Your Memphis Mix Presenters Are:

Ricky Ian Gordon was born on May 15, 1956 in Oceanside, NY and raised on Long Island. After studying composition at Carnegie Mellon University, he settled in New York City, where he quickly emerged as a leading writer of vocal music that spans art song, opera, and musical theater. Mr. Gordon's songs have been performed and or recorded by such internationally renowned singers as Renee Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Audra MacDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Frederica Von Stade, Andrea Marcovicci, Harolyn Blackwell, and Betty Buckley, among many others.

Recent productions of his work include:

2010: Sycamore Trees By Ricky Ian Gordon, Directed by Tina Landau, Book by Ricky Ian Gordon and Nina Mankin, Sycamore Trees was sponsored by the Shen Family Foundation and was a recipient of the Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award.

2010: The Grapes of Wrath - A Two Act Concert Version of the Opera with a libretto by Michael Korie, at Carnegie Hall, directed by Eric Simonson with projections by Wendall Harrington and lighting by Francis Aronson.

2008: Green Sneakers, a theatrical song cycle for Baritone, String Quartet, and Empty Chair, with a libretto by the composer, premiered July 15th in Vail, Colorado, at the Alberto Vilar Performing Arts Center. Upon its premiere, with baritone Jesse Blumberg and the Miami String Quartet, it was cited in Opera Today.

2007 & 2008: The Grapes of Wrath, a full-scale opera with libretto by Michael Korie, premiered at the Minnesota Opera and is available on a 3 CD set with libretto liner notes.

2005: Orpheus and Euridice, an hour-long song cycle in two acts, premiered at Lincoln Center. Directed and choreographed by Doug Varone and performed by Elizabeth Futral, Soprano, Todd Palmer, Clarinet and Melvin Chen, Piano, it won an OBIE Award.

2003: My Life with Albertine, written with Richard Nelson and based on Proust's Remembrance of Things Past premiered at New York's Playwrights Horizons and starred Kelli O'Hara, Brent Carver, and Emily Skinner.

2001: Bright Eyed Joy: The Music of Ricky Ian Gordon, was presented at Lincoln Center as part of the American Songbook Series. Bright Eyed Joy is recorded on Nonesuch Records with vocalists including Audra McDonald, Dawn Upshaw, and Adam Guettel.

Other works include Dream True, written with Tina Landau that premiered in 1999 at The Vineyard Theater, and Only Heaven, based on the works of Langston Hughes that premiered in 1995 at Encompass Opera.

He is currently working on commissions for New York's Metropolitan Opera with Playwright Lynn Nottage, and a new opera for the 50th anniversary of the Minnesota Opera (Garden of the Finzi Continis) with librettist Michael Korie. Rappahannock County, a new work about the Civil War with librettist Mark Campbell, commissioned by Virginia Opera and The Virginia Arts Festival, will premiere in April 2011. Gordon is also writing a new musical for Playwrights Horizons with Richard Nelson.

As a teacher Mr. Gordon has taught both Master Classes and Composition Classes in Colleges and Universities throughout the country including Yale, NYU, Northwestern, Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, Catholic, Bennington, Vassar, Carnegie-Mellon, Elon, Michigan State, U of Michigan, Point Park (McGinnis Distinguished Lecturer), and San Francisco Conservatory. He has been the featured Composer-in Residence at various festivals including The Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Songfest at Pepperdine University, Chatauqua, Aspen Music Festival, and Ravinia.

Among his honors are the 2003 Alumni Merit Award for exceptional achievement and leadership from Carnegie-Mellon University, the Shen Family Foundation award, the Stephen Sondheim Award, The Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Theater Foundation Award, The Constance Klinsky Award, and many awards from ASCAP, of which he is a member, The National Endowment of the Arts, and The American Music Center.

Karen Brunssen, mezzo soprano, Associate Professor of Voice at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, Co-Chair of Performance Studies.

Noted for her lively workshops and master classes, Ms. Brunssen is a frequent clinician for such organizations as Classical Singer Magazine Competition, Opera America, Chorus America, American Choral Directors Association, and the Chicago Chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. She has taught at the International Institute of Vocal Arts in Chiari, Italy and during 2008, 2009, 2010 was invited for intensive teaching residencies at Cambridge University in Cambridge, England, sponsored by Clare College. Her recent interactive article, The Evolving Voice: Profound At Every Age, appears in the August 2010 issue of the American Choral Director's Association Choral Journal in the "On the Voice" section. The article describes physical conditions of the voice from newborns through old age with corresponding recorded vocal examples of ages 3 months through 103 years old.

Students have won prestigious competitions such as the Metropolitan Opera Council Competition, going on to sing professionally throughout the United States and Europe, participate in premiere apprentice programs including Santa Fe, Chautauqua, Glimmerglass, Merola and Adler Programs, Houston Grand Opera, Wolf Trap, Aspen, and are teaching at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Ms. Brunssen's singing career has spanned over 30 years including solo appearances with Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Houston, St. Louis, National, San Diego, Seattle, Milwaukee, Netherlands Radio, Mexico City Symphony Orchestras, Buffalo Philharmonic, Cincinnati Opera, Music of the Baroque, Blossom Festival, Waterloo Festival, Chicago Opera Theatre, Carmel Bach Festival, Colorado Music Festival, and Prague Autumn Festival. Recent engagements include a European tour performing Verdi's Requiem in Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland as well as at the Berkshire Choral Festival and Memphis Symphony, numerous performances of Lee Hoiby's Bon Appetit, Durafle's Requiem with Grant Park Music Festival. Recordings include Telemann's Day of Judgment, Mozart's Mass in C Minor, and Monteverdi - Vespers of 1610 with Music of the Baroque.

Robert Stuart Thomson, the author of Operatic Italian (2009) and its precursor, Italian for the Opera (1992), was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1940. His education includes an honors B.A.in French and Italian (University of British Columbia, 1962) and a PhD in French and Italian from Yale University (1966). A Woodrow Wilson fellow, Thomson's thesis advisor at Yale was Henri Peyre. His academic career has included teaching at various levels, both high school and university.

In 1995 Robert took early retirement and started his own publishing house, Godwin Books, which he named in honor of his mother's family of origin. He operates his company out of his home in Victoria, B.C. Much of Robert's focus has been on reprinting two of his great-uncle's (George Godwin) autobiographical novels, The Eternal Forest and Why stay we here? Both had been out of print since 1930.

Robert's main interest, however, has been operatic Italian: how to teach it in the classroom and how to write a text which would enable students to teach themselves: i. e., a text that would be clear and lively yet at the same time subtle enough to do justice to the subject. Self-defined as rather quixote, Robert has spent about twenty years pursuing these goals: (1) teaching and re-teaching courses on operatic Italian and (2) writing two books on the subject: Italian for the Opera (1992) and Operatic Italian (2009).

Robert's interest in opera started at the age of eleven when he was bowled over by the power of Mario Lanza's voice in The Great Caruso (1951). His interest in opera deepened over the years, partly through the experience of doing 'total immersion' in Italian while on scholarship to Florence, Italy. (1960-61). In that city of artistic marvels he studied voice with Nedda del Vivo but, subsequently, realizing that he would never have more than an octave of good notes in the bass register,, he wisely chose to take up the slide trombone.