OUR NEXT PERFORMANCE:
Saturday 11th February, 2012 -7:30pm
hexaSHOWCASE - BARITONES:
Andrew Sauvageau, Jeremy Hirsch & Alex Rosen
Mount Vernon Music Space
1015 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21202
We are a collective of individuals each equally skilled in solo and ensemble performance. We are collaborators. We each promote music education in our own ways. We take the old and the new and present it in innovative programs. We are hexaCollective.
hexaCollective was originally founded as a group of singers working to fill the niche between choral ensemble and soloists, creating opportunities to explore solo options whilst growing as a vocal ensemble. The addition of a full instrumental roster to hexaCollective has enhanced its chamber and solo music programming with a more diverse presentation of works. The ensemble is centered on the desire to explore possiblities in new works, some commissioned specifically for hexaCollective, as well as rarely performed pieces. Each member of hexaCollective is an established or emerging artist-teacher dedicated to private and public music education in various mediums. The origin of the name hexaCollective draws from the six voice categories (soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass).
Sonya Alexandra Knussen - General Artistic Director
Praised by The New York Times for her gracefully shaped vocal lines and for her “dead-on surety of pitch and attractive tone” by the Albany Times Union, Mezzo-Soprano, Sonya Alexandra Knussen is equally at home performing new music and established repertoire. She has premiered many works, most recently Joanna Lee’s “archy interviews a pharaoh” at the 2010 Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk, England.
Engagements have included Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzer at Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Noon Concert series, The Walters Art Museum and Friedberg Concert Hall; Alto soloist with the Baltimore Baroque Band; soloist with the Peabody Camerata in works by Jean Eickelberger Ivey, Schoenberg and Mahler; New Music specialist performing works by Crumb, Sciarrino, Stockhausen, Andriessen, Boulez, Hoiby, as well as several world premieres including works by Jon Carter, Joanna Lee, John Belkot, Graham Ross, Matthew Rogers, Gerald Busby and David Knotts at Festivals including the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Dallas Festival of Modern Music and Dartington International Summer School.
Ms. Knussen’s work as an educator includes teaching individual singing lessons, ear training and sight-singing classes at the college level and teaching classroom music to children ages four to sixteen including classes in composition. She has coached beginners’ chamber music groups (including British Associated Board string students at Grades 1 to 5) and a variety of children’s choruses both in the UK and the US. Additionally, she has acted as assistant vocal animateur for projects with English National Opera and the BBC Proms.
Ms. Knussen’s media experience includes blind direction of cameras throughout live concert performances at Elliott Carter’s Centenary Celebrations at the Tanglewood Music Center as well as writing and cuing supertitles for various operas there. Her supertitles were recently featured in a production at New York City Opera. She served as producer for the recordings of Elliott Carter’s Boston Concerto and Cello Concerto, music assistant for recordings of works by August Read Thomas, Oliver Knussen and Hans Werner Henze and assistant to the director for Sounds from the Big White House for BBC 4 as well as score-reader for LWT/Channel 4’s series on twentieth century orchestral music with Simon Rattle entitled Leaving Home.
Andrew Sauvageau - Vocal Artistic Director
Andrew Sauvageau , baritone, rejoices in the diversity of his musical career, embracing song, oratorio, opera and other genres with verve and alacrity. He embodied the roles of Falke in Die Fledermaus, the Forester in Cunning Little Vixen, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Herr Bauer in the modern opera Dora, and Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro.
As a concert soloist, Mr. Sauvageau sang Bach’s Magnificat and Mozart’s C Minor Mass under Helmuth Rilling in his native Oregon, while undertaking solos in Bach’s Johannes-Passion, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem and Handel’s Messiah in the Greater Baltimore/Washington area. As a recitalist, his affinity for Romantic Lieder and 20th century and contemporary American song has led him to perform a variety of concerts, to include the premieres of several new works by American composers.
Highlights from the 2010-2011 season include Louis Andriessen’s Die Materie with Great Noise New Music Ensemble, Handel’s Messiah with Chandos Orchestra, Die Schöne Müllerin and Brahms’ Liebeslieder books at the Walters Art Gallery, Floro in Mirena e Floro with Baltimore Vocal Arts, Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette with Bel Cantanti, and Wild Thing with Horns in Where the Wild Things Are with New York City Opera.
Mr. Sauvageau has studied with William Sharp and Milagro Vargas and has coached extensively with John Shirley-Quirk, JoAnn Kulesza, Robert Muckenfuss. He was a fellow with the Tanglewood Music Center in 2010, where he had the privilege to work with Phyllis Curtin, Dawn Upshaw, Mark Morris, Lucy Shelton, Kayo Iwama, Oliver Knussen and Alan Smith. Mr. Sauvageau is on the board of founders for the new vocal ensemble hexaCollective, which will have its inaugural season in 2011-2012.
Melissa Wertheimer - Instrumental Artistic Director
Melissa Wertheimer (Instrumental Artistic Director, flute/piccolo) is a new music enthusiast and diverse performer. With the Dahlia Flute Duo , she has given recitals, lectures, and workshops in 11 states. They have received grants from Yamaha, the College Music Society, the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, and the Peabody Institute. Melissa has performed as principal flute in the orchestras of the College Light Opera Company, Maryland Choral Society, Syracuse Chorale, and Ithaca College at Avery Fisher Hall. In Baltimore, Melissa performs with hexaCollective, Vivre Musicale , and the Golden Egg Ensemble . Melissa won second place in the 2009 Piccolo Artist Competition of the Flute Society of Washington, DC. In 2007, she became the first student in the history of Ithaca College to win the Ithaca College Concerto Competition on piccolo. As a member of the Ithaca Choro Ensemble, Melissa was featured on the NPR program "Crossing Borders" in October 2005. She is a Music History Instructor for the Peabody at Homewood Program of the Johns Hopkins University, and teaches flute at the Chesapeake Arts Center and from her private studio. She holds a M.M. in Piccolo from the Peabody Institute and a B.M. in Flute from Ithaca College.
VIDEO:
Federal Hill Parlor Series: hexaSalon
Here are some links to recent press and reviews:
http://www.thosewhodig.net/?hexaCollective%3A-Winter-Marathon-Concert&article=654
New Kid on the Block - Today’s writer is Melissa Wertheimer.
January 8, 2012
Hello, hexaFans! Welcome to hexaBlog. I am the Instrumental Artistic Director and a newcomer to the fabulous hexaCollective. I’m proud and excited to be a part of running this ensemble and series! Sonya, Andrew, and I have had many fun work/play dinners to figure out how we could incorporate an instrumental roster into hexaCollective. Four months later, our concert series has unique themes and works that showcase the many talented musicians in the collective.
hexaCollective’s December concert featured the debut of our Instrumental Roster. My favorite work from that program was Gustav Holst’s Four Pieces, Op. 35 for soprano and violin. Our vocalists (Sarah Hayashi and Molly Young) and violinists (Kathryn Kilian and Joseph Kneer) gave superb and haunting performances! Our percussionist Georg Videnov also gave a fantastic and visceral performance of Iannis Xenakis' Rebonds b. Instrumental repertoire that I can’t wait to perform and hear in our upcoming concerts include: Concerto da Camera for flute and English horn by Arthur Honegger (“hexaSix” Jan. 14), L’album des Six for solo piano (“hexaSix” Jan. 14), three instrumental Cantos by Samuel Adler (“hexChange” Mar. 10), Living Room Music by John Cage (“hexChange” Mar. 10), Libby Larson's Blue Windows for wind quintet and piano (“hexArt” Apr. 14), and Theme and Variations, Op. 80 for flute and string quartet by Amy Beach (“hexaFemmes” May 12).
Please join us at Mount Vernon Music Space on January 14, 2012 at 730pm. We look forward to seeing you there!
Greetings from hexaCollective!
This blog will be written by different members of hexaCollective highlighting what we are doing collectively as well as individually. To see the personal blogs of individual members hit a link in the colored box.
Launch Day! - Today's writer is Andrew Sauvageau.
I'm so glad you've found us! We have a fantastic season in mind, and I for one am incredibly excited about it. As a singing individual, I've always had opportunities to collaborate with other artists one-on-one in recital settings, and in large groups in operatic and standard oratorio, but I have yet to really dive into this niche we are establishing here in Baltimore. We want to bring something to the public that they might not have experienced before. The idea of a vocal ensemble stems from concepts that are very old, but are constantly changing as the ideas of performance stretch and evolve. We want to share the wide span of this kind of music with you, pulling from its historical roots, its recent past, and even from other genres to display the versatility of the human voice. Follow us as we embark on this exciting facet of musical artistry. We are soloists, ensemble, collaborators, musicians. We are hexaCollective.
Andrew is a Baltimore based Baritone and Co-Artistic Director of hexaCollective.
Donations from strangers, friends, family, colleagues and heroes are what will keep hexaCollective growing and evolving.
hexaCollective is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the purposes of hexaCollective are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
If you would like to make a donation to hexaCollective please click on the icon below.
For more information about hexaCollective, bookings, questions
or to be added to our mailing list please fill in the form above.
