LunART Chamber Music Collective presents “In Her Voice” featuring GRAMMY Award-winning soprano Sarah Brailey in a program of chamber works with string quartet. Embarking on March as Women’s History Month, the concert will spotlight renowned women composers of today, each a distinct voice with a story to tell, who are currently shaping 21st century music history.

LunART with Sarah Brailey will perform Saturday, March 1, at 7 PM at the Opera House, with doors opening at 6 PM.  Admission is $20-30, plus Eventbrite fees. Tickets to this and all other Opera House events can be found at tickets.mpoh.org.

A meet-and-greet reception with the artists will follow the performance. All are invited for light refreshments and conversation with Sarah, violinists Kangwon Lee Kim and Dawn Dongeun Wohn, violist Marie Pauls, and cellist Lindsey Crabb.

Vocal text lays a thematic foundation for this program, one of light and transformation. In The Light Blurred by the Stars, composer Eliza Brown has created musical vignettes from five poems by Susan Stewart, touching on themes of human survival and renewal. Danaë Xanthe Vlasse’s (France, Greece) Nocturne pour Caline is a moment of ethereal suspension, an homage to the composer’s beloved feline companion. In By and By, Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw draws listeners into an intimate space, transporting us from timeless folk hymns to lush, reckless abandon instrumentals.

Audiences will get a sneak preview of what’s to come for LunART’s upcoming summer festival with Shuo, a string quartet by 2025 Composer-in-Residence Chen Yi. The Chinese word for “initiate,” ”shuo” also refers to the beginning of a new moon cycle. Dr. Chen, a Guggenheim fellow and former violinist with Peking Opera, seamlessly blends Chinese and Western musical language into a voice all her own.

Program

• By and By, Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
• The Light that Blurred the Stars, Eliza Brown (b. 1985)
• Nocturne pour Caline, Danaë Xanthe Vlasse
• Shuo, Chen Yi (b. 1953)

About Sarah Brailey

GRAMMY Award-winning soprano Sarah Brailey enjoys a versatile career that defies categorization. Praised by The New York Times for her “radiant, liquid tone,” and by Opera UK for “a sound of remarkable purity,” she is a prolific vocalist, cellist, recording artist, and Educator.

Sarah’s numerous career highlights include performing Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato with the Mark Morris Dance Group, serenading the Mona Lisa with John Zorn’s Madrigals at the Louvre in Paris, and recording the role of The Soul on the world premiere album of Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Prison, for which she received the 2020 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. Other notable recent and upcoming projects include the role of the Angel in Handel’s La Resurrezione with Haymarket Opera; Julia Wolfe’s Her Story with the Lorelei Ensemble and the Boston, Chicago, Nashville, National, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras; and David Lang’s Song of Songs at the Barbican Centre.

Sarah is a member of Beyond Artists, a coalition of artists that donates a percentage of their concert fees to non-profit organizations. Through Beyond Artists, she supports the Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, and the Animal Welfare Institute. Sarah is the Director of Vocal Studies at the University of Chicago, the Artistic Director of the Handel Aria Competition, and serves on the voice faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.