The UW Symphony (David Alexander Rahbee, director) and combined UW Choirs (Giselle Wyers, director) team up for a year-end program featuring music by Respighi, Nadia Boulanger, and Poulenc. Mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski is featured soloist with the combined ensembles for Poulenc's Gloria (Giselle Wyers, conductor). David Alexander Rahbee and Giselle Wyers conduct.
Program
Respighi: Fountains of Rome
Nadia Boulanger: 6 Songs, orchd. Rahbee
Poulenc: Gloria
Clara Osowski, soprano; Giselle Wyers, conductor
Biographies
Clara Osowski
Mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski, who sings "from inside the music with unaffected purity and sincerity" (UK Telegraph), is an active soloist and chamber musician hailed for her "rich and radiant voice" (UrbanDial Milwaukee). She was a Metropolitan Opera National Council Upper-Midwest Regional Finalist, the winner of several competitions including Bel Canto Chorus Regional Artists Competition of Milwaukee, the Houston Saengerbund Competition, several time runner-up in The Schubert Club Bruce P. Carlson Scholarship Competition, and third place in the Madison Handel Aria Competition. Recognized for her excellence in Minnesota, Clara was a recipient of the prestigious 2018-2019 McKnight Artist Fellowships for Musicians administered by MacPhail Center for Music.
In international competition with pianist Tyler Wottrich, in March of 2017, Clara became the first ever American prize winner when she placed second at Thomas Quasthoff's International Das Lied Competition in Heidelberg, Germany. Later that year, the duo was also one of four to reach the finals in the very prestigious Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation Song Competition in London, and Clara was awarded the Richard Tauber Prize for the best interpretation of Schubert Lieder. She recently won the Radio-Canada People’s Choice Award and third place in the song division at the 2018 Concours Musical International de Montréal.
Recent performance highlights include her debut with Minnesota Opera as Mrs. Herring in Britten’s Albert Herring, and active as a recitalist, she stepped in for Susanna Philips in The Schubert Club International Artist Series Recital with Eric Owens. She has also been a feature recitalist at the Enlightenment Festival of Seraphic Fire, The Pablo Center of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, The Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, and several universities. She has collaborated with many chamber musicians, including pianist Wu Han, The Lydian String Quartet, VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet, Accordo, and Dark Horse Consort. Clara’s passion for contemporary music is exhibited in the song-cycles and chamber music she has premiered or commissioned by numerous composers including James Kallembach, Libby Larsen, David Evan Thomas, Linda Kachelmeier, Reinaldo Moya, Carol Barnett, and Juliana Hall.
Orchestral performance highlights include her soloist debuts of Bach's St. Matthew Passion with the Bel Canto Chorus of Milwaukee, B Minor Mass with the Back Bay Chorale of Boston, Christmas Oratorio with Bach Society of Minnesota, Mozart’s Requiem with Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Mahler's Symphony No. 2 with Tulsa Signature Symphony, Bernstein’s Jeremiah with Mid-Columbia Symphony, and Dominick Argento's orchestral song cycles Casa Guidi and A few words about Chekhov with the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra of Minneapolis.
Active also as an educator, Clara has enjoyed giving masterclasses and convocations at several universities, including Syracuse University, Muhlenberg College, Seattle University, Concordia College (Moorhead), and North Dakota State University. She was also the guest artist in residence at Indiana State University's 50th Contemporary Music Festival celebrating the music of Libby Larsen. Clara also served on the faculty at the Aspen Music Festival's Professional Choral Institute in partnership with Seraphic Fire, and has been a panelist for SongFest and the Lakes Area Music Festival.
Previous season highlights include her Wigmore Hall debut recital with Julius Drake, debuts with Kansas City Symphony and Handel and Haydn Society, a premiere oratorio with the National Lutheran Choir by Steve Heitzig, and a premiere orchestral song cycle by Carol Barnett with the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.
In addition to performing, Clara serves as the Artistic Director of Source Song Festival, a week-long art song festival in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This festival strives to create and perform new art song, and cultivate an educational environment for students of song, including composers, vocalists, and collaborative pianists. In addition to her solo work, she participates in a number of ensembles, including Lumina Women's Ensemble, Lorelei Ensemble, and Seraphic Fire.
David Alexander Rahbee is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Music in Seattle, where he is Director of Orchestral Activities and Chair of Orchestral Conducting. He is Music Director and Conductor of the University of Washington Symphony Orchestra and founder of the UW Campus Philharmonia Orchestras. He is a recipient of the American-Austrian Foundation's 2003 Herbert von Karajan Fellowship for Young Conductors, the 2005 International Richard-Wagner-Verband Stipend, a fellowship the Acanthes Centre in Paris (2007), and is first prize winner in conducting from The American Prize national non-profit competitions in the performing arts for 2020. His work at UW has earned national recognition. In 2021 he was praised by The American Prize as “Consistently one of the most courageous and comprehensive [orchestral] programmers working in higher education in the U.S. today…”
Dr. Rahbee has appeared in concert with orchestras such as the Seattle Symphony, RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Kammerphilharmonie Berlin-Brandenburg, Guernsey Symphony Orchestra, Chattanooga Symphony, National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia, Orchestre de la Francophonie, Orchesterakademie der Bochumer Symphoniker, the Dresden Hochschule orchestra, Grand Harmonie, the Boston New Music Initiative, Seattle Modern Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Loja (Ecuador), Savaria Symphony Orchestra (Hungary), Cool Opera of Norway (members of the Stavanger Symphony), Schönbrunner Schloss Orchester (Vienna), the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra, the Kennett Symphony, and the Divertimento Ensemble of Milan. His collaborations with the Seattle Symphony include assistant conductor for the performance and recording of Ives’ Fourth Symphony, and as guest conductor for their Native Lands project and the North American premiere of Páll Ragnar Pallson's Quake with faculty cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir. He has collaborated with several prominent soloists such as Sarah Chang, Jon Kimura Parker, Yekwon Sunwoo, Glenn Dicterow and Jonathan Biss. He has been a guest rehearsal conductor for numerous young orchestras, such as the New England Conservatory Symphony Orchestra, The Symphony Orchestra of the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music at Chapman University, and the Vienna University of Technology orchestra. He has served on faculty of the Pierre Monteux School as Conducting Associate, has been resident conductor of the Atlantic Music Festival and guest conductor at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival.
Dr. Rahbee was an assistant at the Vienna State opera from 2002-2010. As part of his fellowship and residency at the 2003 Salzburg Festival, Dr. Rahbee was assistant conductor of the International Attergau Institute Orchestra, where he worked with members of the Vienna Philharmonic. He has been selected to actively participate in masterclasses with prominent conductors such as Kurt Masur, Sir Colin Davis, Jorma Panula, Zdeněk Mácal, Peter Eötvös, Zoltán Peskó and Helmut Rilling, and counts Nikolaus Harnoncourt to be among his most influential mentors. From 1997-2001, David Rahbee was founder and conductor of the Fidelio Chamber Orchestra in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dr. Rahbeeʼs principal conducting teachers were Charles Bruck and Michael Jinbo at the Pierre Monteux School. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree in violin and composition from Indiana University, a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory in orchestral conducting, and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Montreal in orchestral conducting. He has also participated in post-graduate conducting classes at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Vienna. His brass arrangements are published by Warwick Music, and his articles on the music of Mahler have appeared in journals of the International Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft, among others.
In addition to being awarded first prize in conducting from The American Prize for 2020, he was awarded 2nd place in 2019. He has also placed among winners for five consecutive years for The American Prize Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award for Orchestral Programming, recognizing his programming with the UW Symphony and its affiliated ensembles for every season since he joined the faculty. The UWSO has also been a finalist in the category of orchestral performance in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Dr. Rahbee is co-editor of Daniels’ Orchestral Music (6thedition) and Daniels’ Orchestral Music Online (DOMO), the gold standard among conductors, orchestral administrators, orchestra librarians as well as other music professionals and students researching for orchestral programming.
Giselle Wyers (she/her/hers) is the Donald E. Petersen Endowed Professor of Choral Music at the University of Washington, where she conducts the award-winning University Chorale and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in choral conducting and music education. She serves as the newly appointed School of Music's designated Diversity Liaison. University Chorale’s latest CD, Chasing Daybreak, will begin streaming in January 2024 on Apple Music and Spotify. Their third CD, Resonant Streams (on the MSR Music Recordings label) was featured in a 2018 Gramophone magazine article. Wyers is the newly appointed director of Concord Chamber Choir, an adult community chorus within the Columbia Choirs community. Her professional project choir Solaris Vocal Ensemble, specializes in the performance of contemporary American choral literature. Their premiere album Floodsongs, on the Albany Music label, won the American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music in 2017-18.
As a guest conductor, Wyers has led high school honor choirs and all-state choruses in New York (Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center), Kansas, Wisconsin, Georgia, Missouri, Louisiana, Connecticut, Nebraska, Texas, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Nevada and Vancouver, Canada. She has conducted semi-professional ensembles across the United States and in Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, and Sweden.
Wyers is a leading national figure in the application of Laban movement theory for conductors. She has served as guest lecturer in conducting at Sweden’s Örebro Universitet, European Festival of Church Music (Germany), Latvian Academy of Music, Eastman School of Music, Ithaca College, Westminster Choir College, University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Portland State University.
Wyers’ choral works are published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing Company as part of the "Giselle Wyers Choral Series," as well as with MusicSpoke and Hildegard Publishing. Her works have been performed across the United States, South America, Canada, Australia, Cuba, and numerous European cities. She conducted her 30-minute choral cycle entitled And All Shall Be Well, in Carnegie Hall during May of 2022 with a consortium of NW-based choruses, and she will return with a newly composed choral/orchestral work in May of 2026. In 2021-22, she served as composer-in-residence for the Greater Seattle Choral Consortium's annual festivities celebrating the return of in-person singing (her appearance was sponsored by Consortio). Wyers is also committed to mentoring scholar-writers in the field, and served on the editorial board of ACDA’s Choral Journal for six years.