THE HOLIDAY TRADITION
December 10 @ 7pm VMA 
Handel’s magnificent Messiah!
Betsy Burleigh, conductor
The Providence Singers
Deborah Selig, Soprano ; Andrey Nemzer, Countertenor
Zachary Wilder, Tenor; Craig Verm, Bass
A Don’t-Miss Holiday Concert!
The Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra is joined by the Providence Singers for a spectacular performance of one of the most glorious works in the choral literature: Handel’s Messiah. The Orchestra and 100 voices perform Messiah’s huge Choruses including “For unto us a Child is born,” “Lift up your heads,” “And the Glory of the Lord” and the famous “Hallelujah” as well as gorgeous arias sung by our vocal soloists.
website: providencesingers.org
GREAT seats available!
TICKETS: $30 - $100
Phone: 401.248.7000
a fun video to get you in the spirit...
Betsy Burleigh, Conductor
A graduate of Indiana University (Bachelor of Music Education with distinction, vocal concentration), Betsy Burleigh earned graduate degrees in choral conducting at the New England Conservatory (Master of Music with distinction) and Indiana University (Doctor of Music).
Throughout her career, she has combined her interests in choral and orchestral conducting with her academic interests in choral education. She was music director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus, chorus master for Cleveland Opera and assistant director of choruses for the Cleveland Orchestra. She also prepared choruses for Blossom Festival, the Cleveland Orchestra’s program of summer performances. She has commissioned a number of choral works, including Andrew Rindfleisch’s Anthem.
She served as professor of music at Cleveland State University, conducting university ensembles and teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in conducting, choral literature, choral methods and diction (English, French and German). She also served as interim conductor of the Cleveland State Orchestra. She was a member of the faculty for 15 years before moving to Boston in 2010.
In Pittsburgh, Dr. Burleigh prepared the Mendelssohn Choir for all choral performances of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, including concerts by Manfred Honeck, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Leonard Slatkin and Sir Andrew Davis, among others. She also conducted the chorus and orchestra for Handel’s Messiah.
In addition to serving as artistic director of the Providence Singers, Dr. Burleigh is the music director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh and of Chorus pro Musica in Boston.
SOLOISTS:
Soprano Deborah Selig
A native of Washington DC, Deborah Selig has performed leading operatic roles with a number of US opera companies. In concert, she has sung with the Pittsburgh, Albany, Cincinnati, Kentucky and Greater Bridgeport symphonies, Handel and Haydn Society of Boston and the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra. She was one of five American singers chosen to compete in the distinguished international Wigmore Hall 2011 song competition and will sing in the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series at the Chicago Cultural Center in the 2012 season.
A striking and versatile artist on the concert stage, recent performances include Fauré’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Creation and Lord Nelson Mass, Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, Orff’s Carmina burana and Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem.
In recent seasons Ms. Selig has sung the roles of Pamina in The Magic Flute, Rose in Street Scene and Marion in The Music Man with Chautauqua Opera; Curley’s Wife in Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men with Kentucky Opera; Adele in Die Fledermaus and Amy in Little Women with Dayton Opera; Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro with Connecticut Lyric Opera and Zerlina in Don Giovanni with Central City Opera.
Ms. Selig earned an Artist Diploma and Master of Music from Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a BM/BA in Voice and English from the University of Michigan. She spent two seasons each as Apprentice with Chautauqua, Santa Fe and Pittsburgh opera companies and was a fellow at the Ravinia Festival Steans Institute for Singers and the Tanglewood Music Center.
Countertenor Andrey Nemzer
Andrey Nemzer was born in Moscow in 1982. In 1989 he entered the Moscow Choir Col¬lege to sing in the College boys’ choir (first as a boy alto, then as a boy soprano). In 1992 he became a soloist and toured with the Choir throughout Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States.
In 2000 Mr. Nemzer entered the Moscow Academy of Choral Art where he studied solo singing and choral conducting until 2005. In 2010 he was awarded a scholarship and a position as a teaching assistant at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh where he is pursuing an Artist Diploma in Music Performance.
Since 2008 Mr. Nemzer has performed internationally as a countertenor, singing sacred and secular music of different eras and styles. Mr. Nemzer’s repertoire includes music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods to Avant Garde and Jazz, including Russian folk songs, romances, sacred music and opera.
Tenor Zachary Wilder
Zachary Wilder is a much sought after performer on both the operatic and concert stage. He has performed with numerous groups across the United States, including Apollo’s Fire, Back Bay Chorale, Boston Early Music Festival, Emmanuel Music, Harvard Baroque Orchestra, Houston Bach Society, Mark Morris Dance Group, Pacific Musicworks and the San Antonio Symphony. He recently made his European debut with Mercury Baroque as Renaud in Lully’s Armide at the Théâtre de Gennevilliers. He returned to France in the summer of 2011 to perform Coridon in Handel’s Acis and Galatea at Festival D’Aix en Provence and at La Fenice in Venice.
Mr. Wilder was named a Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Fellow at Emmanuel Music, a former Gerdine Young Artist at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow. Highlights of the 2012-2013 season include the roles of the Evangelist in Bach’s Saint John Passion, Mercurio in Zamponi’s Ulisse Nell'Isola di Circe at Le Salle Philharmonique de Liege, San Giovanni in Handel’s La Resurrezione and Lukas in Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten. He sings on Boston Early Music Festival’s Grammy nominated recording of Lully’s Psyché and their recordings of Charpentier’s Actéon.
Baritone Craig Verm
Craig Verm is rapidly gaining recognition for his exciting performances. His concert appearances include Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols with the Pittsburgh Symphony; Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs with the Asheville Symphony; Bach’s Mass in B minor at Portugal’s Aviero Music Festival, Faure’s Requiem, Schubert’s Mass in G, Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzer and Rutter’s Mass of the Children with the Pittsburgh Concert Chorale. He has also sung Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem in Cincinnati and Handel’s Messiah in Houston.
On the opera stage he has sung the roles of Ramiro in L’Heureux Espagnole, Escamillo in Carmen, the Miller in Montsalvatge’s El gato con botas, Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas, Adonis in Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Marcello in La Bohème with Austin Lyric Opera and Hermann in Les contes d’Hoffmann and the Commissioner in Madama Butterfly at Santa Fe Opera in the summer. Other performances include Papageno in Die Zauberflöte with Florentine Opera, Joseph Pitt in Angels in America with Fort Worth Opera and Falke in Die Fledermaus with the Opera Theatre of Pittsburgh.
Mr. Verm has a strong relationship with Pittsburgh Opera singing the roles of Ping in Turandot, Junius in The Rape of Lucretia, Tom Joad in Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath, Mercutio in Romeo et Juliette, the Novice’s Friend in Billy Budd and Angelotti in Tosca.