Sunday, Mar 1, 2015
Elem Eley, baritone, and J. J. Penna, piano, will perform works by Boyle, Fauré, Milhaud and Debussy.
Westminster Choir College continues its Faculty Recital series with a performance titled “Scents of Paris” on Sunday, March 8 at 7:30 p.m. in Bristol Chapel on the campus of Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, N.J. Admission is free.
Elem Eley, baritone, and J. J. Penna, piano, will perform Boyle's Lenoriana, set to poems by Edgar Allan Poe; Fauré's passionate Poème d'un jour, Milhaud's humorous Catalogue de fleurs; and Debussy's vivid Trois ballades de François Villon, set to texts by 15th-century poet François Villon.
Elem Eley creatively blends his active performing career with an extensive teaching life as professor of Voice. His lieder CD with pianist J. J. Penna, Der Geist spricht/The Spirit Speaks, which was released in October 2013 by Centaur Records, is the most recent in a discography of eight recordings, including another solo recital, also with Penna, Drifts and Shadows: American Song for the New Millennium, released on Albany Records. A Journal of Singing review of that disc declared, “No matter what technical and expressive hurdles these songs present, Eley surmounts them with conviction and assurance...What they [Eley and Penna] achieve here is truly profound.” Eley is frequently heard in recital and in master classes, and he has performed in concert and opera in New York’s most prominent venues, throughout the country, and in Europe. Winner of the 1996 Joy in Singing Award, Elem Eley also directs Westminster’s study program, Vienna: Language of Lieder.
One of the most gifted collaborative pianists of his generation, J. J. Penna has performed in recital with very notable singers. He has been heard at Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; Weill Hall, Zankel Hall and Merkin Recital Hall in New York City; the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City; Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood; Wigmore Hall in London; as well as on concert tours throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, the Far East, South America and the former Soviet Union. Devoted to the performance and study of new music, he has premiered song cycles by William Bolcom, Ricky Ian Gordon, Richard Hundley and Lowell Liebermann. He has performed and held fellowships at prestigious festivals, such as Tanglewood Music Center, Chautauqua Institution, Banff Center for the Arts, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Music Academy of the West, and San Francisco Opera Center’s Merola Program, where he received the Otto Guth Award. In addition to serving on the Westminster Choir College faculty he is a coach at The Juilliard School.
