“It sounded as if she were pulling organ stops out of her
throat, there were so many colors.” – composer
Mario Davidovsky, at the 2010 Wellesley Composers
Conference
Soprano, conductor, and new music specialist Tony Arnold offers
comprehensive educational residencies for composers and performers
who want to expand their knowledge of and contributions to the
vocal chamber music repertoire.
Residency activities can be structured to include any or all of
the following:
Concerts & Recitals
Readings & Performances
of Student Compositions
Individual
Meetings with Composers
Master Classes
for Singers & Instrumentalists
Lectures
for Composers on Writing for the Voice
Surveys
of Contemporary Vocal Repertoire
Demonstrations & Discussions
of Extended Vocal Techniques
Chamber
Music Coaching
Performances
with Student Musicians & Ensembles
Collaborations
with Faculty Performers & Composers
Concerts and Recitals can be drawn from repertoire for solo voice,
or presented with collaborators including Movses Pogossian (violin),
Jacob Greenberg (piano), Michael Norsworthy (clarinet), and others.
Many other types of repertoire, instrumentation, and programming
are possible, including premieres of works by composers at your
institution.
RESPONSE to RESIDENCIES with TONY ARNOLD:
“Tony Arnold’s presence at Eastman will resonate for
a long time… She met regularly with our composers, and every
student was surprised to receive much more than a lesson on ‘how
to write effectively for singers.’… Her contribution,
which included coaching all of the participating composers, singers,
and instrumentalists was, simply, irreplaceable. Thanks to Tony’s
assertive, sincere, and precise advice, our composers articulated
their settings of Lia Purpura’s difficult texts with a degree
of expressivity and exactness they probably didn’t realize
they possessed, and the dozen singers who sang these settings benefited
from Tony’s tireless coaching, a well-balanced and impressive
mix of technical ‘grilling’ and a contagious enthusiasm
to go deep into the essence of the music: Music is what matters. Vocalists
who had expressed no previous desire to sing new music came out
of the experience with such a degree of confidence and enhanced
technical aptitude that they have since become regular collaborators
with our composers!
“Tony also premiered new works expressly composed for her
by David Liptak (with the Eastman Wind Ensemble), and graduate
composers Baljinder Sekhon and Paul Coleman (with Musica Nova),
and met regularly with the voice faculty and students – hers
was an indefatigable presence!” – composer
Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Eastman School of Music
“It is really a pleasure and a privilege to work with Tony.
She is gifted not only with a beautiful voice and superb musicianship,
but also with an unusual musical imagination. Her sensitivity to
timbre is magical. She is able to internalize the timbral situation
in which she is singing, and to interact (or blend) with the surrounding
instrumental colors through her mode of singing and tone production.
At times, one almost gets the impression that she has a whole orchestra
of voices within her vocal cords. Tony is very concerned with expressing
the deeper meaning of the text, and she truly interprets when she
sings.” – composer Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon,
from an interview in New
Music Box
“Rob Deemer has
been totally enjoying soprano Tony
Arnold and her meetings with Fredonia composers on their art
songs they're writing for her concert here in February - can't
wait to get my own work for her finished!” – composer
Rob Deemer, SUNY Fredonia, from his Facebook status update Dec.
10, 2010
“One of my favorite moments was when Tony Arnold was giving
her talk on how to write for the voice… [even though] I
am a cellist, I got to listen to how well the two relate in every
way. She would talk about the breath and it would make absolute
sense for the bow…” – cellist Jennifer
Bewerse, 2010 soundSCAPE festival participant
