Date & Time: Friday April 29, 2022 at 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Incarnation Episcopal Church, 1750 29th Avenue, San Francisco
Tickets: $25 General, $20 Seniors/Students
Eventbrite Tickets: Click here
Program
San Francisco Girls Chorus School Level III – Terry Alvord, Director
Soloist Intensive Program
- Dr. Justin Montigne, Director of Voice Studies
- Tonia D’Amelio and Silvie Jensen, Instructors
Chesley Mok, piano
Health and Safety
In accordance with health and safety guidelines from the City and County of San Francisco, a face covering is required for all concerts at Incarnation Episcopal church and must be worn at all times. Face masks must completely cover nose and mouth and have ear loops or similar to hold in place. Gaiters and bandanas are not acceptable. Please click here for full details.
About San Francisco Girls Chorus
Praised by Gramophone Magazine as a “remarkable tapestry of teenage voices,” the five-time GRAMMY Award-winning San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) is recognized as one of the world’s leading youth vocal ensembles. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe, SFGC presents subscription performances throughout the Bay Area and regularly performs both nationally and internationally as a cultural ambassador for San Francisco. SFGC is a frequent collaborator with leading arts organizations such as Kronos Quartet, San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera, as well as numerous world-renowned guest artists.
Over the last year, SFGC has embraced the challenges of distance learning by presenting eight virtual performances, premiering seven new works as well as five commissions, and collaborating with renowned guest artists and ensembles from across the Bay Area, United States and beyond, including Virtual Artists-in-Residence The King’s Singers (Fall 2020), Roomful of Teeth (Spring 2021), and TENET Vocal Artists, among many others. Recent highlights over the past few seasons include debut performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. with The Knights and Carnegie Hall with the Philip Glass Ensemble. In September 2019, SFGC released My Outstretched Hand on Supertrain Records featuring The Knights and Trinity Youth Chorus, following the success of its February 2018 release, Final Answer, featuring Kronos Quartet on Philip Glass’ Orange Mountain Music label.
In addition to its Premier Ensemble, the San Francisco Chorus School is renowned as a regional center for choral music education and performance for girls and young women ages 4-18. Through its innovative Online Learning Program, SFGC has utilized technology to keep its hundreds of choristers engaged and advancing in their musical activities and performing live together from their own homes.
Level III of the San Francisco Girls Chorus School is an ensemble of singers generally between the ages of 10-13. Throughout each season, they learn and perform a varied repertoire of classical, contemporary, and multilingual folk songs from multiple musical eras. In recent years, Level III has performed with other local organizations such as the SF Opera and Opera Parallèle, as well as in the community at schools across San Francisco and the East Bay.
The Soloist Intensive program is a select cohort of soloists that are part of SFGC’s GRAMMY Award Winning Premier Ensemble. Singers strengthen their performance experience, vocal technique, stage presence, diction and language skills through an individualized program of private voice lessons; projects that build organization, communication, and professionalism; masterclasses; auditions; and performances, often in collaboration with world class professional singers. Many Soloists go on to pursue vocal performance in universities and conservatories, and all receive college prep and advising as a part of the program.
Terry Alvord, Level III Director
Terry Alvord, a mezzo soprano and conductor, has conducted the San Francisco Symphony Chorus in rehearsals of Brahms’ Requiem and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, and has conducted the San Francisco Conservatory’s chamber vocal ensemble, assisting Maestro Ragnar Bohlin. She has also been one of four assistant conductors for the San Francisco Symphony’s Community of Music Makers “Sing Out Davies” program since its inception in 2011.
For the 2015-2016 season, Ms. Alvord was the interim artistic director for Resound Ensemble, a 50 member mixed voice choir based in San Francisco. Last summer, Ms. Alvord was a featured conductor in a program of sacred music in Sarteano, Italy. She is currently music director at Trinity United Methodist Church in Berkeley.
In addition to conducting, Ms. Alvord is an active soloist and choral singer. She has appeared as soloist in James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross with the Berkeley Symphony and with many other groups in performances of Handel’s Messiah, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Bach’s Magnificat. Ms. Alvord has sung with many Bay Area opera companies in roles such as Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, Siebel in Faust, and Hansel in Hansel and Gretel. She has been a professional member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus since 2000, and has also sung with San Francisco Opera Chorus and Philharmonia Baroque Chorale.
Justin Montigne, Director of Voice Studies
Justin Montigne – voice teacher, countertenor soloist, and registered yoga teacher – teaches workshops, classes, and private lessons in the Bay Area and around the country. Dr. Montigne’s interest in the free and easy alignment of body and instrument led him to yoga, which helped revolutionize his singing and teaching. He hopes to share the same tools he discovered with singers and players everywhere. He received his bachelor’s degree in voice from Drake University, and his master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Montigne has taught on the voice faculties of UC Davis and UC Berkeley, and has presented SingAsana–yoga for singing–workshops for the San Francisco Conservatory, Seraphic Fire; Miami, FL; Studio Arsis, Tokyo, Japan; Sonoma County Bach Society–Sonoma State University; San Francisco Bay Area NATS Symposium; College of Marin; Chorus America Conferences in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.; Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, AR; and The Urban School, San Francisco, CA. He co-founded and co-directed the groundbreaking Bay Area Vocal Academy, throughout its highly successful four years training over 75 talented high schoolers in all the musical and pre-collegiate aspects of pursuing a career in solo singing.
Currently, Dr. Montigne is the Director of Voice Studies for the Grammy award winning San Francisco Girls Chorus, where he is responsible for overseeing the vocal development of all of its nearly 350 singers, supervises the voice faculty, and directs the Soloist Intensive program for its most experienced singers. He also teaches academic voice courses, private voice lessons, Opera Scenes Workshop, and stage directs the Music Theatre Production at Sonoma State University. Throughout his twenty years of teaching, Dr. Montigne’s students have sung with Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Opera San Jose, Philharmonia Baroque, American Bach Soloists, Minnesota Opera, and New York City Opera. Former students are currently studying at the San Francisco Conservatory, NYU, Berklee College of Music, CCM, Vanderbilt, Carnegie Mellon, Boston University, St. Olaf, Stanford, Northwestern, USC, and Oberlin, and Dr. Montigne’s students are regularly accepted at top conservatories and universities in this country and abroad.
Dr. Montigne is an expressive countertenor fluent in many styles and time periods of music. He toured the world for three years as an alto with the Grammy Award winning “orchestra of voices,” Chanticleer, performing in venues from Carnegie Hall to Vienna’s Musikverein to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and appearing on several Chanticleer recordings. He as sung numerous alto and tenor solos in oratorios of Handel, Bach, Purcell, Mozart, and Haydn, as well as many contemporary choral works with the Des Moines Symphony, Exultate Orchestra and Chamber Chorus, Minnesota Orchestra, Oregon Bach Festival, City Concert Opera Orchestra, San Francisco Girls Chorus, San Francisco Contemporary Players, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Seraphic Fire, EUOUAE, Conspirare and Volti. Dr. Montigne is a founding member of the 9-voice Bay Area men’s ensemble, Clerestory, and was instrumental in curating thirty-six different concert programs over twelve seasons, as well as appearing and co-producing Clerestory’s two commercially-available recordings. He specializes in early music, but has premiered numerous contemporary works with orchestra and in recital, and enjoys programming French chansons, German lieder, and tunes from the the Great American Songbook alongside the works of Handel and Bach.
Body awareness, breath, and communication are central tenets of Dr. Montigne’s vocal pedagogy and his own singing. Learn more and contact Justin at justinmontigne.com.
Tonia D’Amelio, Soloist Intensive Instructor
Called “extravagantly charismatic” by the San Francisco Chronicle and praised by San Francisco Classical Voice for her “vivid and technically assured” singing, soprano Tonia D’Amelio has sung with opera companies, orchestras, chamber ensembles, and vocal consorts across the U.S. and abroad.
A versatile singer with a repertoire spanning five centuries, Tonia particularly enjoys premiering opera and concert works. She created the role of Celia in Allen Shearer’s Middlemarch in Spring for the world premiere in San Francisco and the revival with Charlottesville Opera, sang in the first performance of Ryan Brown’s Mortal Lessons at the Hot Air Festival, and joined the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys to premiere Ben Bachmann’s Fantasia on American Christmas Carols. Tonia also performed featured roles in the modern stage premieres of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Le Temple de la Gloire (1745 version) with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale, and Carlo Pallavicino’s Le Amazzoni nell’Isole Fortunate (1679) with Ars Minerva. Other favorite opera and concert credits include The Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte), Musetta (La Bohème), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Elisetta (Il matrimonio segreto), and soprano solos in Mozart’s Mass in C minor, Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang, and Orff’s Carmina Burana. As a passionate advocate for sacred music in sacred spaces, Tonia has been a soloist for liturgical performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, Mozart’s Requiem, and J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion, and has participated as a guest artist at the William Byrd Festival in Portland, Oregon, and at the Edington Festival of Music within the Liturgy in Wiltshire, U.K. Next season, Tonia looks forward to her European debut in Jean-Marie LeClair’s Scylla et Glaucus at the Royal Opera of Versailles.
In addition to singing and teaching voice, Tonia teaches alignment-focused barre fitness classes at The Dailey Method’s Piedmont and Berkeley studios.
Silvie Jensen, Soloist Intensive Instructor
“Marvelous,” “elegant,” “beautiful”—so has the New York Times described mezzo-soprano Silvie Jensen. Ms. Jensen has appeared recently with the San Francisco Symphony, as alto soloist in St John Passion, as the Nurse in Boris Godunov, and as alto soloist in the Bach Magnificat. Ms. Jensen has recently been engaged with Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, with Island City Opera and the Mendocino Music Festival; with American Chamber Opera in Chicago as Carmen; with One World Symphony as Olga in Eugene Onegin, and has premiered new operas with Riverside Opera, Stonington Opera House, at the Ostrava Days Festival the in Czech Republic, and at the Carolina Chamber Music Festival. She has created and performed new works at London’s Barbican Centre with Ornette Coleman, Teatro Comunale di Ferrara with Meredith Monk, and Carnegie Hall with Philip Glass. Ms. Jensen made her solo debut at Carnegie Hall singing St. Matthew Passion with Ivan Fischer and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. She also appeared at Carnegie Hall as the alto soloist in Handel’s Messiah with Musica Sacra. She has appeared in recital in New York at Weill Recital Hall, Steinway Hall, Symphony Space, Americas Society, Liederkranz Club, The Stone, Bonhams, Nicholas Roerich Museum, The Cell Theatre, and at the Ethical Humanist Society in Philadelphia. Her solo album Who Is Silvie? is available on iTunes. Visit http://www.silviejensen.com for more information. Silvie is an alumna of SFGC and is delighted to be teaching with the Soloist Intensive for the third year.
Chesley Mok, piano
Chesley Mok graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance and received a Master of Music at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, studying Collaborative Piano with Timothy Bach. A diverse pianist, Chesley works with both vocalists and instrumentalists across a wide range of genres, from standard classical repertory to new music written by her colleagues. A Bay Area native, Chesley has performed with many local organizations including the Golden State Youth Symphony, California Youth Symphony, and Crystal Children’s Choir. Currently, she is also an accompanist for the Pre-College division at the San Francisco
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