Soprano Riot!

On Saturday, September 21st, 2024 at 3:00 pm the Claverack Free Library is pleased to announce sopranos Nellie Rustick Meier and Amy Shake along with pianist/composer David Anderegg for “Soprano Riot!”, an exciting concert program of contemporary and new works.

The repertoire features Aaron Copland’s settings of texts by Emily Dickinson, Lori Leitman’s settings of texts by Margaret Atwood, and songs by Florence Price using poems by Langston Hughes. There will also be two local premieres: the complete “Songs from a Bad Year” and “Two Vocalises for Enrique” by Anderegg.

Tickets are $15.00. Please join the performers for a small reception after the concert. To RSVP call 518-851-7120 or email: info@claveracklibrary.org

NELLIE RUSTICK MEIER is a Columbia County soprano, actress, artist, and teacher. Her voice has been praised as “exquisite” and “simply delicious”. Critics have stated that “Rustick has an exceptional instrument. Her voice is something unusually special and wonderful.”  Rustick Meier has lately been working through Wagner’s Ring Cycle with Tundi Productions in Brattleboro, VT, as well as premiering new works, creating the roles of Eleanor Roosevelt in Eleanor, Mercy Otis Warren in Rebel Town: The Boston Tea Party Musical, and Marie Wisnooski in A Bigger Angel. An avid recitalist, Rustick Meier has recently sung Copelands ‘Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson’, Barber’s ‘Knoxville: Summer of 1915’ and ‘Hermit Songs’, Wagner’s ‘Wesendonck Lieder’, and has been extensively performing Brahms and Verdi art song. Rustick Meier has sung with Tundi Productions Wagner Festival, Connecticut Lyric Opera, City Chamber Opera, Capitol Opera Albany, Mosaic – Arts Opera, Hubbard Hall Opera Theater, and Berkshire Opera Festival.  She has been the soprano soloist with Octavo Singers, Stockbridge Festival Chorus, Albany Community Chorale, Albany Chamber Singers, and Berkshire Lyric Chorus at Tanglewood. Onstage, she has been seen at The Ghent Playhouse, PS21, West Sand Lake Center for the Arts, and NYSTI. Other creative projects include working as a background actor for the first season of The Gilded Age (HBO ’21), portraying a swim coach in the film The Mental State (’18), singing the National Anthem for the USPS First-Day Ceremony of the Ellsworth Kelly Stamp and opening day of Saratoga Race Course, and working as a standardized patient for AMC teaching hospital.

Amy Shake is a voice teacher, performer, and music director from Clifton Park,NY. Amy studied Vocal Performance and Pedagogy at Fredonia School of Music, where she subsequently served as Adjunct Instructor of Voice, and maintains a private voice studio. As a performer, ”steel-clad soprano” Amy Shake has been noted as, “an effervescent delight” with “a great deal of subtlety…in communication of text.” Highlights of Amy’s career have included her portrayals of Queen of the Night (The Magic Flute), Mabel (The Pirates of Penzance), Olympia (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), Cunegonde (Candide), and Marian Paroo (The Music Man). She has performed roles and scenes throughout the US and Europe with ensembles such as Hubbard Hall Opera Theatre, MosaicArts, Burnt Hills Oratorio Society, Hillman Opera, Western New York Chamber Orchestra, Octavo Singers, and Lyric Arts International. She currently lives in the Albany area where she enjoys reading, gardening, foraging, walking and hiking with her dogs, and building her holistic health and herbalism brand, Dandelion Collaborative.

David Anderegg started his musical life as a collaborative pianist for ballet and modern dance companies in Boston. But after joining a men’s a cappella group in the
Berkshires in 2003, he started arranging and composing for voices. He studied vocal composition with Alice Parker as a Melodious Accord fellow in 2009. He has written psalm settings, Christmas carols, pop songs and two chamber operas, What Owls Do and The Beasts, for men’s voices.  In 2007, his Christmas carol “Frozen morn” was selected for an Honourable Mention in the Christmas carol competition sponsored by the Amadeus Chorale of Toronto.  Recording projects have included The Beasts and Be Still and See: Anthems and Carols for Christmas. He recently completed a 15-minute musical, A Bigger Angel,  and he is working on a new chamber opera, Lives of the Psychoanalytic Saints I: Saint Hermine, based on the life of pioneering psychoanalyst Hermine Hug-Hellmuth.

The Claverack Free Library is located at the junction of NY Route 23 and NY Route 9H. Library parking is located at 629 Route 23B, Claverack NY.