GUILFORD — Now in its 52nd season, Friends of Music at Guilford has a long history with “Stage Music Projects.”
These have ranged from musical theater song revues to concerts of arias and art songs presented by some of the region's acclaimed operatic performers. Also in the mix were fully staged but less well-known Broadway or off-Broadway shows and premieres of one-act or full-length operas created by some of the organization's musically gifted founders, among other composers.
This fall, the group is teaming up with New Hampshire's Raylynmor Opera for a concert at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 1, in the sanctuary of Guilford Community Church, with a program of the singers' favorite arias.
Since its founding in 1995, Raylynmor has presented 38 full-length operas at various locations in New Hampshire. Raylynmor's artistic director since 2014 is tenor Benjamin Robinson, who has performed in professional productions and concert settings from Alaska to the East Coast. He was featured in The Pirates of Penzance for Raylynmor in 2011 and has helped diversify and expand the organization's vision since taking the reins.
Robinson has been working with Friends of Music at Guilford to create this weekend's special potpourri of operatic delights, “Viva la Voce!” Featured singers who have appeared in Raylynmor productions include sopranos Molly McCoy and Julie Olsson and bass-baritone Tom Cochran. This trio will work with pianist Ken Olsson, himself a seasoned singer and musical director, as accompanist and coach.
Featured arias, to be presented with a bit of theatrical flair, are from Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and La Bohème, Menotti's The Old Maid and The Thief, Verdi's Aïda and La Forza del Destino, Mozart's Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, Wagner's Tannhäuser, and Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel.
This last offering, “The Dew Fairy Aria,” is a preview for Raylynmor's season, which includes Hoiby's Bon Appétit, a Julia Child cooking episode set to music, which is being paired tongue-in-cheek with Hansel and Gretel in November. Puccini's Madame Butterfly follows in March and Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe in June. Tickets for these shows will be available at the concert on Oct. 1.
McCoy is a senior performance major at Keene State College, where she has been a student in opera workshop for three years and received the Julia McHale Award for performance excellence last year. She has been featured as Juliet in Britten's The Little Sweep and Annette in Hans Krasa's Brundibár.
Last season, she appeared as an ensemble member in Verdi's Macbeth for Raylynmor and is returning as the Dew Fairy in this fall's production of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel.
Julie Olsson and husband Ken Olsson, residents of Jamaica, have been performing for Friends of Music audiences for the past six years. Julie is often a featured soloist, while Ken has appeared as piano accompanist in a variety of settings, as featured soloist for Organ Barn recitals in fall or spring, and as conductor of the Guilford Festival Orchestra that launches each season during Labor Day weekend.
The two met as vocal performance majors at Ithaca College, and both had extensive performing experience while there and with opera companies in the Northeast and Kansas City before settling together in Vermont.
Cochran, a 31-year resident of New Hampshire, has sung with Granite State Opera, the Monadnock Music Festival, New England Chamber Choir, Nashua Symphony, and Raylynmor Opera.