CONTACT: Brad White
Marketing and Publicity Manager
Center for the Arts, Pepperdine University
24255 Pacific Coast Hwy, Malibu, CA 90263
(310) 506-4055
brad.white@pepperdine.edu
BOX OFFICE: (310) 506-4522
http://arts.pepperdine.edu/

Photos available upon request

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY
CENTER FOR THE ARTS

presents

JOHN MUSTO AND FRIENDS:
THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK

"Musto spins flaxen pop into golden art."--New York Newsday

Sunday, January 9, 2011, 2 p.m.
Raitt Recital Hall, Pepperdine University
24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, CA

Pepperdine University presents a recital titled "John Musto and Friends: The Great American Songbook" at Pepperdine's Raitt Recital Hall at 2 p.m. on Sunday, January 9.

Tickets, priced at $25 for the public and $10 for full-time Pepperdine students, are available now by calling (310) 506-4522. Tickets are also available through Ticketmaster at (800) 982-2787. Information online: http://arts.pepperdine.edu/ or http://www.johnmusto.com/

Grammy-nominated opera composer John Musto will be joined for an afternoon of his own arrangements of musical theatre favorites by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Beattie and baritone David Krohn, both recipients of the 2009 Marc and Eva Stern Fellowships at SongFest, the summer art-song workshop held annually at Pepperdine.

John Musto

One of the busiest opera composers, Musto has a secure reputation as a master of the concert song, both as a composer and as a performer at the piano. His highly refined playing is featured in song recitals (often with his wife, soprano Amy Burton of the Metropolitan Opera and New York City opera companies), chamber music, concertos, and solo works. His interpretations of his own music and that of other composers are rivaled by his extraordinary gifts as an improviser.

Last season Musto embarked on a recording project with conductor Glen Cortese and the Greeley Philharmonic to perform and record both his piano concerti for Bridge Records. Musto also served as composer-in-residence at Mannes College The New School for Music.

In the past four years, he has seen the production of three new operas (with librettist Mark Campbell), with a fourth, The Inspector (also with a libretto by Campbell), to premiere at the Wolf Trap Opera Company in April 2011. Wolf Trap's recording of his first opera, Volpone, was nominated for a 2010 Grammy.

In November 2007 Musto's Later the Same Evening premiered at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the University of Maryland Opera Studio, the co-commissioners of the work. That enthusiastically received, innovative opera had its New York premiere in December 2008 at the Manhattan School of Music and will have its third production at Glimmerglass Opera in July 2011.

New York and Caramoor audiences saw the lively new one-act comedy Bastianello (paired with William Bolcom's Lucrezia), commissioned to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), presented in three New York performances and in a second production at the 2008 Moab Music Festival in Utah. While the earlier operas had been characterized by their colorful orchestration, the NYFOS work explored the potential of two concert-grand pianos as luxurious and eloquent pit instruments. The pairing had a third production last March at Wolf Trap. Bastianello/Lucrezia has just been released by Bridge Records.

One recently issued recording entirely devoted to instrumental music by Musto is a revelatory chamber-music release from the Copland House. Last season saw the release of the first stand-alone collection of his songs by Bridge Records (with the composer at the piano), recordings of both Volpone (released by Wolf Trap) and Later the Same Evening (Albany Records), and a recording devoted to his songs by baritone Alexander Hurd and pianist Jacob Greenberg (Centaur label). Musto's Collected Songs for voice and piano are published by Peermusic.

Musto's Improvisation and Fugue for piano was featured in 2008 at the fourth New York Piano Competition, which commissioned it. It was also the piece played by the 2009 Van Cliburn International Competition Gold Medalist Nobuyuki Tsujii when he won the prize for best performance of a modern work. Tsujii's prize-winning performance may be heard on a Harmonia Mundi disc.

Besides being a guest composer at the 2008 Ravinia Festival (coaching singers in his songs) as well as giving concerts and master classes from 2008 to 2010 at SongFest (which presented the West Coast premiere of his cycle The Book of Uncommon Prayer), he has an active concert schedule that includes appearances around the United States and in Europe, playing repertory extending from Bach keyboard to French cabaret (notably in a concert at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu) to the Gershwin Piano Concerto, and appearing as pianist in his own compositions.

Musto earned degrees in piano performance at the Manhattan School of Music under Seymour Lipkin. He also pursued studies with pianists Michael Rogers and Paul Jacobs. He has been a visiting professor at Brooklyn College and is a frequent guest lecturer at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music.

As a pianist, Musto has recorded for Bridge, Harmonia Mundi, Nonesuch, the Milken Archive, Naxos, Harbinger, CRI, and EMI, and his compositions have been recorded for Hyperion, Harmonia Mundi, MusicMasters, Innova, Channel Classics, Albany Records, and New World Records.

Jennifer Beattie

Hailed by Opera News for her "exuberant voice and personality," mezzo-soprano Jennifer Beattie is a dynamic and versatile performer in styles ranging from opera and chamber music to musical theatre and cabaret. She has appeared in concert in New York City at such venues as the National Arts Club, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Juilliard School, and Riverside Church as well as at the Texas Music Festival, the Old First Concert Series in San Francisco, the Vocal Arts Society of Washington, D.C. (education series), with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, and in Salzburg, Austria, at the Mozarteum.

In 2009 Beattie was a recipient of the Marc and Eva Stern Fellowship at SongFest, where she performed in the world premiere of Tom Cipullo's Insomnia. This season she appears as soloist with the Mendelssohn Club Chorus of Philadelphia as the Abbess and the Monitress in Puccini's Suor Angelica with ConcertOPERA of Philadelphia. Recently she was an artist-in-residence at Yale University, culminating in premieres of both student and faculty compositions with pianist Adam Marks.

This summer Beattie will be the featured vocalist and resident artist alongside Chicago's acclaimed Fifth House Ensemble at the New Music on the Point festival in Vermont.

David Krohn

Praised by Opera News as "a clear stand-out, possessing a forceful and well-developed voice," baritone David Krohn enjoys a career both as an opera singer and a recitalist. His calendar takes him across Europe, Canada, and the United States.

Recent performances include Il Maestro in Donizetti's rarely heard Viva La Mamma with Seattle Opera, his New York Philharmonic debut as a soloist at Carnegie Hall with Alan Gilbert conducting Bernstein's West Side Story suites, a holiday pops concert with the Virginia Symphony, the title role in Rossini's Barber of Seville with Aspen Opera, Bernstein's Mass with the Virginia Symphony, his Virginia Opera debut as Masetto in Don Giovanni, Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucretia with Aspen Opera, Il Conte in Le Nozze di Figaro, Carl-Magnus Malcolm in A Little Night Music, and Sid in Albert Herring, along with concert performances with the Canadian National Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, and many others.

His symphonic repertoire includes Bach's cantatas, Bernstein's Arias and Barcarolles, Faure's Requiem, Handel's Messiah, Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, Orff's Carmina Burana, Szymanowski's Stabat Mater, and William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast.

Krohn also maintains a busy schedule as a recitalist, performing around the world with repertoire ranging from the Baroque cantatas of Handel through world premieres of many modern composers, most recently Schubert's Winterreise in Poitiers, France; a Comden and Green celebration with the New York Festival of Song at Carnegie Hall alongside Tyne Daly and Walter Bobbie; Schubert's Schwanengesang as part of the renowned Trinity Church in New York's Concerts at One series; the world premiere of Tom Cipullo's Insomnia at Pepperdine University with SongFest; Christopher Berg's Songs on Poems of Frank O'Hara at Juilliard; and, this past month, the Baltimore premiere of Cipullo's A Visit with Emily as part of the Peabody Conservatory's Adalman concert series.

Krohn has performed with many of the preeminent conductors of his generation, including Julius Rudel, Patrick Summers, Stephen White, John Adams, Jane Glover, Alan Gilbert, Jack Everly, and many others.

Upcoming performances include singing the title role in Don Giovanni with the Seattle Opera Young Artist Program.

Krohn holds a master's degree from the Juilliard School and a bachelor's degree from the Peabody Conservatory.

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