Artist Bios

Joan Lunoe (narrator) has performed on various stages throughout New York City for over 30 years including Ensemble Studio Theatre, Theatre at St. Clements, La Mama E.T.C., and the Park Avenue Armory. Audio Book Narrator for the New York Public Library for 24 years. Other programs with ClassicalCafé include Time Stands Still; An Underground Viennese Café; and In Love's Honor. She is very proud to be performing A Child's Christmas in Wales for the 9th season in a row.

Alex Ruvinstein is a Russian-American classical pianist. He won the International Competition in Salerno, Italy, as a part of the four hands duo. Alex is a winner of the Ibla International Piano Competition in Ragusa, Italy, in a solo and four hands duo divisions, and the other local and regional piano competitions. He received his Master’s at the Gnesin Academy in Moscow. After receiving his Doctorate at the Maimonides State Academy in Russia, Alex worked there as a Professor of Piano and an accompanist. He made his American debut at the Union County Art Center in New Jersey. Alex performed in various concert halls in Kansas, Delaware, Connecticut, and other states. His performances include recitals at the Weill Recital Hall at the Carnegie Hall, The Greater Princeton Steinway Society, New York Library Concert Series, the United Nations Concert Hall, the National Opera Center in NYC, and the others.

​Jonathan Bagg is Professor at Duke University and violist with the Ciompi String Quartet, with whom he has performed hundreds of concerts, in the U.S. and around the world. Currently co-Artistic Director of Electric Earth Concerts in New Hampshire, he is also Chair in the Department of Music at Duke where teaches viola and chamber music. He has performed at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Eastern Music Festival, and the Highlands, NC, Mohawk Trail, and Castle Hill festivals. From 2015 he has been principal viola of CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra. Bagg has recorded solo vi0la music on the Bridge, Albany, Centaur and Gasparo labels.

Peter Heiman has been a Riverdale resident for 35 years, and a Child's Christmas participant from the beginning. In addition, he has performed numerous serious and comic operatic roles with various local companies, most recently the serious and comic role of Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard with the Ridgewood Gilbert and Sullivan Players. He had the unforgettable honor of being in the cast of Tony Amato's very last performance (as Bartolo in the Marriage of Figaro) in the opera house that bore his name for more than 50 years.

Soprano Ilana Davidson enjoys a busy schedule of opera, concerts, and recitals, performing repertoire from the Renaissance and Baroque to the 20th and 21st centuries. Her performances have included William Bolcom’s Songs Of Innocence and of Experience conducted by Leonard Slatkin at Carnegie Hall which earned 4 Grammy Awards, Mahler Symphony No. 4 with Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra which was broadcast live, Mozart Arias at the Royal Concertgebouw Hall, Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre in the Netherlands, Krenek’s Das Geheime Königreich in Vienna, Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice and Mahler Symphony No. 2 with the Québec Symphony Orchestra, recital highlights include a tour of the Lieder of Ernst Krenek, New York Festival of Song, appearances with the Bard Music Festival and the Annenberg Center in Palm Desert. Ms. Davidson has performed major works and operatic roles with the Staatsoper Stuttgart, Florida Grand Opera, Nationale Reisopera, Vlaamse Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Berkshire Choral Festival, Harrisburg Symphony, Duke Chapel, Bellingham Music Festival, Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam, Krenek Festival Vienna, Innsbruck Early Music Festival and the Schwetzingen Festspiele. Recent highlights include Carnegie Hall performances of Mona Lisa (Von Schillings), Der Diktator (Krenek) and Songs From Jewish Folk Poetry (Shostakovich) with the American Symphony Orchestra and TON, a debut with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra as Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Mahler Symphony No. 4 with Keith Lockhart at the Brevard Music Festival, the Anchorage Symphony, Bellingham Music Festival, Mozart Requiem and Haydn’s Creation, Mozart Requiem with the Bellingham Music Festival, and chamber music festivals in the United States and Canada.

American Mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn performs in a wide range of styles and venues, from Purcell to Pierrot Lunaire, Cherubino to The King & I, J.S. Bach to P.D.Q. Bach. She has performed with New York City Opera, The Wooster Group, Philip Glass/Robert Wilson, OperaOmnia, American Symphony Orchestra; on the stages of Carnegie Hall, the Mann Center in Philadelphia, and London’s West End; and at Festivals including the Edinburgh, Verbier, Grimeborn, Tête-à-Tête, and Festival d’Autumne. As an Artist in Residence at HERE arts center, Hai-Ting created and performed Science Fair: An Opera With Experiments, a staged solo show of science set to music. Hai-Ting was featured in the revival and tour of Phillip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, performed at venues around the world from 2011–2014, and sang the role of Belle in Glass’s La Belle et la Bête, also on tour. Operatic roles include Didone in The Wooster Group’s wildly experimental production of La Didone, Poppea in Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea and Medea in Cavalli’s Giasone with Opera Omnia, as well as Nicklausse and the Muse in Offenbach’s Les Contes D’Hoffman, Hansel in Hansel and Gretel, Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, and in Peter Maxwell Davies’s unaccompanied monodrama, The Medium. An ardent advocate of new vocal repertoire, she has premiered new works by Conrad Cummings, Yoav Gal, Renée Favand-See, Amy Beth Kirsten, Tarik O’Regan, Ellen Reid, Matthew Schickele, Stefan Weisman, and Du Yun, and she was featured in the 2017 Resonant Bodies Festival, a singer-centered celebration of new music in New York. Of mixed Chinese and Jewish ancestry, Hai-Ting is a native of Northern California and currently resides in New York City. She holds degrees from the Eastman and Yale Schools of Music.

Laura Gilbert, flutist, has appeared around the world as chamber musician, soloist, recitalist and guest lecturer. In 2012 she co-founded Electric Earth Concerts. In addition to founding and performing with Auréole, a flute, viola and harp trio, Ms. Gilbert has appeared with Musicians from Marlboro, Alexander Schneider’s Brandenburg Ensemble, the Borromeo, Brentano, Saint Lawrence, and Ciompi String Quartets, Chamber Music at the 92nd Street “Y”, Saint Luke’s Ensemble and Orchestra, The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, The New York Philharmonic and Speculum Musicae. Ms. Gilbert’s extensive discography includes a Grammy award for Dawn Upshaw’s “Girl with the Orange Lips”, two solo recordings on Koch International: The Flute Music of Serge Prokofiev, and the Flute Music of Toru Takemitsu. Auréole Trio has released twelve discs on Koch International, the first of which was short-listed for several Grammys. Auréole is responsible for 50-plus original compositions and arrangement, many of which appear on their recordings.

Mezzo-soprano Mary Phillips is closely associated with the music of Wagner and Verdi. She has sung many roles in Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen with The Metropolitan Opera, Canadian Opera; Scottish Opera, Seattle Opera, Hawaii Opera and Dallas Opera. Mary won a Grammy Award for her solo work in The Met Opera’s 2012 recording of The Ring Cycle. She sang Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde for Dallas Opera and Winnipeg Symphony. As a Verdi mezzo, Mary has performed Eboli in Don Carlos for Vancouver Opera, Canadian Opera Co. and Sarasota Opera; Amneris in Aida with Utah Opera, Hawaii Opera, Birmingham Opera, and Bob Jones University; Azucena in Il Trovatore with Seattle Opera, Arizona Opera, Austin Lyric Opera and BJU. Mary has been a regular artist on the Metropolitan Opera roster since 2005. Concert highlights include numerous performances of Handel’s Messiah with Atlanta Symphony, Teatro Massimo Bellini in Italy, Oratorio Society of NY at Carnegie Hall, The N.J. Symphony and Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon; Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with New York Philharmonic; and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with Atlanta Symphony (recorded for Telarc), Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic. Upcoming performances of Beethoven 9, with The Seattle Symphony, are scheduled for Dec. 2021. She is working on a new opera, produced by the (new)New York City Opera, with a production scheduled for Jan. 2022. Ms. Phillips has a master’s degree from Yale University. She joined the distinguished voice faculty at Sarah Lawrence College in Sept. 2019.

ClassicalCafé and A Child's Christmas in Wales

A Child's Christmas in Wales as a piece of prose by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, can obviously stand on its own without any music. Indeed Thomas has created a lyrical language and colorful narrative for us that are music itself.
​ 
Each year our musical interludes and notions pass through the story, not interrupting the magic of picturesque nostalgia of a "simpler time." But to bring another dimension to the sensory experience of living in a moment where Christmas, music, melody, and the crisp softness of falling snow transcend us to simpler times of an idyllic past.

- I. Davidson

---

Concert Program

A Child's Christmas In Wales ~ is a piece of prose by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas recorded by Thomas in 1952. 


Musical Prelude:  

• I. Prelude. Moderato Trio for Flute, Viola and Piano, Op. 18 ........ T.Nikolayeva (1924-1993)
• Chant ...........H. Von Bingen (1098-1179)
• Rex Admirabili ..............G. Palestrina (1525-1594)
• Romanesque for Flute, Viola, and Piano.......R. Hahn (1875–1947)
• Laudamus Te ........ A. Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Musical Notions ~ interspersed throughout the story:

• Duetto Buffo di due Gatti.......... Rossini (1792-1868)
• IV. Aria Tario for Flute, Viola and Piano, Op. 18 .......... Nikolayeva
• Ding Dong Merrily On High ......... Tabourot (1519–1593) arr. Miller
• Now, O now I needs must part ........ J. Dowland (1563 -1626)
• II. Scherzo. Presto from Trio for Flute, Viola and Piano, Op. 18 ........ Nikolayeva
• III. Monologue Adagio from Trio for Flute, Viola and Piano, Op. 18 ...........Nikolayeva
• Intermezzo .......Nikolayeva (December 10)
• Wir Eilen from BWV 78 ........ J.S Bach (1685-1750) (December 11, 19)
• Hark the Herald Angels Sing (1739)  ........Wesly, Whitefield, Mendelssohn
• Good King Wenceslas (1853) ....... Floridum, Stauff, Neale
• Cherry Ripe ......... C. Scott  (1879-1970)
• Cherry Ripe ....... C.E. Horn (1786–1849)
• Drake’s Drum ............. C.V. Stanford (1852-1924)
• Pur Ti Miro ........ C. Monteverdi (1567-1643)
• Silent Night ...............F.X. Gruber (1787-1863)