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Songs from Letters: An Immersive Concert Event
Chicago Fringe Opera presents a one-night only recital featuring song cycles of Gwyneth Walker, Libby Larsen, and Dominick Argento…
Repertoire: Argento’s Robert Browning from Casa Guidi, and A Few Words About Chekhov
This concert has been cancelled, with the hope of rescheduling for a future season. Updates will be shared here as soon as they are available.
Bridget returns to College of DuPage singing the Gounod Requiem with DuPage Chorale, the DuPage Chorale Orchestra, and Maestro Lee Kessellman.
Repertoire: Alto Soloist, Gounod Requiem
May 3 - McAninch Arts Center - College of DuPage at 7:30pm
Tickets $15-$17 available here.
This production has been postponed and will be rescheduled for the 2020-’21 season. Updates will be shared here as soon as they are available.
Two Remain (Out of Darkness): An Opera in Two Acts
Music by Jake Heggie
Libretto by Gene Scheer
American composer Jake Heggie continues his ‘Year in Chicago’ with the Chicago premiere of his latest opera (created with librettist Gene Scheer) based on the separate journals of two Holocaust survivors: Krystyna Zywulska and Gad Beck…
Role: Zosia
Conductor: Catherine O’Shaughnessy
Stage Director: Derek Van Bartham
Performance Dates: March 28, 29, April 1, 3, & 4
Tickets $25-$45 available here.
The 2019/20 season winter parlor concert series, Between the Lines, features songs that blur the line between classical and popular genres. Pianist Kuang-Hao Huang, commended for his “playing that is sensitive and wonderfully warm” (American Record Guide), joins the ensemble…
Repertoire: Selections from Love Songs by Antonin Dvorak; songs of Edith Piaf, Stephen Sondheim, and Lucy Simon.
January 25 - A Gold Coast Home at 7:30pm
January 31 - Pleasant Home at 7:30pm
March 2 - Buchanan Chapel - Fourth Presbyterian Church at 7:30pm
Tickets $45 available here.
Bridget makes her College of DuPage debut under the direction of conductor Lee Kesselman, singing the Haydn Harmoniemesse with DuPage Chorale and the DuPage Chorale Orchestra. The program also features J.S. Bach's Cantata BWV #1.
Repertoire: Alto Soloist, Joseph Haydn Harmoniemesse
December 7 - McAninch Arts Center - College of DuPage at 7:30pm
Tickets $15-$17 available here.
Fourth Coast honors the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment with the Chicago premiere of Lori Laitman's Are Women People?…
Repertoire: Songs by Marion Bauer, Ruth Crawford-Seeger; selections from Jake Heggie’s cycle The Deepest Desire; Lori Laitman’s Are Women People?.
November 7 - Woman’s Club of Evanston at 7:30pm
November 9 - St. Paul & the Redeemer (Hyde Park) at 7:30pm
Tickets $45 available here.
Bridget makes her solo artist debut with The Chicago Ensemble at their 2019 gala benefit concert. Spend a memorable, intimate afternoon as Bridget Skaggs, mezzo-soprano and Gerald Rizzer, piano perform an hour-long program…
Repertoire: Songs of Stephen Foster, Carrie Jacobs-Bond, Édith Piaf, Jacques Prévert; opera arias from Martha and Carmen; standards by George Gershwin and Cole Porter.
October 26 - Le Piano (Rogers Park, Chicago) at 2pm
Tickets $85, available here.
Bridget has been selected for Chicago Vocal Arts Consortium’s Summer Opera Workshop of Handel’s Alcina. The production will be staged with Baroque Gesture and Movement based on based on the gestural acting/oratorical technique of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Stage Director: Sarah Edgar
Music Director: Beth Parker
Role: Bradamante
Fourth Coast Ensemble’s Fifth Season concludes with a field trip to the zoo! Art song composers have looked to the animal kingdom for creative inspiration in their music for generations. Ensemble member David Govertsen has curated this menagerie of animal-inspired songs by Schubert, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Libby Larsen, Gwyneth Walker, and Richard Pearson Thomas.
May 31 - Buchanan Chapel - Fourth Presbyterian at 7:00pm
June 2 - Performance Penthouse - Logan Center at 3:00pm
Repertoire: Francis Poulenc’s Le Bestiaire; selections for vocal chamber quartet by Schubert, Ravel, and Copland.
Tickets $45 available here.
A collection of works by Christopher Cerrone
In Collaboration with Latitude 49
The vital and intimate emotional world of composer Christopher Cerrone is at the heart of Love Wounds. This evening of immersive theater will feature Chicago Fringe Opera, Chicago’s premiere “alt-opera” company, in collaboration with the powerhouse mixed-ensemble Latitude 49.
Included are the cycles I Will Learn to Love a Person and The Naomi Songs, Cerrone’s one-act opera All Wounds Bleed, and a world premiere commission. Recent winner of the 2015 Rome Prize and Pulitzer Prize finalist for his opera Invisible Cities, Christopher Cerrone will be closely involved with Love Wounds, serving as composer/arranger and co-curator.
Repertoire: The Naomi Songs
Performance Dates: May 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 2019
Director: Susan Payne O’Brien
Conductor: Catherine O’Shaughnessy
Tickets $20-$40 available here.
Fourth Coast Ensemble members Bridget Skaggs, mezzo-soprano, and Zachary Vanderburg, tenor, present a guest artist recital titled “Wine, Women, and Song,” accompanied by Dana Brown, piano.
The Shoreline Music Society transforms a concert experience into a conversation among friends. Your ticket brings you an up-close-and-personal experience with the music, Artistic Director Robert Nordling, and Shoreline’s world-class performers. Welcome to the conversation – welcome to the Society. A partnership with you, the Ramsdell Regional Center for the Arts, and Manistee.
Repertoire: Songs by Gwyneth Walker, Lori Laitman, Lita Grier; Benjamin Britten’s Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac; and selections by Stephen Sondheim.
Tickets $15-$30 available here.
Bridget has been selected as one of five finalists for the annual Sherrill Milnes Opera Idol competition.
For the 13th consecutive year, VOICExperience returns to the Midwest for the annual Opera Idol vocal competition in Chicago, Illinois. A panel of judges, including Alan Darling, Joachim Schamberger, Maria Zouves, and Sherrill Milnes, will select the winner.
Bridget has been selected as a young artist for Opera Steamboat's 2018 Opera Artist Institute. The Opera Artist Institute plays a vital role in the life of Opera Steamboat, giving emerging artists a wide range of opportunities to learn and perform in a fast paced and supportive environment. Participants are immersed in rehearsals for the shows, vocal coaching and Master Classes during their three-week residency in Steamboat Springs.
Leos Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen
Role: the Fox
Conducted by Joshua Horsch
Stage direction by Grant Pressier
For tickets and more information, visit operasteamboat.org.
Now in its third year, Haymarket’s Summer Opera Course offers students a unique opportunity to study early Italian operatic literature and performance practice with leading artists in the field of early music. The week culminates in a staged public performance of Cavalli’s La Didone accompanied by members of the Haymarket Opera Orchestra.
Cavalli’s La Didone premiered at Venice’s Teatro San Cassiano in 1640. Librettist Giovanni Francesco Busenello (author of the libretto for Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea) based the story on Virgil’s Aeneid.
Role: Giunone
2018 Summer Opera Course Faculty
Drew Minter, Stage Director
Craig Trompeter, Program Director, Feldenkrais®
Alessandra Visconti, Italian Diction
David Schrader, Vocal coaching and Performance Practice
In the Spring of 2018, Fourth Coast Ensemble will present the world premiere of a song cycle by Chicago-based composer, Wayland Rogers, commissioned expressly for this vocal quartet. The new work, I-THOU, takes its title from the proposition of the philosopher Martin Buber that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. The composer has selected poems that are illustrative of relationships between various people: lovers, family, friends, and strangers. The new work, 33 minutes long, is presented alongside a selection of other songs from Wayland Rogers' catalogue.
Pianist and Fourth Coast Ensemble Board of Directors Chair, Dana Brown, joins the quartet.
Tickets available at fourthcoastensemble.com.
MARCH 10, 12, 14, 16 & 18*, 2018 | 7:30PM (*3PM)
Music and Libretto by Ross Crean
The Great God Pan takes its story from an eponymous 1890 novella by Welsh author Arthur Machen, which explores themes of scientific hubris, transcendental medicine, and unexplainable supernatural behavior. The story begins with a surgery gone wrong. Dr. Raymond invites Mr. Clarke to witness an important experiment based on elements of nontraditional, ancient rituals. Raymond sacrifices his ward, Mary, as the subject of his attempt to access a higher spiritual plane – referred to as, “seeing the Great God Pan” – and unwittingly initiates a series of mysterious supernatural occurrences that Clarke encounters over the next few decades.
Running time 80 min // Cash Bar
This space can only be accessed by one flight of stairs
Role: Austin
Bridget will perform with Fourth Coast Ensemble on the First Presbyterian Church of Flint's monthly chamber music recital series.
The group will perform vocal chamber music of Gioachino Rossini including the quartets O giorno sereno, La Passeggiata, and In giorno sì bello, which features a beautiful solo for mezzo.
Fourth Coast Ensemble’s 2017-18 Season Winter concert, Americana, explores our nation’s cultural identity through art song. The program opens with quintessential American folk song settings, followed by contemporary art song focused on American natural landscapes, and a set celebrating the poetry of African-American poets from the past 150 years. An uplifting evening, this concert will reaffirm the power of music to document our past and guide us toward a more perfect union.
Minneapolis-based pianist and Source Song Festival co-founder, Mark Bilyeu, returns to perform with Fourth Coast Ensemble for the second time.
Fourth Coast Ensemble’s 2017-18 Season Winter concert, Americana, explores our nation’s cultural identity through art song. The program opens with quintessential American folk song settings, followed by contemporary art song focused on American natural landscapes, and a set celebrating the poetry of African-American poets from the past 150 years. An uplifting evening, this concert will reaffirm the power of music to document our past and guide us toward a more perfect union.
Minneapolis-based pianist and Source Song Festival co-founder, Mark Bilyeu, returns to perform with Fourth Coast Ensemble for the second time.
Fourth Coast Ensemble’s 2017-18 Season Winter concert, Americana, explores our nation’s cultural identity through art song. The program opens with quintessential American folk song settings, followed by contemporary art song focused on American natural landscapes, and a set celebrating the poetry of African-American poets from the past 150 years. An uplifting evening, this concert will reaffirm the power of music to document our past and guide us toward a more perfect union.
Minneapolis-based pianist and Source Song Festival co-founder, Mark Bilyeu, returns to perform with Fourth Coast Ensemble for the second time.
Fourth Coast Ensemble's fourth season opens in the fall of 2017 with alla Rossini, a concert that explores the history and origins of the parlor concert and the chamber vocal quartet. The group will present selections from Bärenreiter's forthcoming critical edition of Rossini's vocal chamber music, edited by Philip Gossett and Daniela Macchione, including newly rediscovered and previously unpublished works of Rossini. The concert finishes with a well-known vocal chamber work also born out of the salon, Brahms’ Neue Liebeslieder.
Fourth Coast is joined by pianist and Rossini scholar, Elizabeth Parker, as well as a Fourth Coast favorite, Matthew Gemmill, who joins for the Neue Liebeslieder.
Fourth Coast Ensemble's fourth season opens in the fall of 2017 with alla Rossini, a concert that explores the history and origins of the parlor concert and the chamber vocal quartet. The group will present selections from Bärenreiter's forthcoming critical edition of Rossini's vocal chamber music, edited by Philip Gossett and Daniela Macchione, including newly rediscovered and previously unpublished works of Rossini. The concert finishes with a well-known vocal chamber work also born out of the salon, Brahms’ Neue Liebeslieder.
Fourth Coast is joined by pianist and Rossini scholar, Elizabeth Parker, as well as a Fourth Coast favorite, Matthew Gemmill, who joins for the Neue Liebeslieder.
Performance and Q&A with collaborative pianist Shannon McGinnis as a part of the Near North Chapter of Lyric Opera Guild's annual programming.
Repertoire: Claude Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis, followed by "Que-fais tu, blanche tourterelle" (Stephano's aria) from Charles Gounod's Roméo et Juliette
In cooperation with Chicago Opera Theater and their Chicago Premiere of Philip Glass’ Perfect American, Fourth Coast Ensemble presents a concert series highlighting the life of Walt Disney. The concert weaves quotes and stories of Walt together with song. It’s a touch of whimsy, nostalgia, and fantasy. The evening includes Juliana Hall's Fables for a Prince, John Musto's The Book of Uncommon Prayer, and Liza Lehmann's Nonsense Songs from Alice in Wonderland. Featuring Matthew Gemmill, piano.
In cooperation with Chicago Opera Theater and their Chicago Premiere of Philip Glass’ Perfect American, Fourth Coast Ensemble presents a concert series highlighting the life of Walt Disney. The concert weaves quotes and stories of Walt together with song. It’s a touch of whimsy, nostalgia, and fantasy. The evening includes Juliana Hall's Fables for a Prince, John Musto's The Book of Uncommon Prayer, and Liza Lehmann's Nonsense Songs from Alice in Wonderland. Featuring Matthew Gemmill, piano.
Get to know the golden standards of the classical vocal quartet in an evening of song with Fourth Coast Ensemble. Fourth Coast will be joined by Source Song Festival’s general director and renowned pianist, Mark Bilyeu, in an evening not to miss. Songs by Brahms, Boulanger, Massenet, Schubert, as well as a set featuring American composers curated by Mr. Bilyeu.
Get to know the golden standards of the classical vocal quartet in an evening of song with Fourth Coast Ensemble. Fourth Coast will be joined by Source Song Festival’s general director and renowned pianist, Mark Bilyeu, in an evening not to miss. Songs by Brahms, Boulanger, Massenet, Schubert, as well as a set featuring American composers curated by Mr. Bilyeu.
Baroque on Beaver is a joyful series of concerts offered each summer on Beaver Island, Michigan, located 30 miles off the coast of Lake Michigan. Concerts include orchestral, choral, solo, and chamber ensemble, featuring professional performers. The performances focus on classical music, but you may hear jazz, popular, Broadway, spirituals, or whatever strikes the musicians’ fancy. “B-on-B” celebrates its 15th season in 2016, running from July 29th through August 7th. "B-on-B" is the signature event of the Beaver Island Cultural Arts Association.
An exploration of the published works of composer Gwyneth Walker at the 2016 National Association of Teachers of Singing Convention.
Repertoire: songs of Gwyneth Walker.
In closing their Inaugural Season, CHAI will present vocal chamber music by living, emerging composers, including Caroline Shaw, Mohammed Fairouz, Christopher Cerrone and Juliana Hall.
Repertoire: One Art by Juliana Hall, four songs for mezzo-soprano and cello.
