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Special Guests Saturday, December 24, 2005 Odetta Odetta is one of the most celebrated figures in music. She is a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts and Humanities, the National Visionary Award from the Kennedy Center, the first Duke Ellington Fellowship Award from Yale University, Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Library of Congress, the International Folk Alliance, the World Folk Music Association, and Presidente d'Honeurs from the Cognac (France) Blues Festival, as well as Grammy and W.C. Handy Award nominations and numerous honorary degrees from various universities. She was born in 1930in Birmingham, Alabama. From there, her family moved to Los Angeles, where she began classical voice training. In 1944 she started a four-year association performing at the famed Turnabout Theater in Hollywood, and in 1949 she joined the touring company of Finian's Rainbow. Odetta found her way into the folk music scene in the early 1950s, singing at the Hungry i and the Tin Angel in San Francisco and the Blue Angel in New York. In the decades since, she has released dozens of recordings. As a leading voice of social activism around the world, she participated in the Civil Rights marches in Selma, sang at the 1963 and '83 marches on Washington, and played for President Kennedy and his cabinet on the nationally televised Civil Rights program Dinner with the President. In 1995, she was invited to Beijing, China, as an Elder to the International Women's Conference. Odetta's latest recording is Gonna Let It Shine: A Concert for the Holidays (M.C. Records), recorded live at Fordham University in New York City.Jennifer Rivera After being selected as Outstanding Debut Artist by New York City Opera in 2002, Jennifer Rivera has gone on to perform leading roles with that company each season, as well as expanding her operatic repertoire throughout the United States and abroad. Her roles at New York City Opera have included Lazuli in L'Etoile, Hansel in Hansel and Gretel, Meg in Little Women, and Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro. In the 2005–2006 Season, Ms. Rivera continues her relationship with NYCO, where this fall she sang the part of Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and in the spring will appear as Mhyrrine in Mark Adamo's new opera Lysistrata. A 2001 graduate of the Juilliard Opera Center, Rivera won first place in the 2003 Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation Competition and an encouragement grant in the George London Foundation's 2001 Competition. Recent performances outside the United States include the title role in La Cenerentola with Opera di Colombia in Bogota, and Meg in Little Women as part of NYCO's tour of Japan.The Pavlishyn Sisters with Alla Kutsevych The Pavlishyn Sisters-13-year-old Nadiya and 11-year-old Natalya-were born in the city of Sambir, in the foothills of Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine. Their family came to the U.S. in 2000 and settled in Astoria, Queens. Now the sisters are gaining a following for their singing of traditional Ukrainian songs. Almost every weekend they can be found performing at festivals and community events. Alla Kutsevych plays the bandura, the national instrument of Ukraine. She graduated from the Lysenko Conservatory in Lviv (western Ukraine), majoring in bandura and conducting. Since coming to the U.S. in 1996, she has been active in New York's Ukrainian cultural scene. She teaches bandura classes at the Ukrainian Music Institute in New York, where she also directs the Children's Bandura Ensemble Vyshyvanka. Kutsevych is a member of the bandura duo Lisova Pisnia (Forest Song) and has performed at festivals in the U.S. and Canada.Stanislav and Kristina Kotyza Father-and-daughter duo Stanislav and Kristina Kotyza take great delight in preserving Czech musical traditions. Stanislav was born in Humpolec, Czechoslovakia, but he and his family have made their home in the United States for several decades. He attended the Prague Conservatory of Music and has sung in opera houses the world over, including Moscow's Bolshoi Opera and venues in Italy, Brazil and the United States. Ten-year-old Kristina started singing in churches at the age of four. She has sung for Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Since 2002, she has been a member of the children's chorus at the Metropolitan Opera, where she is in the current production of An American Tragedy.Janez Lotric Tenor Janez Lotric was born in Zelezniki, Slovenia. He studied at the Ljubljana Academy of Music and in Vienna with Hilde Zadek. In 1980, while still a student, Lotric made his debut as Nemorino in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amor at the Opera of Maribor (Slovenia) where he became a member until 1987. In June 1996, he made his Vienna State Opera debut and followed with performances at Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opéra Comique in Paris, the State Opera of Hamburg, London's Royal Opera of Covent Garden, and the opera houses of Madrid, Rome and Zurich, among others. In 2000, Lotric debuted at La Scala, Milan, as Manrico in Verdi's Il Trovatore. This year, his opera roles and concerts have taken him to Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Norway and Japan. In December, he sang for the first time at New York's Metropolitan Opera, in the role of Alfred in Die Fledermaus.Andy Stein Violinist and saxophonist Andy Stein was a regular member of Guy's All-Star Shoe Band on A Prairie Home Companion from 1989 to 2001. He collaborated with Garrison Keillor to create the opera Mr. and Mrs. Olson. He has appeared on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman, and has performed with such artists as Itzhak Perlman, Eric Clapton, Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Joel, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, and many others. | | | |
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