Dear Mason Music Family,
I am thrilled to announce that we have four new full-time faculty joining our Dewberry School of Music for the upcoming academic year. I am exceedingly grateful that we are able to welcome four extraordinary new music faculty for the Fall 2023 semester: Dr. Andrea Reinkemeyer, Associate Professor and Director of Composition; Prof. Richard Leech, tenor, Associate Professor of Voice and Opera; Prof. Jennifer Casey Cabot, soprano, Term Assistant Professor of Voice and Diction; and Dr. Simon Prosser, Term Assistant Professor of Theory and Aural Skills.
We are so happy to announce that two of our outstanding vocalists, Juliana Cardine and Anissa Clay Zelaya, were chosen as National Semi-Finalists in the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Competition! Both students are in the studio of Prof. Patricia Miller, Director of Vocal Studies.
We are looking forward to an exciting week ahead with our Mason Summer Band Camp and our Mason Jazz Camp on June 19-23. We hope you will join us for daily free jazz concerts M-F afternoon in our Center for the Arts Concert Hall, as highlighted in the newsletter.
We hope you are enjoying a relaxing summer filled with beautiful music!
Warm regards,
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Dr. Linda A. Monson
Director, Dewberry School of Music
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Dr. Andrea Reinkemeyer,
Associate Professor and Director of Composition
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Prof. Richard Leech, tenor;
Associate Professor of Voice and Opera
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Tenor Richard Leech is the newly appointed Associate Professor of Voice and Opera at George Mason University, effective Fall 2023. American tenor Richard Leech is one of the most celebrated lyric tenors of his generation. In a performance career spanning more than four decades he has provided iconic interpretations of many of the most demanding and well-known roles of the Italian, French, and German repertoire both on disc and on the stages of the world's leading opera houses and symphonies from The Metropolitan Opera to Carnegie Hall and Vienna’s Staatsoper and Philharmonic, to London’s Royal Opera at Covent Garden and Milan’s Teatro alla Scala.
Richard Leech is featured on more than twenty recordings in many of the roles for which he is so well known including Rodolfo in La Bohème, The Duke in Rigoletto, and Riccardo in Un ballo in Maschera, and his award-winning EMI recording of Gounod’s Faust with Michel Plasson among many others. His solo release from the heart, a collection of favorite Italian arias and songs, can be found on the Telarc label and his acclaimed Deutsche Oper Les Huguenots, on Arthaus DVD.
As a passionate teacher and mentor, Mr. Leech has worked extensively with aspiring artists at all levels of their development throughout his career. Previously he served on the faculties of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts; Rutgers Opera Institute; and The University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
Director of Resident Artist Programs for Michigan Opera Theatre (MOT, now Detroit Opera) from 2015 -2021, Mr. Leech created the MOT Studio, the company’s first young artist program, offering full-time engagement, training, and experience to artists in the early stages of a professional career. In his leadership role with MOT, he also oversaw the company’s many education and community engagement initiatives.
Following his 1987 European debut with Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, as Raoul in Les Huguenots, the headline of the Berliner Morgen Post read: “A World Star is Born” and true to its forecast, Mr. Leech had soon made debuts with virtually every major opera house of the world. Of his first performance with the Metropolitan Opera in 1989, as Rodolfo in La Bohème, Will Crutchfield of the New York Times wrote: “Other than Pavarotti on his best night, I can’t think of another tenor I’d rather hear in the part.” Since then, he has sung nearly 200 Met performances in more than a dozen leading roles.
In addition to the Met, he was also a frequent guest with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the opera companies of San Francisco, LA, Washington, San Diego, and Cincinnati, as well as many other important American companies. Internationally, he was often seen in Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Florence, Rome, and at La Scala in Milan where he had the honor of singing La Bohème with the great Mirella Freni. Other countries where he has performed include Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, Canada, Russia, Cyprus, Japan, China, and South Korea.
In concert, Mr. Leech has distinguished himself with the Vienna, Prague, New York, Chicago, and LA Philharmonic Orchestras, and the National and Montréal Symphonies, among myriad others in repertoire such as Verdi’s Messa di requiem; Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and Missa Solemnis; Mahler’s 8th Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde; Berlioz’s Requiem and La Damnation de Faust; Rossini’s Stabat Mater; and Mozart’s: Requiem and Mass in C minor. In crossover repertoire, he has appeared with the Boston Pops, New York Pops, Cincinnati Pops, and with Doc Severinsen and his Orchestra. His critically acclaimed concert, An evening with Richard Leech in Tribute to Mario Lanza, in which he embraced the crossover style of his childhood hero, was the sell-out season opener for the New York Pops at prestigious Carnegie Hall, and opened Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival to an audience of over 12,000.
Mr. Leech was the 1988 winner of the prestigious Richard Tucker Award, the recipient of The Voice Foundation’s Voice Education Research and Awareness (V.E.R.A.) Award, and the Giulio Gari Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award. He has been a frequent guest teacher and presenter of masterclasses for many institutions and companies such as USC, UCSD, Beijing School of Fine Arts, Opera Lyra Ottawa Young Artist Program, Binghamton University, The Castleton Festival’s Artist Training Seminar, the New York Singing Teachers Association’s Professional Development Program, and for the Prelude to Performance program of The Martina Arroyo Foundation on whose Advisory Board he serves. He attended Eastman School of Music and Binghamton University and credits his success to the training he received in the Tri-Cities Opera Resident Artist Training Program in Binghamton, NY under the long-term mentorship of the company’s founders, Peyton Hibbitt and Carmen Savoca.
Mr. Leech’s many televised appearances include Madama Butterfly with the Met; a “Live from Lincoln Center” Rigoletto with the New York City Opera; Les Huguenots with Deutsche Oper Berlin; and many other opera broadcasts in Europe and beyond, as well as his frequent appearances on the annual Richard Tucker Music Foundation Gala. More popular events include the lighting of the National Christmas Tree, with President Clinton, where he performed with Aretha Franklin and Trisha Yearwood; the famous tree lighting at Rockefeller Center; and the opening ceremonies of the 1995 America’s Cup in San Diego. In benefit concerts, he has appeared with such show business luminaries as Tony Randal, Kelsey Grammer, Ben Vereen, Betty Buckley, and Peter Allen. He joined Placido Domingo in a benefit for Hurricane Katrina relief which marked the reopening of the arts in New Orleans.
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Prof. Jennifer Casey Cabot, soprano;
Term Assistant Professor of Voice and Diction
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Soprano Jennifer Casey Cabot is the newly appointed Term Assistant Professor of Voice and Diction at George Mason University, effective August 2023. Jennifer Casey Cabot is a seasoned opera singer who throughout her exciting career has always nurtured an interest in teaching. Having studied with Richard Miller (Oberlin) and Doris Yarick-Cross (Yale), she is keenly aware of passing on that legacy. Her teaching experience began during her Oberlin years, continued while at Yale and throughout her active 30 year international career she has never been without a steady stream of students. “My mentors taught me not only how to sing well but also how to handle the demands and expectations of a career, I always wanted to share that information and understood the need for a skilled teacher and mentor who demands as much of themselves as they do from their students.”
Jennifer Casey Cabot’s opera career centers around the heroines of Mozart, Puccini and Verdi and Strauss, as well as a recent focus on Russian song repertoire, and the role of Liza in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades. Her engagements have spanned the globe, including Germany,Greece, Chile, Canada, Latin America, Japan, Hong Kong and the United States. Her engagements brought her into collaboration with many leading conductors and directors; Naami Jarvi, Stuart Bedford, Hans Vonk, Alan Gilbert, Leonard Slatkin, Leon Major, Ken Cazan, John Copley, Justin Way, Tito Capobianco and Placido and Marta Domingo, to name a few. Ms. Cabot’s more recent focus has been local to Washington DC, (where she lives and teaches) and she has enjoyed working closely with the Russian Chamber Arts Society, as well as with Opera Lafayette, the Post Classical Ensemble, the Bay Atlantic Symphony and the National Philharmonic.
Jennifer Casey Cabot’s career was launched in Europe as an apprentice at the Deutsche Opera in Berlin and led to an ensemble engagement in Braunschweig, Germany. Soon thereafter she expanded her career to include the US and Canada singing leading roles with the New York City Opera, Washington National Opera, Boston Opera, San Diego Opera, Minnesota Opera, Arizona Opera, Vancouver Opera, Calgary Opera, Central City Opera and singing concerts with the Washington National Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. Her trademark roles are Mozart’s Countess, Donna Elvira, Pamina, Fiordiligi and Konstanze followed by repeat successes singing Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata as well as both Mimi and Musetta in Puccini’s La Boheme. Her Concert repertoire include, Mozart’s C minor mass, Mahler 2, 4 and 8th Symphonies, Strauss’s Vier Letzte Lieder and Verdi’s Requiem.
During her formative years she gained entry to the Operalia Competition and following her status as a finalist in both the Bordeaux and Tokyo competitions she was invited to sing duet recitals with Placido Domingo in Oberhausen, Germany and Fukuoka, Japan. She attended Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she received a double degree in German and Voice. She also received a Masters of Opera from Yale University. Ms. Cabot’s most recent pursuits in addition to teaching and performing include serving on the MD/DC NATS board, adjudicating for vocal competitions such the 2014 Three Centuries of Classical Romances Competition in St. Petersburg, Russia and the Vocal Arts Society of DC’s 2016 Discovery Art Song Competition and working with the Potomac Vocal Institute as faculty and administrative planning consultant.
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Dr. Simon Prosser,
Term Assistant Professor of Theory & Aural Skills
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Dr. Simon Prosser is the newly appointed Term Assistant Professor of Theory and Aural Skills at George Mason University, effective August 2023. Dr. Prosser previously served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Dr. Prosser holds the BA in Music from the University of Toronto (2010), the MA in Music from Indiana University (2012) and the PhD from the Graduate Center from the City University of New York (2021).
His dissertation research confronts issues of tonal hierarchy in the music of eighteenth-century Europe from the perspective of schema theory. He has also pursued research on the music of Dmitri Shostakovich. He has presented his work at numerous national and international academic conferences.
He has previously held teaching positions at the Yale School of Music, the Mannes School of Music, Hunter College, Queens College, and the Jacobs School of Music.
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Mason Vocal Students selected as
National Semifinalists in 2023 NATS Competition
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Juliana Cardine (pictured above) and Anissa Clay Zelaya (pictured right) |
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Huge Congratulations to Juliana Cardine and Anissa Clay Zelaya who have been selected as 2023 National Semifinalists in the prestigious National Association Teachers of Singing (NATS) Competition. Juliana Cardine, Junior Vocal Performance Major, and Anissa Clay Zelaya, first year Masters Vocal Performance Candidate, are students of Prof. Patricia Miller, Director of Vocal Studies at Mason.
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First-ever Mason Summer Band Camp
June 19-23 & Concert June 23 at 3 pm
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Join us in welcoming over 100 junior and senior high band students to Mason Nation for the first-ever Mason Summer Band Camp from June 19-23, 2023. Students from across the Washington Metropolitan Region and beyond will have the opportunity to experience a residential and immersive program, similar to that of our Mason Music Majors. Led by Dr. William Lake Jr., Director of Concert Bands at Mason, the camp includes daily masterclasses and one-on-one lessons with faculty from the Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music. In addition, there is a special appearance by Mason Alumna, Dr. LaToya A. Webb, Wind Ensemble Director of Wilfrid Laurier University – Canada.
On Friday June 23 at 3 pm supporters of Mason Music and the Mason Bands are invited to attend a free concert in Harris Theatre. The Junior High and Senior Bands will perform their individual programs, followed by a lively finale called "The Green Machine Experience," which is unique to the Mason Summer Band Camp.
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Mason Jazz Camp June 19-23 &
Daily Afternoon Performance Schedule
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At the Mason Jazz Camp, students will participate in classes in improvisation, jazz theory, ear training, performance practice (big bands, combos, vocal groups and Latin American ensemble), composition, arranging and jazz history. Students will study and participate in master classes and concerts with leading educators and performers in the Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland region.
Our special guest artist for summer 2023 is acclaimed American vibraphonist, Warren Wolf! You are invited to performances featuring the US Army Blues, Mike Kamuf Little Big Band, Victor Provost, Shawn Purcell, Graham Breedlove, Wade Beach, Zack Pride, Kevin McDonald, Darden Purcell, Xavier Perez, Rick Whitehead, Aaron Eckert and more...
Concert Schedule (Performances are free and open to the public):
Monday, June 19 at 3:30 p.m. US Army Blues
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Monday, June 19, 2023
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Center for the Arts
Mason Jazz Camp - The US Army Blues
Free and open to the public - no tickets or camp registration required.
The U.S. Army Blues, part of the United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own,” is the premier jazz ensemble of the US Army. After informal beginnings in 1970, this 18-piece ensemble became an official element of the Army Band in 1972. The Army Blues strive to fulfill their mission through public concerts, educational outreach, and the preservation of the tradition of America’s unique art form: jazz.
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