Performer, Vocalist
Soprano SARA CLARK is a New York City local. She was born on Long Island and is no stranger to the performing arts in this great city.
She recently graduated with honors from The Boston Conservatory and received her bachelor of music in vocal performance. While studying in Boston, she enjoyed many roles including Peasblossom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Papagena in The Magic Flute, Ilia in Idomeneo, and Sor Isabel in With Blood, With Ink (a contemporary opera by Daniel Crozier and Peter M. Krask).
Upon moving back to New York City, Sara has performed with the Village Light Opera as Kate in Yeoman of the Guard and Rose Maybud in Ruddigore. She also got the chance to perform overseas in Buxton, England this past summer with the Actor’s Opera in productions of The Zoo and Trial by Jury.
Actor, Performer
As a writer, his books for musicals have been performed off-Broadway and around the country; he has also written five children’s books, published by HarperCollins. His adaptation of The Impresario is not a literal translation, but a very free acting version based on the plot outline of the original; it has also been performed in a longer version, incorporating music from other Mozart operas.
As a director, he has staged numerous productions for the Village Light Opera Group and others. As a performer, he has appeared frequently with the New York Grand Opera in Central Park for audiences of several thousand, playing such roles as Goro in Madama Butterfly, Bardolpho in Falstaff and Pang (or was it Pong?) in Turandot. He has specialized in the realm of Gilbert & Sullivan, having performed 31 different roles in the repertory as well as chorusing 10 of the 14 operettas.
He met his wife, the talented and beautiful mezzo Lynne Greene-Brooke, onstage at the Light Opera of Manhattan, where they were frequently married before they ever spoke to each other.
Organist, Performer
The Organist/Music Director of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and Children’s Community Choir in Peekskill, NY and of Union Chapel, Shelter Island Heights, L.I., Linda is a recitalist on concert series in Westchester and Rockland Counties, New Jersey and New York City, and has performed as a soloist in England and Italy.
Ms. Betjeman has performed with the Chappaqua Chamber Orchestra and Mimosa Chamber Ensemble of Manhattan. In addition, she is the keyboard soloist (organ, harpsichord, piano) with The Broadway Bach Ensemble of Manhattan and is piano accompanist for the Taghkanic Chorale and Tri-County Opera of northern Westchester.
Ms. Betjeman has taught on the music faculty of Walden-Lincoln School and The Trevor Day School in New York City, and is currently accompanist for the Riverdale Country School and Sarah Lawrence College choirs.
Conductor, Performer, Pianist
Robert Ainsley began his musical career at the age of eleven, studying the piano and violin at Durham School, in England.
He became a Licentiate of Trinity College of Music, London, in solo piano performance at age 17 and won the National Schools’ Chamber Music Competition twice. Rob won the organ scholarship to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where he studied with Dr Peter Hurford, Dr John Butt, and David Sanger and directed the chapel choir for three years, conducting and playing in major venues in around the world. In 1999, he graduated with a degree in Mathematics, and later that year was invited to become senior organ scholar at Christ Church, Greenwich, CT.
Since then, he has also served as assistant conductor and accompanist of the New Haven Chorale and Greenwich Choral Society, Musical Director of the Marsh Singers, and completed a master’s degree in solo piano performance at Mannes College of Music, NYC.
After serving as Maestro Joseph Colaneri’s assistant for a year at Mannes College of Music, Mr. Ainsley joined the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the beginning of the 2003-2004 season. He has just completed his two years in the program, which culminated in his acting as assistant conductor and pianist for Wagner’s Die Walküre with Maestro Valery Gergiev and Placido Domingo this season. Mr. Ainsley will continue to work as a vocal coach, repetiteur and church musician, with the intention of eventually conducting some of the music he enjoys so much.
Cellist, Performer
Cellist Maxine Neuman’s solo and chamber music career spans North America, South America, Europe and Japan. A grant recipient from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts and a three-time Grammy Award winner, her biography appears in Who’s Who in the World. She is a founding member of the Claremont Duo, the Crescent String Quartet, the Vermont Cello Quartet, and the Walden Trio, groups with which she has traveled and recorded extensively.
Her long list of recording credits includes Deutsche Grammophon, Columbia, Angel, EMI, Nonesuch, Biddulph, CRI, Orion, Leonarda, Argo, Opus One, SONY/Virgin, AMC, Artek, Vanguard, Musical Heritage, Albany, Northeastern and CBS World Records.
She has appeared as soloist before a sold-out audience in New York’s Town Hall in the American premiere of Giovanni Battista Viotti’s only cello concerto, and for Austrophon, she recorded Schumann Cello Concerto in Count Esterhazy’s historic palace in Austria. She can also be heard in such diverse settings as the Montreux Jazz Festival, the films of Jim Jarmusch, and with the rock band Metallica. She has expanded the chamber ensemble repertoire — especially for multiple celli and cello and guitar — by arranging and transcribing works from every period. A longtime champion of contemporary music, she has commissioned and premiered works by many of today’s leading composers.
Distinguished as a teacher as well as performer, Ms. Neuman has served as a juror for numerous international competitions. On the faculty at New York’s School for Strings and Hoff-Barthelson Music School, she has taught at Bennington College, Williams College and C.W. Post University.
Her cello is a J.B.Guadagnini, dating from 1772.
Conductor, Performer
Chorus, Performer
New Amsterdam Singers is an amateur chorus of 70+ skilled singers whose performances in New York City and abroad have won critical acclaim. We rehearse at Broadway Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and perform three subscription concerts per year in and around New York City under the direction of Clara Longstreth.
In 1966, the Master Institute Chorus, conducted by Allan Miller, was run as an adult education course, with Clara Longstreth as assistant conductor and Elizabeth Rodgers as accompanist. On Miller’s departure in 1968, Clara Longstreth became conductor.
When the Master Institute dissolved in 1971, Clara, Elizabeth and an informal group of singers decided to regroup under the name New Amsterdam Singers. From 1972-1978 NAS was in association with the Bloomingdale House of Music. In 1978 it became fully independent under the management of its own elected Board of Directors.
Today NAS is a chorus of 70 skilled singers whose concert performances in New York City and abroad have won critical acclaim. The group is known for the variety and interest of its repertoire, ranging from the 15th century to the present day. The chorus specializes in a cappella and double chorus repertoire and regularly performs 20th century, contemporary and commissioned works. It continues to rehearse on the Upper West Side, performing three subscription concerts and giving a number of other performances around the greater metropolitan area each season.
All subscription concerts are performed in Manhattan at such locations as Merkin Hall, St. Peter’s Church at Citicorp, St. Ignatius Episcopal Church and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. The chorus has also performed at most of the city’s major halls, including Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall, and in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Washington, D.C., Westchester and New Jersey.
Horn, Performer
Kolio Plachkov was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, where he first started studying horn at the age of eight under the direction of Stoyan Karaivanov. At the age of 13 he won the 4th International Competition for French Music, Plovdiv, Bulgaria. In the following year 2001, he won first prize at the competition ‘Young Music Talents’ in Sofia, Bulgaria, and as a part of the prize he was invited to play with the Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra, first as a soloist, and later as a member of the orchestra on an international tour.
In 2001 Mr. Plachkov won first prize at a prestigious horn competition in Chisinau, Moldova. In 2002 he was offered a full scholarship by Idyllwild Arts Academy in California. Not long after beginning his studies at Idyllwild he won the concerto competition of the school and performed the Strauss First Horn Concerto with the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra. In 2004 he played principal horn with the Idyllwild Festival Orchestra in Los Angeles’ Disney Hall under the direction of Larry Livingston and in the same year he was invited to Norfolk (Virginia) to perform on the radio show From the Top. In 2004 he won second prize (no first prize awarded) at The Pasadena Showcase House Instrumental Competition. In 2005 he was the winner of the Redlands Bowl Competition and gave a recital in the city of Redlands. In 2006 he was a winner of the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts scholarship as well as the winner of the 7th Annual Rotary District 5330 Music Competition.
Mr. Plachkov has been principal horn with the New York String Seminar Orchestra in Carnegie Hall and also principal horn with the New York Youth Symphony. In the summer of 2009 Mr. Plachkov was invited to the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he performed with the Festival Orchestra under James Levine, Bernard Haitink, Kurt Masur and Herbert Blomstedt.
Mr. Plachkov is currently pursuing his bachelor,s degree in horn at The Juilliard School where he studies under the direction of Jennifer Montone, principal horn of Philadelphia Orchestra.
Performer, Pianist
Christopher Oldfather has devoted himself to the performance of contemporary music for over twenty years. He has participated in innumerable world premiere performances, featuring every possible combination of instruments, in cities all over America. He has been a member of Collage New Music since 1979 and New York City’s Parnassus since 1997.
He appears regularly in Chicago and has joined singers and instrumentalists of all kinds in recitals throughout the United States. In 1986 he presented his recital debut in Carnegie Recital Hall, which then closed immediately for renovations. Since then he has pursued a career as a freelance musician, which has taken him as far afield as Moscow and Tokyo and has seen him play virtually every sort of keyboard ever made, including the Chromelodeon.
He is widely known for his expertise on the harpsichord and is one of the leading interpreters of contemporary works for that instrument. As a soloist Mr. Oldfather has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the New World Symphony, and Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, Germany. He has collaborated with the conductor Robert Craft and can be heard on several of his recordings. His recording of Elliott Carter’s violin-piano Duo with Robert Mann was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 1990.
Performer
