Westminster Faculty Recital Series Presents Salons, Cafés and Cabaret
Pianist Eric Hung and mezzo-soprano Amy Hartsough will perform café and cabaret songs sung in Paris, Berlin and Shanghai from the 1900s to the 1930s on Wednesday, October 7, at 7:30 p.m. in Bristol Chapel on the campus of Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton. Admission is free.
Part of Westminster’s Faculty Recital Series, the performance will begin with works by Frédéric Chopin: Fantasy in F Minor, Op. 49, Three Mazurkas, Op. 50, and Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52 performed by Mr. Hung. The artists will collaborate to present “The Life of the Diva,” a collection of songs by Erik Satie, Toru Takemitsu, Benjamin Britten and Kurt Weill, including The Diva of the Empire, Surabaya Johnny, Tell Me the Truth About Love and The Saga of Jenny.
Eric Hung, an associate professor of Music History at Westminster Choir College, enjoys a diverse career as a scholar and performer. As a musicologist and ethnomusicologist, his current projects include two books: musical representations of East Asians in American film and television and the presentation of “Chinese-ness” on the Western concert stage.
He recently guest-edited an issue of the journal Asian Music, and he has been invited to present his research at lectures in Australia and Hong Kong and at national and international conferences in the United States, Canada, Thailand, Ireland and Great Britain.
As a pianist, Hung has been featured on Radio Hong Kong, and he has performed in Germany, Austria, Australia and in numerous cities in North America. Hung received his doctorate in Musicology from Stanford University, a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Social Studies from Wesleyan University, and an ARCT in Piano Performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Prior to his arrival in New Jersey, he taught at Minnesota State University-Moorhead and the University of Montana.
Amy Hartsough, soprano, received her Professional Artist Certificate in 2008 and her Master of Music in 2007 from the North Carolina School of the Arts’ (NCAS) A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, where she studied with Dr. Marilyn Taylor. At NCSA, she performed the roles of Idamante in Mozart’s Idomeneo, Public Opinion in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, Dame Martha Schwerlein in Gounod’s Faust, Elizabeth in Kirke Mechem’s workshop premiere of Pride and Prejudice and Emma Jones in Weill’s Street Scene. As part of the Fletcher Institute's Outreach program, she performed the roles of Hansel, Mother, and the Witch in Steven LaCosse’s adaptation of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, as well as the role of Jody Juggler from Sidney the Serpent Wants to Sing.
Hartsough received a Bachelor of Music Performance with honors in pipe organ and voice from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also intensively studied composition, piano, and classical guitar. She has performed in scene programs across London as the title roles in Carmen and Alcina, the Sorceress in Dido and Aeneas, and Mallika in Lakmé, as well as the mezzo solo of Charpentier's Mass in C Minor at Westminster Abbey. She has also presented several art song recitals in Switzerland, Holland, Germany and France with Eric Hung.
Westminster Choir College is located at Hamilton Avenue and Walnut Lane in Princeton. For updates, visit Westminster’s Web site at http://www.rider.edu/arts.
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