NOVEMBER – DECEMBER 2013 - Mondavi Center

LARA DOWNES FAMILY CONCERT
musical insights. The occasional big effects were
commanding and intense without ever descending
into coarseness, and the delicacy and tonal allure he
brought to the cycle’s preponderance of quiet songs
were deeply impressive.” Recent performances on the
operatic stage include Escamillo in Carmen with Diablo
Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Lyric Opera,
Ben in The Telephone with Blue Sage Center for the
Arts, Silvio in Pagliacci and Monterone in Rigoletto with
Sacramento Opera, Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas and El
Cantaor in La vida breve with West Bay Opera, Germont
in La Traviata with West Bay Opera and Center Stage
Opera, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor with North Bay
Opera and Center Stage Opera and many others.
Gordin has been in high demand as a guest artist
with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, where has
sung Fauré’s Requiem, Verdi’s Otello, Kurt Weill’s Street
Scene and Orff’s Carmina Burana. Gordin’s talent
has been recognized as a winner of prestigious
vocal competitions, including the Pacific Musical
Society Competition, East Bay Opera League Vocal
Competition, Bellini International Voice Competition
and the Ibla Grand Prize Baroque Music Competition.
He was the recipient of the Irene Patti Swartz
Encouragement Award for the Florida Grand Opera
National Voice Competition and Grantee of the Vocal
Arts Foundation in San Francisco. He was also World
Finalist for the Academia at Teatro alla Scala, Regional
Finalist for the Metropolitan Opera National Council
Auditions and the youngest candidate selected for
the ORFEO 2000 World Competition of International
Finalists hosted by Hannover Staatsoper.
DAREN JACKSON is the Founders’ Prize winner of
the 2013 Mondavi Center Young Artists Competition.
He began voice studies at age 8 in Wilmington, NC.
At 15, he was accepted as the youngest student at
North Carolina School of the Arts, where he currently
studies with Glenn Siebert. He has performed
diverse roles in works such as Andrew Lloyd Weber’s
Requiem, Bernstein’s Kaddish and Rossini’s Stabat
Mater. He is the recipient of the Bill and Judy Watson
Scholarship and the William Bondurant Scholarship
at UNCSA, and in 2013 he won 1st place in the North
Carolina and Mid-Atlantic Region NATS auditions.
SUNNY KNABLE was raised in a family of artists. As
an adult, he became an award-winning composer,
classical pianist, jazz player, songwriter, percussionist
and educator. As a composer, he has won three
Best Composition awards at the Festival of New
American Music, and in 2009, he was the recipient
of the Iron Composers Award (for which he wrote
a four-minute piece in five hours). His works have
been heard throughout the U.S. and internationally.
After receiving his bachelor’ of music degree in
composition, piano performance and jazz studies at
California State University, Sacramento, he moved to
New York City, where he makes his living as a pianist.
In 2010, his 30-minute work Music of the Rails was
commissioned and premiered by the Sacramentobased
sextet Citywater in celebration of the Crocker
Art Museum’s reopening. In 2011, Half Moon Theatre
of Poughkeepsie, NY, commissioned his children’s
opera, The Magic Fish, with his brother Jim Knable as
librettist. In 2012, he received his master’s of arts degree
in composition at the Aaron Copland School of Music
where he served as president of the Queens College
New Music Group for two years. His debut composition
CD American Variations was released in 2012 on
Centaur Records. He serves as music director of The
Church-in-the-Gardens in Forest Hills, NY, while fulfilling
commissions from around the country. He continues his
doctoral education at Stony Brook University.
ANGELO MORENO is a graduate of UC Davis where
he received his bachelor of arts and master of arts
in orchestral conducting under the direction of Dr.
D. Kern Holoman in the fall of 2002. He also received
his teaching credential in music education from
Sacramento State University. Moreno is the director
of the Sacramento Youth Symphony’s Academic
Orchestra. In addition to his youth symphony work,
Moreno has been directing the Davis Schools
Secondary Orchestras since 2000. He was orchestra
director at Emerson Junior High and is currently the
director of the Davis Senior High and Holmes Junior
High School Orchestra Programs.
In 2005, Moreno was awarded the Teacher of the Year
Award presented by the CSUS College of Education in
recognition of outstanding service to public education.
In 2006, he was honored by State Assemblywoman
Lois Wolk and given a resolution from the California
Legislature recognizing his work in music education. In
2009, the Sacramento News & Review honored Moreno
at the Jammies Concert with the Sacramento Music
Educators Outstanding Achievement Award.
In addition, DownBeat Magazine recognized
Moreno and his Combined Junior High Advanced
Orchestra and the Davis Senior High School
Symphony Orchestra to be Best Classical Ensemble at
the high school level nationwide in 2010 and 2011.
In the fall of 2011, Moreno was given the Harmony
in Our Lives Award for excellence in music education
by the Davis Schools Arts Foundation. In the fall of
2012, the California Music Educators Association
(CMEA) unanimously recognized Moreno as the
state’s Richard L. Levin Orchestra Educator awardee.
ANN MOSS is an ardent and acclaimed champion
of contemporary vocal music who performs and
collaborates with a dynamic array of American
composers. Her high, silvery, flexible voice has been
singled out by Opera News for its “beautifully pure
floated high notes” and by San Francisco Classical Voice
for its “powerful expression.” September 2013 marks
the release of her debut CD CURRENTS, produced by
multiple Grammy Award-winner Leslie Ann Jones
and featuring a dream team of collaborators from the
chamber music, new music and jazz communities
performing some of the extraordinary new and
recent American vocal/chamber music Moss has
championed over the past decade.
Moss has sung premieres and performed
contemporary repertoire with M2B, Earplay, Eco
Ensemble, One Art Ensemble, New Music Works,
San Francisco Lyric Opera, the Ives String Quartet,
Alexander String Quartet, Hausmann Quartet, Sanford
Dole Ensemble and Composers in Red Sneakers. She
has performed at the Sacramento Festival of New
American Music, Fresno New Music Festival, PARMA
Festival, SF Song Festival, Other Minds Festival,
Switchboard Music Festival, Sonic Harvest, CNMAT
and in frequent recitals of contemporary art song.
Equally sought after for her vibrant and affecting
interpretations of masterworks from the oratorio
and operatic literature, Moss has recently been heard
performing solos in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with
the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, Haydn’s Missa
in Angustiis with Oakland Symphony Chorus, Handel’s
Acis & Galatea with California Bach Society, and
Poulenc’s Gloria and Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges
with Berkeley Opera. Other operatic roles include
Nannetta, Blondchen, Despina and Dew Fairy.
A native of Boston and a graduate of the Longy
School of Music and San Francisco Conservatory, Moss
currently resides and teaches in the San Francisco
Bay Area. She has participated in master classes with
artists including Jose Van Dam, Nathan Gunn, Graham
Johnson, Martin Katz, Jake Heggie, John Harbison,
Craig Smith and Barbara Kilduff. Private teachers
include Sheri Greenawald, Wendy Hillhouse, Anna
Gabriali and Rodney Gisick; coaches include Steven
Bailey, Brian Moll, Paul Hersh, Wayman Chen, Brenda
Miller and Tim Bach. She attended the internationally
renowned Songfest program for two summers.
Soprano LAUREN WOODY recently returned from
performing at Lincoln Center with the New York
City Opera Orchestra and on a National U.S. tour
with the prestigious Young Artist program, I Sing
Beijing. She is garnering recognition for her artistry,
beautiful vocal timbre and ringing high notes.
In 2012, she made her international debut in
China at the National Center for the Performing
Arts, where she studied under the tutelage of
internationally acclaimed faculty members, including
Metropolitan Opera bass Hao Jiang Tian, Maestro
Paul Nadler and coach Katherine Chu.
A winner of the Career Bridges Grant Award in
New York, Woody has been described as possessing
a “wonderful lyric soprano voice capable of many
styles and genres.” Over the years, she has been
tackling leading roles in The Magic Flute (Second
Lady), Haydn’s La Vera Costanza (Rosina), and the
title roles in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience and
Iolanthe. Her performances have been characterized
as “superb ... engaging the audience with both her
singing and acting” (Maestro Brian Sparks).
Currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area,
she sings with the contemporary hybrid hip-hop
orchestra, Ensemble Mik Nawooj, premiering new
works by composer Joowan Kim. Woody studies with
world-renowned soprano and San Francisco Opera
Center Director Sheri Greenawald, specializing in lyric
soprano repertoire by Puccini, Mozart and Verdi.
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