bernstein’s Mass at the Vatican.

Kevin Vortmann has appeared in New York’s Juno (IRA Man), Face the Music (Uncle Sam, cast recording), Stairway to Paradise (soldier soloist), Applause (New York City Center’s Encores! series), Show Boat at Carnegie Hall, Children and Art at the New Amsterdam Theatre, and the national tour of Camelot. Kevin has performed with the Chautauqua Opera, Sacramento Music Circus, Blumenthal PAC, Stages St. Louis, Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre, and Theatre at the Center. He received his bachelor’s degree in vocal performance and a certificate in music theater from Northwestern University.

J. D. Webster has appeared on Broadway in Wonderful Town, Ragtime, and Show Boat. He also co-starred in Spring Is Here: Rodgers and Hart of the 1920s at Carnegie Hall and South Pacific on PBS. Recent credits include My Fair Lady with the New York Philharmonic and the title role in The Blackamoor Angel. He has also appeared with the Virginia Symphony Pops, City Center Encores!, and the New York Ragtime Orchestra.

A native New Yorker, Laurie Williamson received critical acclaim as principal soloist in Music of the Night and The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber in Concert. Her Broadway and national tour credits include Ragtime, King David, Chanteuse in Singin’ in the Rain, and Confidante in Phantom of the Opera. Regional work includes Myrt in Carmen Jones, Queenie Pie, and Marian Anderson in Bel Canto. Laurie sings with Broadway Live and 4 Divas and appears on The Best of Broadway and Voices of Broadway recordings.

Morgan State University Choir
Eric Conway, Director
The Morgan State University (MSU) Choir is one of the nation’s most prestigious university choral ensembles. In addition to classical, gospel, and contemporary popular music, the choir is noted for its emphasis on preserving the heritage of the spiritual, especially in the historic practices of performance.

The MSU Choir has performed for audiences throughout the US and worldwide, including in the Virgin Islands, Canary Islands, Canada, Africa, Asia, and Europe. It has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, on numerous occasions, and has performed with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Buffalo, Baltimore, Knoxville, and National symphony orchestras, among others.

The Choir has experienced many historic moments. It performed with Jessye Norman under the baton of Robert Shaw, conducting the Orchestra of St. Lukes at Carnegie Hall’s 100th Birthday Tribute to Marian Anderson. At the personal invitation of Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice, the choir performed for the State Department during its annual African American History Month Celebration. In October 2005, the Choir sang at the service honoring Rosa Parks, who became the first woman to lie in honor at our nation’s Capitol Rotunda. In August 2007, the Choir completed a tour of Ghana and performed at the invitation of the US Ambassador to Ghana to celebrate its 50th year of Independence. In May 2004, Reader’s Digest named the MSU Choir “the Best College Choir in the US” in its list of America’s 100 Best.


Dr. Eric Conway is the director of the Morgan State University Choir as well as chairman of the Fine Arts Department. He has served as associate conductor and principal accompanist for the Morgan State University Choir for the past 20 years under the leadership of the late Nathan Carter.

Dr. Conway has performed as soloist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Baltimore Concert Artists, Johns Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, Georgetown University Orchestra, and Millbrook Orchestra in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. In January 2006 he performed Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concerto No. 5 with the BSO to wide acclaim and toured with the orchestra to East Asia in 1994 and 1997. Dr. Conway’s choral accomplishments include working closely with some of the greatest conductors of the 20th Century, including Robert Shaw, Sir Neville Mariner, and Donald Neuen.

Dr. Conway received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Peabody Conservatory, where he majored in piano performance and minored in conducting. In addition to his musical accomplishments, he holds degrees in both accounting and business management and is also a certified public accountant.

The Brooklyn Youth Chorus
Dianne Berkun, Founder and Artistic Director
Founded in 1992 by Artistic Director Dianne Berkun, the Grammy Award–winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy (BYCA) is a performance-based vocal music education program serving 250 children and reflecting the broad diversity of New York City. At BYCA, children who love to sing can develop their voices and their skills, and experience the joy of performing in a world-class vocal ensemble.

The Chorus’s three training divisions and the advanced Concert Chorus have helped hundreds of children realize their potential as musicians and as individuals. With a commitment to artistry at all levels, BYCA provides an unparalleled vocal music education and performing experience for New York City children.


Dianne Berkun is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy (BYCA). Ms. Berkun made her onstage conducting debut at Carnegie Hall in 2003, performing Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols with BYC. Ms. Berkun has also conducted BYC at Carnegie Hall for two performances of Britten’s War Requiem.

Under Ms. Berkun’s leadership, BYC has become the ensemble of choice for collaborative performances with internationally renowned orchestras and artists. She has prepared choruses and soloists for performances with such acclaimed conductors as Lorin Maazel, James Levine, Charles Dutoit, Robert Spano, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leon Botstein, and Dennis Russell Davies. Most notably, she prepared BYC for its 2002 debut with the New York Philharmonic in John Adams’ Pulitzer Prize–winning work On the Transmigration of Souls, the recording for which the Chorus won its Grammy Award in February 2005.

Ms. Berkun has prepared the Chorus to study and perform a wide range of music—classical and non-classical—and has established an active commissioning program to develop new works for youth chorus across a variety of genres. She prepared the Chorus to record Philip Glass’s music for the film Undertow (Orange Mountain Music, 2004) and to sing with a variety of major recording artists such as Sir Elton John, Lou Reed, Judy Collins, Andrea Boccelli, Lara Fabian, Monica, Debra Cox, P.O.D., and Ray Davies.

Leslie Stifelman, Music Supervisor
Leslie Stifelman is the executive producer and Peabody Award winner for the HBO television series The Music in Me, which celebrates children and music. She is also the music director and conductor of the Tony and Grammy Award–winning hit show Chicago: The Musical, associate conductor for Broadway’s Wonderful Town, music director and supervisor for Here Lies Jenny, and music director and conductor for An Orchestral Evening with Bebe Neuwirth, which toured nationally. She has served as a guest conductor for The Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, and Seattle Symphony, among others. Ms. Stifelman is also the CEO for Symfunny Toons™, a company dedicated to creating concerts, television, and interactive products for children to learn about music. Ms. Stifelman is currently producing a new website and concert series for children and families titled Finding The Groove™.

Seán Curran, Musical Staging
Seán Curran made his mark on the dance world as a leading dancer with the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company. He received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his performance in Secret Pastures. A graduate and guest faculty member of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Mr. Curran was an original member of the New York City cast of the Off-Broadway percussion extravaganza Stomp, performing in the show for four years. He has performed his solo evening of dances at venues throughout the US as well as at Sweden’s Danstation Theatre and France’s EXIT Festival.

Current and recent projects include productions of Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Shakespeare Theater; the 20th anniversary production of Nixon in China at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis; choreography for New York City Opera’s productions of L’etoile, Alcina, Turandot, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Capriccio, and Acis and Galetea; Shakespeare in the Park’s As You Like It; the Teatro San Carlo di Napoli production of Candide; and Cymbeline and The Rivals at Lincoln Center Theater. He also choreographed Romeo and Juliette for the Metropolitan Opera, which was shown in theaters nationwide last December.

Alan Adelman, Lighting Designer
Alan Adelman has served as a lighting designer for film, stage, and television, earning three Emmy Awards and 15 additional nominations. He has recently worked with the Miami City Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, and the Juilliard Opera, with his work appearing at Carnegie Hall, Broadway, and national tours. His film credits include Madame Butterfly, Legally Blonde, It Had To Be You, and Smokey Joe’s Café, among others. Television credits include Live From Lincoln Center (ten seasons), DEF Comedy Jam, The BET Honors, The Gershwin Prize for American Songwriters, the Tony Awards, the Video Music Awards, the Miss Universe Pageants, The Chris Rock Show, Showtime at the Apollo, Chappelle’s Show, Comedy Central Presents, and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. He created designs for more than 50 shows of PBS’s Great Performances and seven programs for American Playhouse.

Mr. Adelman is a founding director of The Hemsley Lighting Programs, which for 25 years has sponsored internships for outstanding lighting grads with New York City Opera, New York City Ballet, and the Lincoln Center Festival.

Acme Sound Partners, Sound Design
Acme Sound Partners was formed in 2000 by Tom Clark, Mark Menard, and Nevin Steinberg. The sound design team’s Broadway credits include In The Heights (Tony Award nomination), The Country Girl, Legally Blonde, High Fidelity, A Chorus Line (2006), Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Drowsy Chaperone, Hot Feet, The Light in the Piazza, Monty Python’s Spamalot, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Dracula the Musical, Twentieth Century, Fiddler on the Roof, Never Gonna Dance, The Boy From Oz, Avenue Q, Gypsy (2003) and La bohème (Drama Desk Award). ACME Sound Partners has also served as sound designers for numerous off-Broadway and regional productions as well as theatrical concerts and special events with renowned orchestras at world-famous venues indoors and out.

Mr. Steinberg has served as production sound engineer on The Wild Party, Footloose, and Side Show.

Jessica Jahn, Costume Consultant
Jessica Jahn graduated from Rutgers University with degrees in dance and psychology. Her recent projects include Die Mommie Die! at New World Stages in New York (Lucille Lortel Award for Costume Design), In the Red and Brown Water at the Alliance Theatre, The Mystery of Irma Vep at Studio Arena, and Esoterica at the Daryl Roth Theatre in New York. Upcoming projects include Roberto Deveraux, Maria Stuarda, and Anna Bolena with Minnesota Opera, as well as La Cenerentola with Glimmerglass Opera.

Casting by: Pat McCorkle, CSA
Casting agent Pat McCorkle’s Broadway credits include The Lieutenant of Inishmore, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Amadeus, A Doll’s House, She Loves Me, Blood Brothers, and A Few Good Men. Off-Broadway credits include Adding Machine, Almost Maine, Down the Garden Paths, Killer Joe, and Mrs. Klein. Film: Ghost Town, Bereft, Secret Window, Basic, The Thomas Crown Affair, The 13th Warrior, Madeline, Die Hard with a Vengeance, and School Ties. Television: The Electric Company, Californication (Emmy Nomination), 3lbs., Barbershop, and Chappelle’s Show.

Assistant Director to be announced

Set Coordinator to be announced