The Hamilton College Department of Music will present a free recital featuring soprano Rebecca Karpoff and pianist Fred Karpoff on Sunday, Nov. 4, at 3 p.m. in Wellin Hall at the Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts. The concert will include Mussorgsky's song cycle "The Nursery" as well as humorous American songs and works by Schubert and Strauss.
Soprano Rebecca Karpoff has been featured as soloist with the Syracuse and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras, the Rochester Philharmonic, the Rochester Oratorio Society, and Eastman School Symphony Orchestra in works of Szymanowski, Mozart, Handel, Bach, and Haydn. Operatic roles include the countess in The Marriage of Figaro, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Rosina in The Barber of Seville, and the title role in Puccini's Suor Angelica. Frequently heard in Central New York, she has performed with the Skaneateles Festival, the Syracuse Camerata, as featured recitalist with Civic Morning Musicals and as Dorabella in Syracuse Opera's October 2000 production of Cosi fan tutte. She has sung world premieres by Augusta Read Thomas and Samuel Adler, as well as large works by Schoenberg, Boulez, Harbison, Varèse, and Ginastera.
Ms. Karpoff received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music and is currently assistant professor of voice/opera at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. A former artistic ambassador for the United States Information Agency, she has been a prize-winner in numerous national singing competitions. She can be heard with members of the Atlanta Symphony on the Gasparo CD: Unholy Sonnets and other Song Cycles by Samuel Adler. In the spring of 2002, she will appear as Zerlina in Syracuse Opera's Don Giovanni.
Fred Karpoff has concertized widely as both soloist and collaborative pianist, including at the Rutgers Summerfest, Skaneateles, and Siena (Italy) music festivals, as well as in collaborations with the Cassatt Quartet, Larry Combs, Eric Ruske, and members of the New World, Chicago, and Audubon String Quartets and the Los Angeles Piano Quartet. The Syracuse Newspapers recently hailed him as "one of the most exciting pianists to watch and hear in the history of the [Skaneateles] festival; Karpoff's interpretations consistently reveal not only a keen dramatic sense of purpose, but also a deep understanding of a work's architectural structure." Concerts last season included four performances of the Beethoven Fourth Concerto with the Syracuse Symphony, concerts in Florence and Montecatini, Italy, and a chamber music recital at Merkin Hall in New York City. A former artistic ambassador for the United States Information Agency, he is a past prize-winner in the San Antonio, Frinna Awerbuch, and Dublin International Piano Competitions.
Karpoff has studied with Ann Schein, Robert Weirich, and Yoheved Kaplinsky and holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Peabody Conservatory, where he was a frequent performer in the master classes of Leon Fleisher. Formerly on the faculties of Peabody and the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, he is currently associate professor of piano and ensemble arts and chair of the keyboard faculty at the Setnor School of Music at Syracuse University.
Fred and Rebecca Karpoff have performed throughout North America and across Europe and Africa, including at the Franz Liszt Hochschüle für Musik in Weimar, the Theatre d'Esch (Luxembourg), the American Cultural Center in Brussels, the University of Cape Coast (Ghana), the Bulawayo Academy of Music (Zimbabwe), the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and the National Concert Hall in Dublin. They have two daughters—Elena, 5 and Luella, 3.
This concert is free and open to the public. No tickets are required. There will be a reception following the performance. For more information call the performing arts box office at (315) 859-4331.
