Sunday, November 10, 2024
3:00 PM EST

Diana McVey is an artist whose consummate skills as both singer and actress have made her highly visible in opera, oratorio, and as soloist with symphony orchestras. She is known for her riveting and moving portrayals of Countess Madeleine in Capriccio, Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro and Lucia in Lucia Di Lammermoor. She has sung leading roles with Florentine Opera, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, Opera Omaha, Opera Dubai, Opera Tampa, Opera Columbus, Lake George Opera Festival, Opera Naples, Light Opera Oklahoma, Ocean State Lyric Opera, Salt Marsh Opera Company, RI Philharmonic and Opera Providence, among others. Recent engagements include Puccini’s La Bohème and Verdi’s Requiem with Helena Symphony, Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro with Opera Idaho, the US premiere of Patrick Hawes’s The Great War Symphony at Carnegie Hall, and Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem with Great Falls Symphony, A Night in Italy gala with Helena Symphony and Southeastern Pennsylvania Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Helena Symphony, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Chamber Orchestra of Barrington at St. John’s, and the world premiere of the one-act opera Whaling Women with Seaglass Theater Company. Upcoming engagements include Mozart’s Requiem, a spring performance of Handel’s Messiah, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Japanese-American conductor Ken Yanagisawa is the Assistant Conductor of the Boston Civic Symphony and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Orchestral Conducting at Boston University under the guidance of James Burton. He will be making his Japanese debut as a guest conductor for a production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with Kansai Nikikai and the Japan Century Symphony Orchestra at the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Japan in February 2023, and most recently served as assistant conductor for the BU Opera Institute productions of Ned Rorem’s Our Town and Mozart’s Così fan tutte as well as for the BU Symphony Orchestra & Symphonic Chorus performance of Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem at Boston Symphony Hall.

Previously, Ken completed a research residency at the Kyoto City University of Arts and received a Master of Music and Professional Studies Certificate in Orchestral Conducting from the Manhattan School of Music. While a student at MSM, he was selected to participate in the Manhattan School of Music / Leonard Slatkin Conductors Project and was subsequently invited to work with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as a Conducting Fellow in March 2020. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Yale University where he received the Joseph Lentilhon Selden Memorial Award and the Stanton Wheeler Award, and prior to Yale he attended the New England Conservatory as an Undergraduate Diploma candidate for Oboe Performance under the tutelage of John Ferrillo.