The Two Gay Geeks were alerted to an event happening tomorrow from two lovely friends who happen to be associated with the opera world. Christopher Can and Jennifer Johnson Cano are performing a Live concert form their living room in Uptown Phoenix, AZ.
Give a listen to these two wonderful artist that are helping with the quarantine cabin fever or those missing their opera performances.
Let us know what you think in the comments section below. As always we welcome your feedback and input on all of our published content. Than you for stopping by and spending time with us.
Now more than ever, great music matters! From Our living room to yours, this Friday, March 27 at 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT on Arizona Opera’s Facebook or Instagram page join Jennifer Johnson Cano, Mezzo Soprano, and her husband, Arizona Opera’s Head of Music & Director of the Marion Roose Pullin Opera Studio, Christopher Cano, for an afternoon concert from their living room!
Featured will be some of their favorite works that they’ve performed in recitals over the years, including music by Brahms, Bernstein and Rodgers and Hammerstein.
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About Jennifer Johnson Cano
Photo by Fay Fox
A naturally gifted singer noted for her commanding stage presence and profound artistry, Jennifer Johnson Cano has garnered critical acclaim for committed performances of both new and standard repertoire. For her performance as Offred in Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale she was lauded as a “consummate actress,” by the Wall Street Journal; a “tour de force” by the Boston Globe; and “towering…restless, powerful, profound, she is as formidable as this astonishingly demanding role deserves,” by the New York Times. In recital with Anna Netrebko at Carnegie Hall, Bachtrack called her performance “self-effacing and full of musicality.” With more than 100 performances on the stage at The Metropolitan Opera, her most recent roles have included Nicklausse, Emilia, Hansel and Meg Page.
Following engagements at Bravo! Vail with the New York Philharmonic, Ravinia Festival with Matthew Polenzani, and Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Music Festival, Ms. Cano ends her summer with the LA Phil for performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl. She begins her 2019-2020 season with Michael Tilson Thomas at San Francisco Symphony’s Opening Night Gala. Additional orchestral highlights include Berg’s Lulu, singing the role of Countess Geschwitz with the Cleveland Orchestra, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder with Dudamel and the LA Phil, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony. In recital she appears at Da Camera of Houston for a performance of Argento’s From the Diary of Virginia Woolf and joins pianist Benjamin Hochman and friends for Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared at New York’s 92nd Street Y. After widespread acclaim last season for her portrayal of Offred in Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale with the Boston Lyric Opera, Ms. Cano bows this season as Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma with Pittsburgh Opera, Komponist in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos with Arizona Opera and as the title role of Bizet’s Carmen with New Orleans Opera.
Cano is a native of St. Louis and earned degrees from Webster University and Rice University and was honored as a distinguished alumna and commencement speaker at Webster University in May 2017. Her debut recital recording with pianist Christopher Cano, Unaffected: Live from the Savannah Voice Festival, was recorded completely live and unedited. Recent recordings include a live performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony, Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and a live recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde featuring conductor George Manahan, tenor Paul Groves and St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble. Ms. Cano joined The Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at The Metropolitan Opera after winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition, and made her Met debut during the 2009-2010 season. Among her honors are a First Prize winner of the Young concert Artist International Auditions, a Sara Tucker Study Grant, a Richart Tucker Career Grant and George London Award.
“Her voice is radiant and intense, rich in the lower part of her range, bright and precise at the top, with astonishing evenness throughout. For such a commanding singer she also cuts a remarkably approachable persona on stage, and has an uncanny ability to discern and embody the character of each song.”
— Boston Globe
“Dramatic intelligence and imagination suffused every note of Ms. Johnson Cano’s performance. Endowed with an attention-grabbing dark mezzo, its depths bracing like strong coffee, she seems to thrive in the role of a storyteller.”
— The New York Times
http://www.jenniferjohnsoncano.net/index.php
About Christopher Cano
Photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco
A seasoned recitalist and orchestra soloist, pianist Christopher Cano has performed with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, the Tucson Civic Orchestra, the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra, the Catalina Chamber Orchestra, and the University of Arizona Symphony Orchestra. Recital appearances have been in Europe, across the US, Mexico, Israel and the Far East.
Mr. Cano has won numerous awards including the Green Valley Scholarship Competition, Emilio Osta Scholarship Competition, Tucson Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Competition, and is a recipient of the Theodore Presser Scholarship. He is also a two-time winner of the University of Arizona President’s Concert Concerto Competition. Mr. Cano made his recording debut with The Catalina Chamber Orchestra in an acclaimed performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No.1, Op.35.
As a collaborative artist, he has played in the Master Classes of the late Fedora Barbieri, the late Anna Moffo, Lauren Flannigan, Martin Katz, Craig Rutenberg, and Suzanne Mentzer. Mr. Cano has also played for the master classes of Marilyn Horne in New York City at Carnegie Hall. As a studio pianist, Mr. Cano has had the distinct privilege of working with some of the great artists and teachers of singing including Marilyn Horne, Sherrill Milnes, Luciano Pavarotti, Marni Nixon, Patricia McCaffrey, Joan Patenaude-Yarnell, Rita Shane and Diana Soviero.
Mr. Cano has performed as a guest soloist and chamber musician at the Killington Music Festival in Vermont, the Alamos Music Festival of Sonora, Mexico, and has participated as a pianist at the International Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv, Israel and Blacksburg, Virginia. Mr. Cano has been a member of the music staff at the Festival Lyrique en Mer in Belle Isle, France, Toledo Opera, San Diego Opera, Utah Festival Opera, Opera Company of North Carolina, Florida Grand Opera, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Mr. Cano has served on the faculties of The Intermezzo Music Festival, Manhattan School of Music Summer Voice Institute, the CoOPERAtive Program of Westminster College for the Arts and V.O.I.C.Experience, a summer program for promising young singers in New York City, Orlando and Savannah under the Artistic Direction of renowned baritone, Sherrill Milnes.
Recent recital appearances include collaborations with some of today’s most promising young vocal talent including, Jennifer Welch-Babidge, Jossie Perez, Wendy Bryn Harmer, Elaine Alvarez, Timothy Mix and Young Concert Artists Winners Jeanine DeBique and Jennifer Johnson Cano.
Mr. Cano has maintained a private studio in New York City where he has prepared singers for appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Chicago Lyric Opera, and orchestral appearances with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic among others.
A native of Southern Arizona, Mr. Cano holds a Bachelor and Master of Music degree in Piano Performance from the University of Arizona where his teachers included the late Ozan Marsh, Nicholas Zumbro, Dr. Paula Fan and Rex Woods.
Mr. Cano and his wife, Mezzo-Soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano previously resided in New York City where he was a full-scholarship student in the Professional Studies Program of Vocal Accompanying at the Manhattan School of Music. He currently serves on the vocal coaching faculty of that institution where he was a student of renowned pianist, Warren Jones.
Currently, Mr. Cano and his wife, Jennifer Johnson Cano reside in Phoenix, AZ where he is the Head of Music and Director of the Marion Roose Pullin Studio Artists Program at Arizona Opera and she commutes all over the world for performances.
http://www.christophercano.com/live/
About the Marion Roose Pullin Studio Artists Program at Arizona Opera
The Marion Roose Pullin Arizona Opera Studio continues to be one of the most competitive and respected training programs in the country. For the first time in the history of the program, we welcome a 2019 Metropolitan Opera National Council Grand Finals Winner into the Studio!
We continue to grow and develop the Studio program in a way that provides each artist with the unique opportunity to grow as individual artists on our stage in leading and secondary roles. We repeatedly hear from industry leaders and insiders alike that these mainstage roles provide invaluable experience and are often the primary reason these gifted artists choose to come to Arizona Opera. These performance opportunities allow our alumni to distinguish themselves on some of the world’s greatest operatic and concert stages once they leave the Studio program.
About Arizona Opera
Arizona Opera, now in its 48th season, produces fully-staged operas, concerts, and collaborative programs throughout the state of Arizona each season, and is among only a handful of companies in the U.S. that regularly performs in more than one city. Arizona Opera elevates the transformative power of storytelling through music, cultivating community and strengthening a state and people as adventurous and diverse as the place they call home. Since its inaugural year in 1971, Arizona Opera has produced more than 175 fully-staged operas and concerts. The company’s artistic history is rich with a blend of operas traditional repertoire featuring baroque, bel canto, and verismo works, turn-of-the-century masterpieces, operettas, and American operas.
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