January 20, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SOPRANO REPLACEMENT FOR
THIS WEEKEND'S CONCERTS
(Portland, OR) – Soprano Elizabeth Keusch will be replacing an indisposed Christine Brandes for this weekend’s concerts of Haydn’s Creation.
American soprano Elizabeth Keusch is rapidly emerging as an artist to watch and has already been heard in major venues worldwide. She is a versatile singer with great experience in both contemporary and classical repertoire, and an avid champion of chamber and new music. She performed recently in Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and composer/conductor Thomas Adès, and in the Seattle Chamber Players’ Icebreaker III Festival. This season, Ms. Keusch returns to the Chameleon Arts Ensemble for Harbison’s Book of Hours and Seasons, sings Messiah at Avery Fisher Hall and collaborates with Bang on a Can in Lost Objects.
She has enjoyed many successive engagements since 2003 with Maestro Helmut Rilling of the Oregon Bach Festival and Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart. These include Handel’s Belshazzar (role of Nitocres), Jeptha (role of Iphis), the Bach Magnificat, Bach Cantatas 14, 36, 112, 140, 147, Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem and C Minor Mass and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. In Spring 2005 she performed Elijah with Maestro Rilling in her Seattle Symphony debut.
Other orchestral performances include Oliver Knussen’s Requiem: Songs for Sue with the Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa; Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Dallas, Baltimore and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestras; George Benjamin’s Mind of Winter and Oliver Knussen’s Whitman Settings with the Berlin Philharmonic and New World Symphonies; Liszt’s Missa Solemnis with the American Symphony Orchestra; Handel’s Messiah with the Minnesota Symphony; and the Mater Gloriosa in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony with the Boston Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Keusch’s Boston Symphony Orchestra debut with conductor Robert Spano occurred with the 2000 American premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión Según San Marcos.
Ms. Keusch holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Texas, a Master’s of Music Degree and an Artist Diploma from New England Conservatory. While at New England Conservatory she was named the 2001 Presidential Scholar for the Conservatory. The soprano was a Tanglewood Fellow in summers 1997 and 1999. She resides in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The Oregon Symphony is grateful to Ms. Keusch for agreeing to fly to Portland and sing at these performances with only two days’ notice. She makes her Oregon Symphony debut this weekend.
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CONTACT:
Jim Fullan
Vice President, Communications, Marketing & Sales
503-416-6347
jfullan@orsymphony.org