West Virginia University voice professor Hope Koehler, soprano, will make her Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall, Tuesday, Oct. 9.

The soprano, emerging as the pre-eminent interpreter of the songs by the Dean of American Folk Music, John Jacob Niles, will be accompanied by James Douglass, a guest artist at WVU last spring when he performed a recital with Koehler at the Creative Arts Center. The two often perform together and have also recorded together, including two CDs featuring the songs of John Jacob Niles.

The Carnegie Hall program will be American music and will feature several works by Niles, as well as “Songs for Leontyne” by Lee Hoiby, and “Lyric Suite” by Robert L. Morris.

“In the course of the Carnegie Hall recital we will be highlighting John Jacob Niles’s music by performing songs from our first Niles recording, ‘The Lass from the Low Countree,’ and introducing songs from the new Niles recording, ‘Lost Melodies,’ which is due to be released this fall,” Koehler said.

“The songs on ‘Lost Melodies’ are either unpublished or out-of-print, so many people will never have heard them. They show a side of Niles we don’t often hear, many times reflecting his study of music in Lyon and Paris, France, and the influence of French composers, like Debussy and Ravel.”

Koehler’s voice has been heralded as having “the richness of Marilyn Horne at the bottom and the clarion clarity of Leontyne Price at the top.” She has appeared in “Carmen,” “Il Trovatore,” “Lucia di Lammermoor,” “Rigoletto,” “The Impressario,” “The Old Maid and the Thief,” “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” “Gianni Schicchi” and many others. She has appeared in the title roles of “Tosca,” “Carmen,” “Fidelio,” and “Madama Butterfly” and is also noted for her performances in orchestral and oratorio works form Bach to Verdi.

She is a regular performer and soloist with the American Spiritual Ensemble, a group that performs all over the world, and whose mission is to keep the American Negro Spiritual alive and vibrant. She can be heard on the CDs “The Lily of the Valley,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “The Spirit of the Holidays” and the DVD “The Spirituals,” recorded with the American Spiritual Ensemble. “The Lass from the Low Countree” was released in 2008 by Albany Records and “Lost Melodies” will be released in 2012 by Multigram Records.

Koehler will also be heard in recitals and concerts in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. She serves on the voice faculty of the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts, and the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. She completed her doctorate at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and is currently associate professor of voice in the WVU School of Music.

Douglass received a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in piano performance from the University of Alabama. He earned his doctorate in keyboard collaborative arts from the University of Southern California, where he received a Koldofsky Fellowship and the Outstanding Keyboard Collaborative Arts award. He joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2005, where he is associate professor of collaborative piano, and vocal coach.

Hear Hope Koehler on the CD “The Lass from the Low Countree”:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Lass-Low-Countree-Koehler/dp/B00199PNIK

-WVU-

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

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