The singers
Tenor Ross Hauck (Ulisse/L’Humana Fragilita) is a resident of Issaquah, WA where he lives with his wife, Laura, and twin boys, Daniel and Benjamin. Mr. Hauck has appeared with the National Symphony, Tanglewood Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, and others. Regional work includes performances with the Seattle Symphony, Portland Chamber Orchestra, Bellevue Philharmonic, Helena Symphony, Walla Walla Symphony, and the Cascade Festival of Music.
He has been featured in early music with the Seattle Baroque, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, and the Seattle Early Music Guild. Opera credits include Wolf Trap Opera, Sacramento Opera, Tacoma Opera, Aspen Opera Center, and Indianapolis Opera. He has premiered new roles in operas by American composers Libby Larsen and John Musto, and was recently featured on the Naxos label recording of the opera Brundibar. Recital highlights include the Ravinia Festival, the New York Festival of Song, the Southeastern Festival of Song, and the Wolf Trap Discovery Series. Mr. Hauck holds degrees from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Mr. Hauck enjoys programming and performing innovative song programs, often for various sacred concert series. He is also a cellist, a voice teacher, and is active in music ministry.
Laura Pudwell’s (Penelope) reputation as a superb vocalist has been well-established as a result of her performances in London, Paris, Salzburg, Houston, Vienna and Boston. Her vast repertoire ranges from early music to contemporary works. Ms. Pudwell is equally at home on the opera, oratorio or recital stage, and has received international acclaim for her recordings.
A frequent guest of many national and international presenters, Laura has had the privilege of working with many outstanding conductors, including Hans Graf, Hervé Niquet, Andrew Parott, Ivars Taurens, David Fallis, Brian Jackson, John Sinclair, Bernard Labadie, Lydia Adams, Howard Dyck and Robert Cooper. On the opera stage, Ms. Pudwell has performed with such companies as Opera Atelier, the Calgary Opera, Vancouver Early Music and Festival Vancouver, as well as with the Houston Grand Opera and the Cleveland Opera. Her many roles include Cornelia (Giulio Cesare), Marcelina (Le Nozze di Figaro), Nerone and Arnalta (L’Incoronazione di Poppea), Mrs. Quickly (Falstaff), and Dido/Sorceress (Dido and Aeneas), which also was an award-winning recording performed by Ms. Pudwell in Paris.
Laura appears regularly with the Toronto Consort, and is a frequent guest soloist with Tafelmusik, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Toronto Chamber Choir, Symphony Nova Scotia, the St. Lawrence Choir, Le Concert Spirituel, Chorus Niagara and the Menno Singers. Ms. Pudwell lives in Kitchener-Waterloo with her husband and two children. She is a Professor of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Coloratura soprano Cyndia Sieden (Amore/Minerva) moves between the Baroque, Classical and Contemporary repertoire with extraordinary accomplishment and considerable acclaim. Her purity of tone lends itself to the exactness required by the eighteenth-century composers Handel and Mozart and the demands of the twenty-first century’s Thomas Ades and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Thomas Ades’ The Tempest, with Ms. Sieden as the high-flying Ariel, premiered at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 2004 and has already gained a place in the repertoire, with subsequent productions in France, Denmark, and the Santa Fe Opera. Of her performance London’s Daily Telegraph has said “her ability to keep control over the stratospherically high writing for Ariel [is] astonishing”.
She has garnered equally enthusiastic acclaim for her Mozart performances, in particular her portrayal of The Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte and as Blondchen in Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail. Her Archiv recordings of these two works, both conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, affirmed her status as one of the preeminent Mozart interpreters of her generation. She is ideal for Strauss, frequently performing Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos (Munich, Japan, Vienna) as well as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier (Paris’s Chatelet) and Aminta in Die Schweigsame Frau (Palermo). Ms. Sieden’s Metropolitan Opera debut was an acclaimed performance as Berg’s Lulu, and she returns to sing Queen of the Night this season. A native of California, Ms. Sieden now lives in Washington State.
Northwest native mezzo-soprano Sarah Mattox (Melanto/Fortuna) is fast making a name for herself across the country. She is a First Prize Winner of the Belle Voci National Competition, and has sung principal roles with such companies as Seattle Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Lyric Opera Cleveland, Tacoma Opera, Eugene Opera and Amarillo Opera. Favorite roles include Dorabella, Hansel, Rosina, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, Ottavia in L’Incoronazione di Poppea and the title roles in Carmen and Cendrillon.
A sought-after concert soloist, Ms. Mattox has appeared several times with the Seattle Symphony. Additionally, she has appeared as a soloist with the Portland Chamber Orchestra, the Sunriver Music Festival, the Northwest Chamber Chorus, the Eugene Concert Choir, the Northwest Sinfonietta, the Cascade Festival of Music and many others. In 2007 she made her Carnegie Hall debut as the mezzo soloist in Mozart’s Coronation Mass under the baton of Maestro John Rutter.
Her upcoming season includes appearances with Seattle Opera, Eugene Opera, Skagit Opera and the Eugene Concert Choir. For a complete schedule please visit www.sarahmattox.com.
Jason McStoots (Giove/Eumete) has been celebrated as one of the “new generation of New England singers,” “particularly outstanding” with “a perfect light-opera voice,” “finely articulated diction,” “sweet, appealing tone and real acting ability.” In a recent production of Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea with the Early Music Guild of Seattle, he was acclaimed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as “a born comic.” He has been described as one of the “strong cast of singers who are beginning to make their names in Baroque opera.”
McStoots is a frequent interpreter of Bach having performed over thirty Cantatas, many with Emmanuel Music’s acclaimed cantata series. He is honored to be one of Emmanuel Music’s Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson fellows for the 2007–2008 season where he will be a featured soloist in their performances of Bach’s Mass in B minor and St. John Passion.
He has sung with groups around the US including Boston Lyric Opera, Handel Choir of Baltimore, New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and Opera Providence; and has performed recitals with Tanglewood Music Center, MIT Recital Series, and Boston French Library.
As the Madwoman in Britten’s Curlew River with Intermezzo The New England Chamber Opera Series, McStoots was called “heartbreaking” by The Boston Phoenix who declared the production Boston’s Best Staged Opera 2006.
Douglas Williams, (Tempo/Nettuno/Antinoo) bass-baritone, has been praised for his “ringing conviction” by the Boston Globe and has been called “especially good” by the Boston Phoenix. Comfortable in many styles, Mr. Williams is most at home in the Baroque idiom, having appeared as a soloist with Sir Neville Marriner, Sir David Wilcocks, Bruno Weil, Helmuth Rilling, Paul O’Dette, and Stephen Stubbs in concert and opera, as well as with the ensembles Concerto Palatino, the Clarion Society of New York, and numerous performances with the Boston Early Music Festival. In the upcoming year Mr. Williams will appear in Monteverdi’s Ulisse with Pacific Opera Works under Stephen Stubbs, and Antiochus und Stratconica with the Boston Early Music Festival. In 2009 he concretize and record with Christophe Roussett and Les Talens Lyriques in King Arthur in Paris and Toulouse. This past year he was a finalist in the Young Concert Artists International Competition held in New York. He received his training at the New England Conservatory and Yale University.
Originally from Los Angeles, tenor Zachary Wilder (Telemaco/Pisandro) is an avid performer of both early music and modern music alike. In 2007, he made his debut in a trio of roles with the Boston Early Music Festival’s production of Lully’s Psyché. He has worked with a number of early music luminaries including Matthew Dirst, Ellen Hargis, Paul O’Dette, Albert Ledoux, Antoine Plante and Steven Stubbs, and has performed with the Houston Bach Society, Mercury Baroque and Ars Lyrica Houston, and Ossia New Music Ensemble. Mr. Wilder is also a founding member of the new music ensemble, Mimesis. Mr. Wilder received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music in 2006 studying with John Maloy and Robert Swensen, and his Master of Music degree from the University of Houston in 2008 studying with Katherine Ciesinski. He is also a 2008 Tanglewood Vocal Fellow where he premiered Mad Regales by Elliot Carter and performed the role of Toby Higgins in Weill’s Mahagonny.
Tenor James Brown (Anfinimo) is an active proponent of early and new music and has performed as soloist with the best known music directors in early music: Rinaldo Alessandrini, Arthur Haas and Stephen Stubbs. A degree holder from Loyola University, The Juilliard School and Stony Brook, James did post Doctoral study at the Seattle Academy of Baroque Opera with a Regency Advancement Grant.
Mr. Brown has sung with such opera companies as New York City Opera, New Orleans Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Bronx Opera, Rogue Opera (Oregon), Chautauqua Opera, Skylight Opera Theatre (Milwaukee), Aspen Opera Theater and The Spoleto Festival in Spoleto, Italy. Recent performances included several roles in the Seattle Early Music Guild’s production of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea (February 2007), a recital at PLU of twentieth century vocal chamber music for voice, viola and piano with Oksana Ezhokina (March, 2007) and the title role in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with Stony Brook Baroque in New York (April, 2007).
James is the Chair of Vocal Studies and Director of Opera at Pacific Lutheran University.