Bach's Lunch Concert

Bach’s Lunch concert at The Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew, 8 Church Street (corner of Church and Federal Streets), Greenfield, Massachusetts. The concert will take place on Wednesday, April 9 at 12:15 p.m. The program will be performed by soprano Kathryn Guthrie, violinist Omar Guey, pianist Jiayan Sun, and hornist Josh Michal and will feature works by contemporary composer Joseph Summer (josephsummermusic.com). The concert is free. Audience members are invited to bring their own lunch to eat during the concert.

**Joseph Summer, composer**

While attending the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina at age fourteen, Joseph Summer studied composition with the eminent Czech composer Karel Husa. At age 15 he was accepted at Oberlin Conservatory, where he studied composition and graduated with a BM in Music Composition in 1976. Recruited by Robert Page, Dean of the Music Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Joseph was hired as a full-time faculty member at CMU when he was twenty years old. Despite this early entry into academia, Summer chose to leave after just two years in order to pursue composition full time.

For the next twenty years Joseph Summer concentrated his efforts composing a series of comic operas based on the bawdy stories of Boccaccio’s *The Decameron*. Summer is currently composing his ever expanding collection of settings of “the bard’s” ever living texts, which he titles *The Oxford Songs*, (titled thus due to Summer’s support of Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the likely identity of the author also known as William Shakespeare.) In addition to the individual scenes, sonnets, and songs from Shakespeare in The Oxford Songs, Summer completed the opera *Hamlet*, in 2006 and *The Tempest* in 2013. Summer’s operas *Hippolytus* and *The Tenor’s Suite* have been performed several times in piano reduction. In the recent past Summer has focused on string quartets, including *The Garden of Forking Paths,*the *Sea Change Quartets* (two quartets depicting littoral scenes), *The Book of Invisible Women*, and *Zócalo*.

Recent performances include “*Sycorax*” from *The Book of Invisible Women* with the Ulysses Quartet at Carnegie Hall (May 11, 2022) and the fully staged premiere of the opera *Hamlet* in Ruse, Bulgaria in May and June 2021, along with its recording by Navona Records, for release in 2022. 

**About the musicians:**

**Soprano Kathryn Guthrie** is quickly becoming recognized as an artist of unusual artistic versatility, equally praised for her performances of the traditional operatic and concert repertoire and her vibrant and sharpwitted interpretations of contemporary works. She made her New York City Opera debut in Rufus Wainwright’s American premiere of Prima Donna as Marie, whose Act II aria “outshone any other single moment on stage” (Huffington Post). She sang with the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute Program for Singers in Chicago this summer, finding success performing Milhaud’s Quatre chansons de Ronsard and excertps from Libby Larsen’s ME (Brenda Ueland). Ms. Guthrie has performed the roles of La Fée in Massenet’s Cendrillon, Romilda in Handel’s Xerxes, Adele in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus and Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni. On Parma Records she sang excerpts from composer Joseph Summer’s Hamlet under the title “The Fair Ophelia”. Ms. Guthrie is the recipient of awards and honors from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition, Palm Beach Opera’s Vocal Competition and the Marguerite McCammon Vocal Competition at Fort Worth Opera. She completed her M.M. at the Peabody Conservatory in 2009, receiving the Phyllis Bryn-Julson Award for Contemporary Music upon graduation, and received her B.M. from the University of Connecticut.

**Brazilian violinist Omar Chen Guey** has performed internationally as a soloist with orchestras, in recitals and chamber concerts throughout Brazil as well as the United States, Europe, Qatar, Taiwan, Kenya and the Seychelles. He is a prizewinner at both Tibor Varga and Lipizer International Violin Competitions in Switzerland and Italy, respectively. In 2019, He performed the Britten Violin Concerto with the Fribourg Youth Orchestra in Switzerland.

Mr. Guey premiered the Violin Concerto by Jean-Charles Gandrille with the Qatar Philharmonic. This performance has been released on the French label Paraty. He released the Bach Concerto for Two Violins on the Paulinas Label with the Brazilian soloist Elisa Fukuda and the Camerata Fukuda, of which he was also concertmaster. He premiered and released a work for solo violin of renowned French Lebanese musician Marcel Khalife on Nagan records. He participated in the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshop and has collaborated with renowned musicians such as Lynn Harrell, Ani Kavafian, David Finckel, Lawrence Dutton, Kikuei Ikeda and Colin Carr.

He was a member of A Far Cry for 10 years, a two time Grammy nominated self conducted chamber orchestra that performs internationally. He is the assistant concertmaster of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, a member of the Boston Ballet and of the New England Camerata Trio. 

Mr. Guey has taught violin at Dartmouth College since 2020. He holds a Doctorate degree from Stony Brook University, a Masters from Juilliard and a Bachelors degree from Manhattan School of Music. He was assistant concertmaster of the Orquesta de la Comunidad Valenciana, in Valencia, Spain, under the direction of Lorin Maazel and has served as concertmaster of the Jerusalem International Symphony Orchestra in Israel, and guest assistant concertmaster with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet.

Praised by the *New York Times* for his “revelatory” performances, and by the *Toronto Star* for his “technically flawless, poetically inspired and immensely assured playing,” **pianist Jiayan Sun** has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, the Chinese and RTÉ (Ireland) National Symphony Orchestras, the Fort Worth and Toledo Symphony Orchestras, the Toronto and Aspen Concert Orchestras, and the Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, and he has conducted from the keyboard the Meiningen Court Orchestra. He has collaborated with prominent conductors, such as Sir Mark Elder, Michail Jurowski, Stefan Sanderling, Leon Fleisher, David Hayes, Thomas Crawford, Daejin Kim, Kerry Stratton and Xincao Li. His performances have been broadcast by the BBC, the RTÉ, China Central Television and classical music radio stations in North America. He has performed at and participated in the Verbier Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Aspen Music Festival, the Sarasota Music Festival and PianoTexas. Under the mentorship of Sir András Schiff, he was invited to give a number of solo recitals in Europe as part of Schiff’s “Building Bridges” project.

Sun has been awarded prizes at many of the major international piano competitions, including third prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition, second prize at the Dublin International Piano Competition, fourth prize and the audience prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition, and first prize at the inaugural CCC Toronto International Piano Competition. Playing early keyboard instruments and studying historical performance practice have played a significant role in Sun’s musical activities, with critically acclaimed appearances with the American Classical Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall.

Hailing from Yantai, China, he received bachelor’s, master’s and doctor of musical arts degrees from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Yoheved Kaplinsky and Stephen Hough. His other mentors include pianists Malcolm Bilson, Richard Goode and Robert Levin, and harpsichordist Lionel Party. His devotion to the art of composition led him to study with the composer Philip Lasser. As the Iva Dee Hiatt Visiting Artist in piano at Smith College, he presented Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas in chronological order, in addition to yearlong series devoted to the music of Schubert and Chopin.

**Josh Michal, horn**, is the Associate Professor of Horn at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.  He is a member of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and is a faculty member at the Interlochen Summer Arts Camp in Michigan. He received his degrees from Indiana University (B.M.), Northwestern University (M.M.), The Ohio State University (D.M.A.), and he completed additional studies at Bowling Green State University and the IES Institute in Vienna, Austria.

Josh Michal has performed with the Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Boston Lyric Opera, Albany Symphony, Portland Symphony, Charleston Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the United States Coast Guard Band, and the Breckenridge Music Festival and has toured with the Boston Brass. As a soloist, Dr. Michal performed *The Glass Bead Game* by James Beckel with the UMass Wind Ensemble, *Horn Concerto No. 1, op. 11* by Richard Strauss with the UMass Symphony Orchestra, and *Horn Concerto No. 2 in Eb Major, K. 417* by W.A. Mozart with the Pioneer Valley Symphony and The Ohio State University Orchestra.

Josh Michal can be heard on the Resound Label with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Bernard Haitink performing Mahler’s *Symphony No. 2* and on the Analekta label with L’Orchestre de la Francophonie Canadienne as solo horn for Bruckner’s *Symphony No. 4*.  He has also recorded with the Cincinnati Symphony and Albany Symphony, and has recorded his first solo album of world premiers for horn and electronics by Peter Van Zandt Lane, Mark Oliveiro, Salvatore Macchia, and Gordon Green with additional pieces by Tyler Ogilvie. He has presented recitals and masterclasses at the International Horn Society Conference, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and International Computer Music Conference, Ohio Music Education Association Conference, Hartt School of Music, University of Georgia, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Stevens Point, and Milwaukee, The Ohio State University, Ohio University, Bowling Green State University, Wright State University, and Amherst College.