IlluminArts presents: Love's Magic

Join IlluminArts and “golden-toned baritone” (NY Times) Jesse Blumberg for Love's Magic, a mesmerizing musical exploration of the beauty and mystery of love. From the joy of new love to the melancholy of love lost, this program highlights the power that music has to unearth the deepest human emotions.

This program is centered around selections from Ricky Ian Gordon’s Green Sneakers, a song cycle for baritone and string quartet that was written specifically for Jesse Blumberg. In this song cycle, the composer explores the life and love of his late husband, who passed away during the AIDS crisis.

Additional highlights include works by Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, arranged for string quartet and voice, as well as music from Gabriel Faure, Astor Piazzolla, Florence Price, and more.

Join us on either May 16, 2024 at Sanctuary for the Arts in Coral Gables, or May 17, 2024 at St. Nicholas Episcopal Church in Pompano Beach.

In order to make our programs as accessible as possible to our community, IlluminArts offers tickets using three tiers of pricing. Please choose the option that best describes you when checking out: Patron Ticket, General Ticket, or Student/Artist Ticket.

About the Artist:

Baritone Jesse Blumberg enjoys a busy schedule of opera, concerts, and recitals, performing repertoire from the Renaissance and Baroque to the 20th and 21st centuries. He has performed featured roles at Minnesota Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Atlanta Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Boston Early Music Festival, Opera Atelier, and at Château de Versailles Spectacles and London’s Royal Festival Hall. He has sung major concert works with Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Boston Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, Oratorio Society of New York, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Early Music Vancouver, and on Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series.

Jesse’s recital highlights include appearances with the New York Festival of Song, Marilyn Horne Foundation, and University Musical Society, as well as performances of the Schubert song cycles with pianist Martin Katz. He has given the world premieres of several acclaimed American operas and song cycles, and works closely with many renowned composers as a member of the Mirror Visions Ensemble.

He has been featured on nearly thirty commercial recordings, including the 2015 Grammy-winning and 2019 Grammy-nominated Charpentier Chamber Operas with Boston Early Music Festival. Jesse’s other albums include Bach cantatas with Montréal Baroque, Winterreise with pianist Martin Katz, Rosenmüller cantatas with ACRONYM, and St. John Passion with Apollo’s Fire. Recognized in several competitions, he was awarded Third Prize at the 2008 International Robert Schumann Competition in Zwickau, becoming its first American prizewinner in over thirty years.

Jesse received undergraduate degrees in History and Music from the University of Michigan and a Master of Music degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He is also the founding artistic director of Five Boroughs Music Festival in NYC, and recently served as a guest instructor of voice at The Cleveland Institute of Music.

Host or Publisher IlluminArts