Soprano Lisa Delan Performs at San Francisco Conservatory Tonight

Soprano Lisa Delan (class of 1989) will perform on the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's distinguished Alumni Recital Series tonight, February 11, 2015, at 8 p.m.

Ms. Delan's program will include works by American composers John Corigliano, David Garner, Gordon Getty, Jake Heggie and Luna Pearl Woolf. She will be joined by special guests Matt Haimovitz, Christopher O'Riley and Jake Heggie. The concert, held at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Sol Joseph Recital Hall, is dedicated to the memory of pianist Kristin Pankonin (class of 1989), alumna and former staff pianist of the Conservatory.

According to Lisa Delan, "The common thread of this recital is the dearly-missed Kristin Pankonin, my longtime friend and keyboard partner. This program is the embodiment of the passion we shared for collaborating with contemporary composers and for blurring the lines between genres. We recorded many of these works together and several were written specifically for us. Her spirit runs through all of it."

Ms. Delan is the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Fanfare honoree for 2015.

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI RECITAL

LISA DELAN, SOPRANO

SAN FRANCISCO CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC

SOL JOSEPH RECITAL HALL

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2015, 8 P.M.

Complete Program:

Luna Pearl Woolf (1973):

Rumi: Quatrains of Love (world concert premiere)

Christopher O'Riley, piano

Matt Haimovitz, cello

Rumi translation by Coleman Barks

Gordon Getty (1933):

Four Dickinson Songs

Robert Schwartz, piano

Jake Heggie (1961):

From the Book of Nightmares

Jake Heggie, piano

Matt Haimovitz, cello

John Corigliano (1938):

World premiere of piece to be announced

Christopher O'Riley, piano

Matt Haimovitz, cello

David Garner (1954):

Phenomenal Woman

Kevin Korth, piano

Free admission, no tickets required

More information at:

http://calendar.sfcm.edu/index.php?eID=738

Program subject to change

About Lisa Delan - American soprano Lisa Delan has won acclaim as an interpreter of a vast range of repertoire, and is recognized for her breadth of accomplishment in opera and song, in both live performance and in recordings. She has performed on some of the world's leading concert stages including Lincoln Center, Davies Symphony Hall, Madrid's Auditorio Nacional, the Moscow Conservatory, Tchaikovsky Hall, and in a special appearance at Windsor Castle. Her festival appearances include the Bad Kissingen Festival in Germany, the Colmar Festival in France, the Rachmaninoff Festival in Novgorod, Russia, Festival del Sole in Napa Valley, the Tuscan Sun Festival, and the Domaine Forget Festival in Quebec.

Ms. Delan won recognition singing the title role in the world premiere of Gordon Getty's Joan and the Bells in 1998, a role she has since reprised in France, Germany, the U.S., and Russia, and in the 2002 recording for PentaTone Classics. Critics have praised her depiction of Joan of Arc as "beautifully sung" (International Record Review), "refreshingly unpretentious" (Gramophone), and "a role she has made her own, with the kind of pure tone one expects of a saint-to-be and the passion one expects from a 19-year-old girl going to her death. Miss Delan is exceptional" (Nevada Events). She reprised this role for the Russian National Orchestra's Grand Festival in Moscow in 2012.

Ms. Delan is privileged to collaborate with composers whose musical lives are still works in progress, and has performed and recorded the music of William Bolcom, John Corigliano, David Garner, Gordon Getty, Jake Heggie, Mikhail Pletnev and Luna Pearl Woolf, among others. She was featured on three recordings released by PentaTone Classics in 2009: And If the Song Be Worth a Smile, her debut solo recording of songs by American composers (with pianist Kristin Pankonin); Getty's song cycle The White Election (with pianist Fritz Steinegger); and as a guest artist on Phenomenon (works by composer David Garner). In reviewing all three recordings, Sequenza 21 concluded, "As a song interpreter she may well be unequaled." The year 2013 saw the release of The Hours Begin to Sing and the new Getty opera Usher House, both on PentaTone Classics. An Audiophile Audition critic wrote of The Hours Begin to Sing, "I reviewed Lisa Delan's first issue in this series back in 2009... I said then 'I am not sure I have heard a finer American song album since Songs of America made its debut on Nonesuch about 20 years ago.' Well, guess what? I can say it again, with a lot of confidence.... Lisa Delan is still the master of this sort of recital."

In 2013 Oxingale Records released Angel Heart, a music storybook, created by Ms. Delan and composer Luna Pearl Woolf, featuring the soprano together with Frederica von Stade, Zheng Cao, Sanford Sylvan and Dan Taylor with Matt Haimovitz and his all-cello ensemble Uccello. The recording also features Jeremy Irons narrating an original story by best-selling author Cornelia Funke. Angel Heart premiered in 2013 as a live multimedia performance presented by Cal Performances in Berkeley and Carnegie Hall in New York City and will be presented in 2015 by LA Opera and Festival del Sole. The family-oriented project has been lauded by The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly and The New York Times.

2015 will welcome the release of PentaTone's American holiday album featuring Ms. Delan in works by Jake Heggie and David Garner with baritone Lester Lynch and members of the New Century Chamber Orchestra; she also returns to the studio to record a new recital album. Ms. Delan is currently developing a genre-defying recording with Christopher O'Riley and Matt Haimovitz featuring art songs written for her by Philip Glass, Gunther Schuller, John Corigliano, Mark Adamo, Aaron J. Kernis and Luna Pearl Woolf. For more information, visit lisadelan.com.

About The San Francisco Conservatory of Music - Founded in 1917, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music is the oldest conservatory in the American West and has earned an international reputation for producing musicians of the highest caliber. Notable alumni include violinists Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern, conductor and pianist Jeffrey Kahane, soprano Elza van den Heever, Blue Bottle Coffee founder James Freeman and Ronald Losby, President, Steinway & Sons-Americas, among others. Its faculty includes nearly 30 members of the San Francisco Symphony as well as Grammy and Latin Grammy Award-winning artists in the fields of orchestral and chamber performance and classical guitar. The Conservatory offers its approximately 400 collegiate students fully accredited bachelor's and master's degree programs in composition and instrumental and vocal performance. SFCM was the first institution of its kind to offer world-class graduate degree programs in chamber music and classical guitar. Its Pre-College Division provides exceptionally high standards of musical excellence and personal attention to more than 580 younger students. SFCM faculty and students give nearly 500 public performances each year, most of which are offered to the public at no charge. Its community outreach programs serve over 1,600 school children and over 11,000 members of the wider community who are otherwise unable to hear live performances. The Conservatory's Civic Center facility is an architectural and acoustical masterwork, and the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall was lauded by The New York Times as the "most enticing classical-music setting" in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, visit www.sfcm.edu.

Photo Credit: Marika Rosenthal Delan