On Sunday, March 25th, Sally Wolf will hold her annual master class in the Lang Music Center. The event begins at 2:00pm and will feature several Swarthmore student singers. It is free and open to the public.

Soprano Sally Wolf has led a decorated career spanning over 30 years. She received her vocal training from renowned sopranos Donna Pegors and Margaret Harshaw, and holds an Opera Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music. She was the recipient of a 1981 National Opera Institute Grant, placed first in the 1980 San Francisco Opera Auditions, and was a 1986 winner in the International Pavarotti Competition in Philadelphia. She was also awarded Seattle Opera’s “Artist of The Year” in 1992. She has earned widespread critical acclaim for her roles as Norma at Seattle Opera and Florida Grand Opera, Mimi (La Boheme) at Seattle Opera, Violetta (La Traviata) with Opera du Rhin in Strasbourg, and Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor) with Seattle Opera. She is also an accomplished interpreter of Mozart’s repertoire, including Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) with Frankfurt Opera, and Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni) at New York City Opera and Los Angeles Opera, among others. A former interpreter of Queen of the Night (Die Zaubeflöte), she performed the role 192 times in some of the world’s most prestigious opera houses.

Ms. Wolf is a master of coloratura, an elaborate vocal style that is usually sung by sopranos. Coloratura singing is dramatic and dynamic, combining runs, trills, wide leaps, and other difficult techniques. Her skill in this regard is part of what makes her such a sought-after instructor. Although coloratura is used primarily by sopranos, it has universal applications in vocal coaching. It combines melody with a number of inventive styles, and once its principles are mastered, they can be used to embellish and ornament almost any piece of music. Ms. Wolf is able to separate and combine these skills as she teaches, producing multi-layered classes that construct and deconstruct simultaneously. It is for this reason that her teaching is as infamous as her own career.

She has also provided meaningful contributions to Swarthmore’s vocal program over the years. In addition to her annual master class, she teaches at the Florence Opera Seminar each year alongside Swarthmore vocal coach Debra Scurto-Davis. Student vocalists from Swarthmore often attend this seminar, learning valuable skills from both teachers in the beautiful Italian city. Sally Wolf is one of the world’s premier vocalists, and Swarthmore students should not hesitate to take advantage of all she has to offer.

Gabriel Hearn-Desautels ’20

As the end of the year draws closer, Natasha Nogueira ’18 has been preparing for her senior recital, a culmination of the music she has studied in her time at Swarthmore.

Nogueira will sing pieces in English, French, Italian, and German, with most of her songs dating from the 17th through 19th centuries. For one piece, “The Flower Duet” by Léo Delibes, she will be accompanied by duet partner Shelby Billups ’20. On her favorite piece, Thomas Arne’s 17th century “Morning Cantata,” she will be accompanied by a small ensemble featuring Jasmine Sun ’18 and Henry Feinstein ’19 on the violin, Ayaka Yorihiro ’20 on the viola, Noah Rosenberg ’18 on the cello, Rachel Hottle ’18 playing the flute, and pianist Debra Scurto-Davis playing the harpsichord. She has agreed to discuss the process of planning her recital, which will take place on March 24 at 8:00 pm in Lang Concert Hall.

How long have you been preparing your recital? How have you prepared yourself?

Nogueira: I have actually been working on this repertoire since last year (January 2017). After reaching the Freeman Scholar level in Music 48 [Music majors, minors, and Freeman Scholars taking Music 048 can apply for funding for a recital. Freeman Scholarships are given to Music 048 students who show exceptional talent.], I was excited to have a senior recital. I also wanted to be well prepared for it, so this recital has been a year in the making. It has been an adventure to learn all this music in the past year and perfect it for performance.

How did you choose the songs you will be performing?

Nogueira: Most of the music was actually chosen by my voice teacher, Nancy Jantsch. However, I have been wanting to do The Flower Duet for the past couple of years, so that was something I chose. As my voice teacher, Nancy knows how to choose music that is well suited to my voice and capabilities. Sometimes, as singers, we fall in love with a song. that unfortunately is not great for our voices. Our teachers ensure that the music we sing matches the type of voice we have. Of course, Nancy proposed all the music to me first, and I spent a lot of time listening to all the songs before agreeing to them.

Does any song have a special significance for you?

Nogueira: My favorite is definitely The Morning Cantata. It is a pastoral piece, so while the textual meaning is not as significant [as some of the other songs], the music portrays the text beautifully and singing with the ensemble has made it really stand out.

How are you feeling about the recital?

Nogueira: As someone who loves music and has been singing for a long time, I am excited to share this night with people, as it is the culmination of a lot of hard work and years of vocal studies. I want to enjoy myself during the recital and share my love for music with other people.

Do you have any plans for what you’d like to do next?

Nogueira: One of the easy things about being a singer, is that your instrument is with you wherever you go. Wherever I end up after graduation, I will continue singing.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Emilie Hautemont ’20

At the two-day festival “Forbidden Songs,” attendees will hear long-lost music by Roman Palester and view an iconic film about how Warsaw’s street musicians fought the Nazi invasion, presented for the first time with English subtitles. Although Palester was one of the most distinctive composers of twentieth-century Poland, his compositions have been virtually forgotten, due in large part to censorship in communist Poland. “Forbidden Songs” brings Palester’s neoclassical and lyrical style to a new audiences and also explores his substantial work with film.

On the first day of the festival, the English-subtitled version of the film Forbidden Songs (1947) will see its world premiere at Swarthmore. The film tells the story of everyday life in Warsaw during World War II through popular “street songs” banned during the Nazi occupation. The film score was created by Palester and includes newly composed music as well as arrangements of the featured songs. Professor Barbara Milewski of Swarthmore College will introduce the film and reveal some of the hidden stories it has held since its creation. As she explains, “The film compels us to consider the tensions between personal and official acts of remembering—and forgetting—within the contexts of Poland’s historically oppressive regimes and the nation’s contemporary politics. It also gives us a glimpse into the ways in which music helped Polish Jews and non-Jews alike to reclaim notions of community in the immediate postwar years.” Mackenzie Pierce ‘11, a PhD Candidate in musicology at Cornell University, will deliver the Peter Gram Swing lecture earlier that day: “Beyond Historical Rupture: Classical Music and the Second World War in Poland,” which will place Palester in a broader musical and historical context.  

Day two of the festival will feature performers Xak Bjerken, Lucy Fitz Gibbon, Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, Susan Waterbury, and David Colwell in the American premiere of Palester’s chamber music and vocal works, which span Palester’s entire career from the 1930s to the late 1970s. Says Pierce, “In Poland today, memory of the Second World War is inescapable. By looking at music during the war and in its immediate aftermath, we can peel back some of these later political interpretations and recover the complexity and ambiguity of the heady postwar moment.” Pierce is particularly fascinated by the difficult choices musicians in postwar Poland faced: leave the country and work abroad, or stay and endure the risks of an authoritarian regime. Those who left often had their music banned and subsequently forgotten, like Palester.

Milewski and Pierce first met at Swarthmore as professor and student, but now see each other as colleagues with shared scholarly interest in the music of mid-century Poland. Both emphasize the great interdisciplinary value in this festival, which will draw people interested in European cinema and music, WWII history and politics, and Holocaust studies. On the significance of Palester’s life and work, Pierce says, “He had to overcome two authoritarian regimes: first, the brutal and terrorizing Nazi occupation and then the repressive communist government that rebuilt Poland from the rubble up. His compositions provide insight into how music creates a sense of continuity over rupture. They also remind us that every step towards war and censorship strikes at the lifeblood of an artistic culture.”

The Forbidden Songs Festival will take place on Thursday, March 22nd and Friday, March 23rd. On Thursday, Mackenzie Pierce will give his lecture on “Classical Music and the Second World War in Poland” at 4:30 PM in Lang Concert Hall. This event will be followed by the world premiere of the film Forbidden Songs at 8PM in LPAC 101 Cinema. On Friday, the performance of Roman Palester’s works will take place at 8PM in Lang Concert Hall. These events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit https://www.swarthmore.edu/music/concerts-events or forbiddensongs.org

Maya Kikuchi ‘20

Bo Lim Lee ‘18, a Chemistry major and Dance minor, came to Swarthmore with an eclectic background in dance. After suffering a foot injury in high school, she didn’t think she would be able to dance again. Despite this setback, Lee has become one of the most active members in Swarthmore’s dance program, taking part in a wide range of classes and performing at every opportunity.  Lee was originally trained in classical ballet, but became exposed to more modern and contemporary techniques high school. During this period, she also joined a hip hop dance troupe, an experience that motivated her to join the tri-college hip hop group, Rhythm n’ Motion, later on. She has continued to pursue a wide range of styles since coming to Swarthmore, and while she enjoys many of them, her favorite is umfundalai, a contemporary African dance technique that is made up of movement traditions from throughout the Diaspora.

Umfundalai means “essential” in Kiswahili. Its technique is centered around the idea of an “essence of African dance” that “lives wherever African people reside.” In this way, umfundalai situates its dancers both in the past and the present, creating a contemporary amalgamation of traditional styles that become representative of African movement in a wider sense. Several members of Swarthmore’s Dance faculty were trained in the technique and have brought their own artistic voices to its instruction. Despite their different approaches, they all place particularly high importance on the narrative component of umfundalai, which is something that Lee deeply appreciates: “I have fallen in love with the dance’s unique ability to intertwine narratives into the movements,” she says.

Lee was part of the tri-college group, Rhythm n’ Motion, during her sophomore and junior years. The group is made up of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds, and focuses on movement traditions from the African Diaspora, including jazz, salsa, hip hop, and African. They rehearse every weekend and perform two shows each year at the end of the fall and spring semesters.

Lee also had the opportunity to create her own pieces in choreography class. When she came to Swarthmore, she had not been particularly involved with choreography, and so appreciated how the class pushed her to “explore beyond [her] comfort zone.” Of the works she created for the class, she says that she was primarily influenced by “music and/or certain themes. “I can’t really choreograph from free-style so, I like having some structure to work with when I choreograph.”

Lee will be working as a research technician in a lab at the University of Pennsylvania over the next two years, after which she will attend graduate or medical school. She hopes to continue taking dance classes on the side.

Gabriel Hearn-Desautels  ’20