New York Poetry and Song marries art song, chamber music, and solo piano music within various themes, to present an intimate and cohesive recital experience. This recital presents a collection of Heinrich Heine poems in settings by myriad composers, from Schumann and Schubert, to Liszt, Wagner, and Boulanger.
Nigel Smith, baritone
Suna Chung, piano
Hamburg (1800s) ©Patrick Guenette
Suna Chung is the
creator and curator of
New York Poetry and Song
Suna Chung received her Master’s degree at Indiana University and her DMA from SUNY Stony Brook. Suna has participated in festivals including the International Musicians’ Seminar at Prussia Cove in the UK; the long-term residency program at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Canada; the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute in Toronto, Canada; the American Conservatory Summer Festival in Fontainebleau, France; the Franz-Schubert-Institut Master Lieder Course in Baden-bei-Wien, Austria; the Oxford Lieder Master Course in Oxford, England; the Wiener Meisterkurse in Vienna, Austria; and the Stimmen Festival in Freistadt, Austria.
Her teachers include Evelyne Brancart, Ferenc Rados, and Pierre Vallet. She has appeared in public masterclasses with Richard Goode, Leon Fleischer, Julius Drake, Elly Ameling, Marc Durand, Wolfram Rieger, Graham Johnson, and Roger Vignoles; and in concert at the 92nd Street Y, Palais de Fontainebleau in France, Zankel and Weill Halls at Carnegie Hall, in Berlin under the auspices of Deutsch-Kanadische Gesellschaft, Haus der Kunst in Austria, the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, England, and the Royal Swedish Opera’s Summer Concert series in Stockholm, Sweden.
Born in Montreal, Nigel Smith spent most of his professional life in France. After graduating from the Curtis Institute of Music, he completed his apprenticeship with the Centre de Formation Lyrique, at the Paris National Opera, where he performed on both the stages of the Bastille and Palais Garnier. Nigel represented Canada at the 2001 Cardiff Singer of the World, and continued working in many theatres in France and in Europe. Performing principally on the operatic stage, Nigel has been heard with Jean-Claude Malgoire and the Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing in works such as Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, Händel’s Agrippina, and Rinaldo, as well as in Salieri’s Falstaff. Additionally, he has created the roles of Lead for James Rolfe’s Beatrice Chancy, which was produced both live, and for television; as well as the role of Der Auskunftgeber for Philippe Manoury’s setting of Franz Kafka’s “Der Prozess”, entitled K…, at the Opéra National de Paris (Bastille). This latter encounter inspired Manoury to write the role of un jeune fugitif in his chamber opera La frontière for Nigel, which he created with Manoury and famed actor/director Yoshi Oida at Paris’ Les bouffes du nord. Nigel also premiered Guillaume Connesson’s oratorio Athanor at France Musique’s Festival Présences and, most recently, was featured in the world premiere of Joseph Barandashvili’s The Passion of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai with the Israel Camerata Jerusalem, under the baton of Avner Biron.