35th Season Finale in Sacramento

Join us for our season finale concert on Sunday, June 4 in Sacramento!

$30 general | $25 senior | $12 students 18+ | FREE for children

• Nadia Boulanger, Clara Schumann, Adela Maddison, Franz Schubert | Songs for Soprano and Piano
• Schubert | Quintet for Piano & Strings “Trout”

Lauded by the Los Angeles Times for her “luxuriant large soprano” and by the Washington Post for her “arresting, magisterial voice and presence,” CLARISSA LYONS is a graduate of The Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program where she has performed several roles.

As a Filene Young Artist at Wolf Trap Opera in 2016, Ms. Lyons sang Stonatrilla in the highly praised U.S. premiere of Gassmann’s L’Opera Seria and was awarded the Catherine Filene Shouse Career Development Grant. A noted recitalist, Ms. Lyons has performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, the Park Avenue Armory, Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter Auditorium, the Frick Collection, and Carmel’s Sunset Center. She has also collaborated with Dawn Upshaw, Mark Morris Dance Group, the Cleveland Orchestra, Bozeman Symphony, and Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Ms. Lyons has been selected as a two-time Tanglewood Music Center fellow, Bel Canto Young Artist at Caramoor, and Young Artist at Opera on the Avalon. Clarissa was named the Grand Prize winner of Florida Grand Opera’s Young Patronesses of the Opera Competition, Carmel Music Society’s competition, and West Bay Opera’s Holt competition. She has also won awards from the Loren L. Zachary Society, Shreveport Opera’s Mary Jacobs Smith Singer of the Year Competition and the James Toland Vocal Arts Competition.

Ms. Lyons holds Masters degrees from Bard College Conservatory and the Manhattan School of Music. A native California, Ms. Lyons graduated with Honors from the University of California Berkeley where she was the recipient of the 2006 Eisner Prize for Excellence in the Arts and the 2014 Hertz Memorial Traveling Fellowship. She teaches voice and lives in the East Bay with her two children, husband, and basset-hound mix.

Born in Boston and raised behind the Redwood Curtain of northern California, pianist RYAN McCULLOUGH has developed a diverse career as soloist, vocal and instrumental collaborator, composer, recording artist, and pedagogue. Ryan’s music-making encompasses work with historical keyboards, electro-acoustic tools and instruments, and close collaborations with many of today’s foremost composers. In a performance of Chopin “his virtuosity was evident and understated, his playing projected a warmth... that conjured the humanity of Arthur Rubinstein,” (Eli Newberger, The Boston Musical Intelligencer) and in a performance of contemporary music, his playing “found a perfect balance between the gently shimmering and the more brittle, extroverted strands… and left you eager to hear the rest.” (Allan Kozinn, NY Times).

Ryan’s growing discography features many world premiere recordings, including solo piano works of Milosz Magin (Acte Prealable), Andrew McPherson (Secrets of Antikythera, Innova), John Liberatore (Line Drawings, Albany), Nicholas Vines (Hipster Zombies from Mars, Navona), art song and solo piano music of John Harbison and James Primosch with soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon (Descent/Return, Albany), and art song by Sheila Silver (Beauty Intolerable, Albany, also with Ms. Fitz Gibbon). He has also appeared on PBS’s Great Performances (Now Hear This, “The Schubert Generation”) and is an alumnus of NPR’s From the Top.

As concerto soloist Ryan has appeared frequently with orchestra, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Sarasota Festival Orchestra, Colburn Conservatory Orchestra, Orange County Wind Symphony, and World Festival Orchestra, with such conductors as George Benjamin, Gisele Ben-Dur, Fabien Gabel, Leonid Grin, Anthony Parnther, Larry Rachleff, Mischa Santora, and Joshua Weilerstein. Mr. McCullough has collaborated with the Mark Morris Dance Group, contemporary ensembles eighth blackbird and yarn/wire, and has performed at festivals including the Tanglewood Music Center, Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, Sarasota Festival, Nohant International Chopin Festival, and Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival. Highlights of the ‘21-‘22 season include an original cabaret developed with mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, four tours with the Mark Morris Dance Group, a residency with the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, Brahms’ Die Schöne Magelone at the Harvard Musical Association with soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, and performances of Stockhausen’s MANTRA at Notre Dame and Syracuse Universities as part of ensemble HereNowHear.

Ryan lives in Kingston, NY, with his wife, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, and in his time off can be found brewing beer, building and modifying audio equipment, or photographing the sublime Hudson Valley.

*Special thanks to Joan Frye Williams & Martin Helmke for sponsoring the recording of our concerts

Host or Publisher Chamber Music Society of Sacramento