Arrive at the Vernon and District Performing Arts Centre at 10:00am for coffee, tea, treats and a chance to chat with the musicians. The 70-minute concert starts at 10:30am in the Marie Fleming Hall featuring Benjamin Butterfield as tenor. Butterfield has performed in operas across the world, is a professor at University of Victoria and on October 6th he is joined on stage by pianist and series host Sarah Hagen for this intimate chamber music experience.
Programme:
Joseph Haydn: Two English Songs
Robert Schumann: Dichterliebe "A Poet's Love"
Benjamin Britten: Selected folksongs
About Benjamin:
Regarded by the Washington Post as a tenor who sings “…with taste, authority and agility…” and having “… a creamily sweet timbre…” (Opera News) Benjamin Butterfield is equally at home in the opera and concert repertoire having performed with companies from New York to San Francisco, Toronto to Vancouver; London, Paris and Rome to Israel and Taiwan.
On the concert stage Mr. Butterfield has performed with the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in Carmina Burana with Bramwell Tovey and in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Vancouver Symphony under Andrew Grams where he was “…the star amongst the soloists…” (Globe and Mail). In Europe he sang the arias in Bach’s St. John Passion for Jan Willem de Vriend with the Residentie Orkest of the Netherlands and the St. John Passion Evangelist for Choeur Ardito in Switzerland under Nicolas Reymond. Other engagements included Chicago’s Music of the Baroque with Jane Glover and the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony under James Conlon. Mr. Butterfield returned for Messiah with the San Francisco Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic with Jean-Marie Zeitouni as well as Beethoven’s Ninth with the Colorado Symphony under Jeffrey Kahane. He also presented the neglected American art song of Randy Newman for Toronto Masque Theater.
Film and TV credits include Dido and Aeneas with the Mark Morris Dance Company and Tafelmusik, Burnt Toast with the Esprit Orchestra, L'enfant et les sortileges with the Montreal Symphony and Charles Dutoit, Handel’s Messiah for ZDF in Halle with the English Concert under Trevor Pinnock and Bach's B minor Mass with the Bach Choir of Bethlehem for PBS. He is also heard regularly on CBC Radio.
Prof. Butterfield teaches voice for the School of Music at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and he also teaches and performs at summer vocal training programs, including Opera Nuova (Edmonton), Opera on the Avalon (St. John’s), Yellow Barn (Vermont) the Amalfi Coast Music Festival (Italy) and VISI (Vancouver).