Category: Performances

What a continually busy and exciting season this Spring has been! Today marks a week since my Senior Recital, which was an overwhelmingly successful event. I was quite proud to present works featuring so many collaborative musicians, including a 14 piece orchestral ensemble for an excerpt from Haydn’s Creation and the premiere of a song set with cello and guitar by my friend and colleague David Brighton. A sincere thanks to all who attended, and for anyone who missed out a link can be found below to the Georgia State online archive so that you may watch it!

http://original.livestream.com/georgiastate

Although that venture has ended, things are continuing to bustle as my final semester at Georgia State comes to an end. This past Sunday I performed as the soloist in ‘Easter,’ the first of Ralph Vaughan WiIliams Five Mystical Songs, in the Easter service at the First Baptist Church of Decatur. Currently I am in the midst of tech week for Georgia State Opera Theater’s production of Puccini’s La Bohème, in which I will be performing as the character Schaunard. The event will occur at the Rialto theater in downtown Atlanta this coming weekend, April 10th- 12th. I will be performing as a principal in two of the three performances, Friday the 10th at 8pm and Sunday the 12th at 3pm. Tickets can be purchased at the door, and students receive 5 dollar tickets! The show features a full orchestral ensemble under the baton of Maestro Michael Palmer, and is sure to be one of the most exciting operatic events in the Atlanta area this year!

After the opera I will be performing several events in the Atlanta area. I will be participating in an encore performance of David Brighton’s song set on Wednesday, April 15th in the Georgia State Guitar Ensemble performance. It will occur at 8pm in Florence Kopleff Recital Hall downtown, and is completely free and open to the public. I will also be performing as a background vocalist in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Classic Soul’ concert on Friday April 17th and Saturday April 18th, both at 8pm. This event will be a very different type of performance than the typical operatic repetoire I have frequented as of late, and features an incredible list of songs from great artists such as Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, and more. This will surely be an event that will keep your toes tapping and leave you humming a familiar tune, so be sure to check out tickets at the link provided below!

Guitar Ensemble:

 http://music.gsu.edu/ai1ec_event/guitar-ensemble/?instance_id=170943

Atlanta Symphony ‘Classic Soul’:

http://www.atlantasymphony.org/ConcertsAndTickets/Calendar/2014-2015/Classic-Soul.aspx

I have a few auditions for companies in the Atlanta area coming up in the near future, as well as exciting announcements for what the summer will hold. Be sure to stay tuned in for those updates coming soon!

A new video has just been posted on Youtube from the 2015 Atlanta Opera Project I participated in. The full post about this event can be viewed here: https://nicholasyaquinto.com/2015/01/28/atlanta-opera-24-hour-opera-project/

Enjoy!

This past week I spent an evening recording 4 arias in my repertoire, all of which were featured on my audition package this season, both at the Metropolitan Opera competition and in my various auditions. I worked with Daniel Solberg of DSol productions, whose website can be found below. I’m very excited with how they turned out, and am even more excited to be able to share them! The arias are all listed on Youtube, but can also be found on the Videos page of my website.

http://danielsolberg.com/

Lieben, Hassen, Hoffen, Zagen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHBl0cbKxHo

Mab, la reine des mensonges:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6qwBPlFvbw

Pictured are shots from my rehearsal this week for my debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra on this coming Valentines Day. The production is entitled ‘My Family Valentine,’ and is a performance reaching out to families and the younger generations, in an attempt to heighten interest in classical music. This is accomplished by presenting well known and loved symphonic works, including pieces by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Strauss, and more. To tie these beautiful works together there is an adaptation of the love story between Papagano and Papagana from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. I play Papagano in this production, and Soprano Allison Mion is my Papagana. We have been hard at work to put this production together, but this was the first rehearsal of the preparation process in which we were able to work in the Atlanta Symphony Hall. (Located in Woodruff Arts Center) [http://www.atlantasymphony.org/] It was also our first opportunity to work with Joseph Young, the director of the program and the assistant conductor/ youth orchestra music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. (http://www.josephfyoung.com/) This program is one of the first in an exciting amalgamation between the ASO and the Alliance Theater, and it is a very exciting process seeing these great companies coming together. (http://alliancetheatre.org/) All of the production cast could not be more excited about this program, and we hope to see you all there! Tickets are still available and can be found at the link provided below!

http://www.atlantasymphony.org/ConcertsAndTickets/Calendar/2014-2015/My-Family-Valentine.aspx

I also did a recording session with pianist extraordinaire Grant Jones and production expert Daniel Solberg of DSol productions (http://danielsolberg.com/) last night. I did several arias from my operatic repertoire, and I can’t wait to see how they turned out. Video and audio will be posted soon, keep your eyes and ears open!

http://www.theatricaloutfit.org/

On Saturday, January 24th I participated in the Atlanta Opera’s 24 Hour Opera Project. This cutting edge event assembles librettists, composers, directors, and singers in order to create a completely new composition of Opera, which is written, put to music, staged, memorized, and performed within 24 hours. This event was a great opportunity to test my ability as a performer to grasp the concept of a production, characterize it, internalize it, and memorize it in time for a quality performance in a limited time frame. The event was great fun, and within the cast of the production I was greeted with the faces of many local Atlanta artists, both familiar and foreign.

I worked under musical director Catherine Giel, (musical director for Capitol City Opera here in Atlanta) [http://www.ccityopera.org/], stage director Kristin Kenning (Samford University), and the musical composition was done by Marvin Carlton. The Libretto was written by Sumita Chakraborty, and was based upon the idea of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, (Shakespeare) in which each of the characters is enchanted with a flower which forces them to fall in love with the first person they see. This was extremely reminiscent for me, because the last time I performed in the Atlanta Theatrical Outlet (Pictured above) was when I performed as Demetrius in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream this past summer in the Harrower Summer Opera Workshop. The twist of the production was that a very brightly colored ‘disco shirt’ had to be worked into the script, and the theme of the night was ‘Not For the Faint of Heart.’ So instead, each of our characters smelled the potion that had been cast upon the shirt causing us all to fall for whatever person- or item- they saw first. These items included a rubber chicken, a feather, a star, and lastly I was made to fall in love with myself upon seeing my reflection, and spent most of the production wallowing in the beauty of my own image.  It was quite the comedy routine, and featured a wonderful cast, adaptation of the story to fit our needs, involved staging, and extremely catchy music which we all walked out humming!

http://clatl.com/atlanta/24-hour-opera-gets-fierce-and-funny/Content?oid=13249532

All in all it was a wonderful experience, and at the end of the performance there was a surprise performance by a hilarious improv comedy group from ‘Dad’s Garage’ theatrical group. I definitely recommend attempting to catch one of their shows, I haven’t laughed that hard in some time! (Link provided below)

http://www.dadsgarage.com/

As the holiday season approaches, many professions find a time of relaxation and holiday breaks. Musicians, however, often find this time to be the most busy season of the year, and for me this year is no exception! After finishing 4 performances Il Barbiere di Siviglia last weekend, I now find myself upon the ‘crunch time’ of the school year, all coinciding with a season of auditions and performances. This weekend I will be performing in Georgia State Opera Theaters’ presentation of ‘Opera Goes to Church,’ a scenes program consisting of repertoire from all spectrums of opera, to be performed Friday through Sunday at the locations listed below. I’m performing in two scenes, one from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and the other from Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring. The following Monday I’ll be performing in a conjoined choir concert between the Georgia State University Singers and the University of Georgia Hodgson Singers at All Saints Episcopal Church, 7:30pm, November 17th. That same week Pulitzer prize winning composer Michael Colgrass will be coming to Georgia State to lead a performance of his piece Zululand featuring combined band, orchestra, and choir, in which I will be featured as the male soloist. The following Saturday I will be participating in the Metropolitan Opera Competition at Peachtree First Presbyterian Church, which is free and open to the public for anyone wanting to attend. Fortunately I will then have a week off to rest up and celebrate my birthday/ Thanksgiving with family and friends back home in Savannah, before heading off to Chicago to audition for Central City Opera in Colorado this coming summer. All of these opportunities are both exciting and unsettling, however I look forward to facing them and giving each opportunity my all. My success in the coming weeks will also play a role in my acceptance to audition at L’Atelier Lyric opera national de Paris this coming January, which is the opportunity I anticipate most for the coming year. Apprehension turns into inspiration, and inspiration into success! Everyone enjoy a happy and restful holiday season, and take time to enjoy the things in life that matter most.