ANN TEDARDS

WOMAN SPIRIT: SONGS BY LIBBY LARSEN

WOMAN SPIRIT: SONGS BY LIBBY LARSEN


Libby Larsen

ANN TEDARDS, soprano
MARVA DUERKSEN, piano


[MS1349]

$12.95

LISTEN
REVIEWS
"[Ann Tedards] has good dramatic instincts and makes excellent interpretative choices, with a real feeling for the composer’s work."
Steven Ritter, Audiophile Audition - July 2011
PROGRAM NOTES
American composer LIBBY LARSEN’s compositional catalogue is wide-ranging, from large-scale orchestral and choral pieces to a trove of songs for voice and various instrumental combinations: string quintet, orchestra, percussion and tape, and piano. In addition, she is known for her frequent choice of female subjects, ranging “from women pioneers of the American West to characters created by Virginia Woolf.” It is this aspect of her compositional preference that provides the basis for the program presented here.

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Soprano ANN TEDARDS has performed extensively in the United States and Europe as an opera and concert soloist and in chamber music and recitals. Her operatic career includes roles with The Washington Opera, Princeton Opera Theatre, and European opera companies in Ulm, Heilbronn, Klagenfurt, Baden and Vienna. She has appeared as a concert soloist with the New York Pro Musica Antiqua, Vienna Symphony, Austrian Radio Orchestra, Vienna Choir Boys, Stuttgart Philharmonic, Oregon Bach Festival, Oregon Repertory Singers, Ensemble Moderne (Berlin), Baltimore Choral Arts Society and the Washington Bach Consort, among others. Solo festival engagements include the Carinthian Summer Festival in Austria, Oregon Bach Festival, Viennese Schubertiade and the Festival Music Society of Indiana. Tedards is a recipient of the Mozart Prize from the Francisco Viñas International Voice Competition in Barcelona and first prize in the Southeastern region of the National Association of Teachers of Singing competition. She has recorded for the Musical Heritage Society, Orfeo and Soundspells labels, and published a biography of the singer Marian Anderson. Tedards serves as Professor of Voice, Associate Dean, and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Sweet Briar College, a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore.

Associate Professor of Music and Women’s and Gender Studies at Willamette University, MARVA DUERKSEN combines an active academic life with performing and recording music by women composers and musical settings of women poets. Duerksen’s work is marked by special emphasis on the songs of American composer, Libby Larsen and, most recently, on musical settings of American poet Emily Dickinson. Duerksen has presented papers and lecture-performances on Larsen’s music at regional, national, and international conferences. In the spring of 2008, with funding from the University of Oregon’s Center for the Study of Women in Society, Duerksen and soprano Ann Tedards presented recitals of Larsen’s music at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, at Bowdoin College and at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Together with soprano Christine Welch Elder, Ms. Duerksen has performed musical settings of Emily Dickinson in Ottawa, Canada, and at various locations in Oregon. Duerksen holds a Bachelor of Music with greatest distinction from Brandon University, a Master of Music from the University of Alberta, and a Ph.D in Music Theory from the Graduate School and City University of New York.

PROGRAM

LIBBY LARSEN (b.1950)

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE (1998)
I thought once how Theocritus had sung (Sonnet 1)
My letters! (Sonnet 28)
With the same heart, I said, I’ll answer thee (Sonnet 34)
If I leave all for thee (Sonnet 35)
Oh, Yes! (Sonnet 40)
How do I love thee? (Sonnet 43)

MY ÁNTONIA (2004)
Landscape I: From the Train
Ántonia
Landscape II: Winter
The Hired Girls
Landscape III: Prairie Spring
Ántonia in the Field
Landscape IV: Sunset

MARGARET SONGS (1998)
Bright Rails
So Little There
Beneath the Hawthorne Tree

TRY ME, GOOD KING: LAST WORDS OF THE WIVES OF HENRY VIII (2002)
Katherine of Aragon
Anne Boleyn
Jane Seymour
Anne of Cleves
Katherine Howard





MSR Classics