Sara Guttenberg Directs SUU's Women's Choir in Concert

Published: April 13, 2012 | Author: Whitney Hershberger | Read Time: 2 minutes

When ladies raise their voices in song, the result is a wondrous and harmonious evening. Under the direction of Sara Guttenberg, SUU’s Women’s Choir celebrates spring with a joyful concert on Tuesday, April 17, 2012. This Department of Music event takes place in Thorley Recital Hall within the SUU Music Building. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. and is free and open to the general public.

Women’s Choir director Sara Guttenberg has a selected a diverse range of choral works for the evening’s program. The concert’s highlight will be a performance of Gabriel Fauré’s Messe Basse with SUU mezzo-soprano Geneil Perkins as the featured soloist. The program also includes two English Madrigals: How merrily we live by Michael East and Now, let us go and bid the morning by Thomas Elsbeth. There are two pieces reflecting on Holocaust: Birdsong by Paul Read and Scholf main kind by Allan Naplan. The performance also includes a South African freedom song, Haleuya! Pelo tsa rona!, sung in Sotho.

Highly sought after as both a soloist and chamber artist, soprano Sara Guttenberg is a current member of the critically acclaimed chamber choir Seraphic Fire (Miami), Spire Chamber Ensemble (Kansas City) and the Oregon Bach Festival chorus. She has performed and recorded music of multiple vocal genres. As an oratorio soloist, she has received praise for her performances of Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Mass in B Minor and St. John Passion, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and the Monteverdi Vespers. She is a featured ensemble soloist on the Naxos recordings of William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which received three Grammys. Ms. Guttenberg has sung under the batons of Nicholas McGegan, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Nelson, Leonard Slatkin, and Helmuth Rilling. She is also a champion of new music, having participated in workshop and premiere performances of works of Bright Sheng, Kristin Kuster, and Shawn Crouch, among others. Ms. Guttenberg received her bachelor’s degree in music education and vocal performance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she studied with Ilona Kombrink, and masters’ degrees in vocal performance and choral conducting from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Carmen Pelton and Jerry Blackstone. At Southern Utah University, Sara Guttenberg is currently an adjunct Voice Instructor as well as Director and Choral Conductor of SUU’s Women’s Choir.

With such a diverse program, this concert is sure to be an evening of glorious song. For more information on the SUU College of Performing and Visual Arts visit suu.edu/arts.

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