Performances
By popular demand, we're doing it all over again! Many of our audience members asked us to bring this performance back so we're working on the details and will keep you posted. In the meantime, support Art Songs of Haiti with your generous donations, ad sponsorships or host a fundraiser of your own and please SPREAD THE WORD about this spectacular performance!
UPDATE: We will soon post video excerpts and performance photos of Art Songs of Haiti to give you a taste.
About the Show
Be inspired by the unique classical Art Songs movement of the Haïtian Diaspora performed by internationally renowned opera soloist, conductor, director and composer, Jean Ronald LaFond. Some of the most remarkable composition by Haitian composers are the classical songs, called Art Songs or melodies. The songs cover nearly a century of composition in a tradition that goes back to the early 19th century and represent the multi-facted culture that is Haiti.
About the Artists
Jean-Ronald LaFond, now a dramatic tenor will make his debut in this new repertoire as Canio in Pagliacci in October 2008. As a conductor, he most recently led the Clifford Brown Festival Jazz Orchestra in Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts and as a stage director most recently led the ensemble of the Berlin International Opera in productions of Don Giovanni and Macbeth. He has appeared as soloist in Bach's Passions, Magnificat and B minor Mass, Requiems by Mozart, Fauré, Duruflé, and Brahms, Handel's Messiah, Orff's Carmina Burana, Haydn's Creation and Beethoven's 9th Symphony and played lead roles in more than 20 different operas with Michigan Opera Theater, Berlin International Opera, Opera Delaware, Intermountain Opera, Rheinland-Pfalz Philharmonie, Kalamazoo Symphonie, etc. A prolific recitalist, LaFond has sung more than 300 recitals in 10 languages with such partners as Dalton Baldwin, the late Glenn Parker, Mutsumi Moteki, Lillian Questel, Akemi Masuko and Julie Nishimura. An internationally respected pedagogue, students of Jean-Ronald LaFond attend the finest Schools of Music in the country including the Juilliard School and University of Michigan School of Music, and sing professional with companies in Germany, Japan and Australia. Dr. LaFond held academic positions at University of Florida, East Carolina University, University of Delaware and Westminster Choir College among others. He currently teaches privately in New York and Berlin. Jean-Ronald LaFond holds the Doctor of Musical Arts and the Masters of Music degrees from the University of Michigan and the Bachelor of Music degree from Westminster Choir College. LaFond studied orchestral conducting under Gustav Meier, and composition under Leslie Bassett and William Albright..
Sarah Childress An exceptionally versatile collaborative musician, Sarah Childress has played with many of Philadelphia’s finest performers and institutions, from David Kim to the Mendelssohn Club. She earned her M.M. in Piano Performance and Choral Conducting from the IU Jacobs School of Music while also working as an Associate Instructor of Music Theory. She currently serves as a Conducting Assistant at historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Center City Philadelphia where she accompanies the main choir and directs both the Sinfonia Sacra youth orchestra and the thirty-voice Women’s Chorus. Her teachers include Edward Auer and Emile Naoumoff, piano; Jan Harrington, John Poole, and Paul S. Jones, conducting; and Marilyn Keiser, organ and church music. Ms. Childress actively freelances as a pianist, organist, coach, and conductor. She has been awarded scholarships from The Hymn Society, the Robert Carwithen Music Foundation, and the 2007 Académie Internationale d’Été de Nice where she studied collaborative piano at the invitation of Dalton Baldwin.