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Program includes a mix of American and Parisian works
The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra will perform with Dame Felicity Lott at 8 p.m. Friday, March 28, in the Williams Center for the Arts.
Tickets are free for students, $4 for faculty ad staff, and $30 for the public. They can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009. This is a special non-subscription performance. The final performance in this year’s Chamber Music series will be the Emerson String Quartet, April 9, $22.
The performance by Orpheus includes two works that will illuminate the Impressionist movement of 19th century Paris: Symphony in C by George Bizet and Songs of Love and the Sea by Ernest Chausson. The American half of the concert features Latin American Sketches by Aaron Copland and �cana by Cuban-born composer Tania Leon, newly arranged for orchestra and premiered here by Orpheus. Orpheus and Lott will perform the same concert on April 1 at Carnegie Hall.
The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1972 by cellist Julian Fifer and a group of fellow musicians who aspired to perform chamber orchestral repertory as chamber music through their own close collaborative efforts, and without a conductor. Orpheus developed its approach to the study and performance of this repertory by bringing to the orchestral setting the chamber music principles of personal involvement and mutual respect. Orpheus is a self-governing organization, making the repertory and interpretive decisions ordinarily assumed by a conductor.
Orpheus has received numerous distinctions and awards, including a 2001 Grammy Award for Shadow Dances: Stravinsky Miniatures, a 1999 Grammy Award for its jazz-inspired Ravel and Gershwin collaboration with Herbie Hancock, a 1998 Grammy nomination for its recording of Mozart piano concerti with Richard Goode, and the 1998 “Ensemble of the Year” award by Musical America.
Born in Cheltenham, England, in 1947, Lott initially decided against a professional singing career. At Royal Holloway College, London University, she read French and Latin to become an interpreter. During a stay in France, Lott continued to take singing lessons at the Conservatoire of Grenoble. In 1969, she returned to London to take up her singing studies at the Royal Academy of Music and left in 1973, after obtaining her LRAM and winning the Principal’s Prize.
In 1975, Lott made her debut at the English National Opera as Pamina in Mozart’s Magic Flute and in 1976 she took part in the first performance of Henze’s opera We Come To The River at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. She has performed in all of the great opera houses of the world, including Vienna, Milan, Paris, Brussels, Munich, Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, New York, and Chicago.
Lott has also performed as a concert artist. She has worked with nearly all major orchestras and festivals under such conductors as Carlos Kleiber, Georg Solti, Bernard Haitink, James Levine, Andre Previn, Neeme J�rvi, Klaus Tennstedt, Andrew Davis, Kurt Masur, Franz Welser-M�st, and many more.
Lott has received honorary doctorates at the Universities of Sussex, Loughborough, London, Leicester, and Oxford, as well as the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Glasgow. She was awarded the titles Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1990 and Chevalier dans la Legion d’Honneur in 2001 by the French government. In 1990, Lott was also made a Commander of the British Empire and in 1996, she was honored as a Dame Commander of the British Empire. In 2003, Lott was awarded the title of Bayerische Kammers�ngerin, the highest honor given by the Bavarian State Opera.
The 2007-2008 Performance Series at Lafayette College is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, J. Mahlon and Grace Buck Fund, the Croasdale Fund, the Class of ’73 Fund, the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour; the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and the New England Foundation for the Arts.