Sunday, May 1, 2022
3:00 P M EST

Baritone Philip Lima has regularly garnered critical acclaim for his performances on both concert and operatic stages: “His singing was glorious” (The Boston Globe) – “vibrant baritone and a commanding presence” (Cleveland The Plain Dealer) – “keen musicianship along with total dramatic intention.” (Opera News ONLINE).

He has sung leading operatic roles for the international Kurt Weill Festival in Germany, numerous regional American opera companies, and the Handel & Haydn Society in works ranging from Handel’s Semele and Mozart’s Così fan tutte to Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Tosca, to Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Barber’s Vanessa, Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic classics The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance. Of particular note have been his featured roles in the world premieres of operas by jazz greats Leslie Burrs, Nathan Davis, and Mary Watkins, and by award-winning composer Larry Bell.

Mr. Lima has appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops and over seventy orchestras, choral societies, and concert series across the United States and in Korea and Ukraine, singing
major works such as Bach’s St. John Passion and Ich habe genug, Beethoven’s Symphony
No. 9 and Mass in C, Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles and Mass (major excerpts), the Requiems of both Brahms and Fauré, Dave Brubeck’s The Light in the Wilderness, Copland’s Old American Songs, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, Mendelssohn’s Grosse Festmusik zum Dürerfest (U.S. premiere), Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, and the major choral works of Vaughan Williams. He has been acclaimed for his performances with numerous orchestras—including the Boston Pops—of Lee Hoiby’s setting of the “I Have a Dream” speech of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and is featured on the recording of pioneering African-American composer Florence Price’s Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight that won the 2020 American Prize for the Performance of American Music.

As a solo recitalist, Mr. Lima debuted in Rome with a concert of spirituals in 2000, and has performed frequently at Boston’s historic Jordan Hall. His performance of Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Beverly Orlove was cited by The Boston Phoenix in an annual summary of Boston’s “Unforgettable Classical Events.”

A native of New Bedford, Massachusetts and an alumnus of Yale University, Mr. Lima studied at the Tanglewood Music Center and Boston University, and with Richard Conrad; and is the Assistant Chair of Berklee College of Music’s Voice Department. More information about Mr. Lima is available at www.philiplima.com, and at his YouTube channel, PhilipLimaSings.

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.