L. Bernstein: For Craig Urquhart; For my Daughter, Nina; For William Kappel (piano solos from ‘Anniversaries’; Dream with me
• G. Gershwin: Prelude no.I, II, III (piano solo); Someone to Watch over Me a.o.

 Soprano Lauren Wagner has won wide acclaim as the winner of numerous prizes and awards, as well as for her performances on concert and opera stages. With a “voice that has power and beauty....a gleaming top, warm phrasing and effortless technique” (Seattle Sun). Miss Wagner has won four major competitions in 1991 alone: First Prize of the Joy in Singing Award, the Concert Artist Guild New York Competition, the Third Prize of the Marian Anderson Competition, and the Pro Musicis Foundation Award. She was also a National First Place Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, winner of a San Francisco Opera Merola Award, the First Prize Winner of the National Association of Teachers of Singing Artists Awards Competition, and was twice a Santa Fe Opera Apprentice, winning the Stetnar Award as outstanding apprentice the second time. Miss Wagner has been the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Sullivan Grant as well as a grant from the Metropolitan Opera Education Fund.
Miss Wagner’s opera credits include leading roles with the Seattle, Santa Fe, Fort Worth, and San Bernardino Operas. She appeared as Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus (Johann Strauss), with the June Opera Festival in Princeton. Other roles have included Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Fiordiligi in Cosí fan tutte (W.A. Mozart), and Europe in Die Liebe der Danae (Richard Strauss). Miss Wagner has also appeared as soloist with the New York Youth Symphony and with the New York’s Feld Ballet. Equally at home on the recital stage, Miss Wagner has performed throughout the Midwest and South. Recital engagements included performances at Stanford University, at the Bing Theater and for the Maestro Foundation in Los Angeles, and in Savannah, Birmingham and Ann Arbor. Her European recital debut was at the Opéra Comique in Paris.
Miss Wagner moved from her native Ann Arbor to Vancouver, to take up a position on the faculty of the University of British Columbia. She holds degrees from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Elizabeth Mosher, and the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Ellen Faull. While at the Manhattan School, Miss Wagner performed leading roles in the New York premieres of Richard Strauss’s Feuersnot (Diemut) and Hindemith’s News of the Day (Laura). She currently studies voice with Susan Ormont and coaches with Martin Katz; other teachers have included Marlena Malas and Margaret Hosswell.

Frederick Weldy

From the White House and Carnegie Hall to Eastern Europe and Central America, pianist Frederick Weldy has received enthusiastic acclaim for his performances as soloist and as an accompanist. Born in India, he received his Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan, and currently resides in Palo Alto, California, where he is on the piano faculty of Stanford University. As winner of the East and West Artist International Auditions, Mr. Weldy was presented in a very successful solo recital debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and was praised by the New York Times for its balance of “precision, power, and passion”. Other engagements have included the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, and the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, Poland, as well as concertos with the Utah Symphony and the Rochester Philharmonic. His performances have been heard on National Public Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and he was seen on PBS Television as a prizewinner in the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition.

 (...) Wat een klankkleuren kan deze zangeres maken, wat een schitterende stem, wat een stembeheersing (...)
Klassiek, June '93
Miss Wagner put together a program of considerable beauty and consistency and made a case for the richness of the American song repertory (...)
New York Times, May '93