The Goal of Living is to Grow: A recital of art song
Greetings and Happy New Year,
This blog post is to invite you to attend The Goal of Living is to Grow, a very special evening of song. Baritone Justin Birchell and pianist Victoria Kirsch present a specially-curated program of great song cycles from the art song repertoire.
--Robert Schumann's Liederkreis (Song-Round), Op. 39, on poetry by the German romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff, is a bedrock classic of the German lieder repertoire, capturing the stirring essence of 19th-century German romanticism in both text and music.
--Maurice Ravel's 5 mélodies populaires grècques (5 Greek Folk Melodies) is Ravel's stunning orchestration of Greek folk songs; though Ravel originally composed them on French translations, as a special treat, we will be presenting them in the original Greek!
--Two great modernist poets are set by Samuel Barber (James Joyce in Barber's Three Songs, Op. 10) and living American composer Mark Carlson (e.e. cummings in Carlson's This is the Garden), with beautiful melodies and accompaniments by both composers to bring out the exquisite English poetry.
Performance Details - Two Presentations:
Thursday, February 6th, 2025
Mount Cross Lutheran Church
8902 40th St W, University Place, WA (Tacoma)
7:00 PM
A Co-presentation with Tacoma Opera
Friday, February 7th, 2025
Wallingford United Methodist Church
2115 N 42nd St, Seattle, WA
7:30 PM
A Fundraiser for the WUMC Pastor's Discretionary Fund
Both nights' admittance by free-will donation.
More about the performers:
Baritone Justin Birchell was most recently seen on the Tacoma Opera stage as Zuniga in Carmen. Recent solo engagements include singing the “Toréador” aria to a packed house of schoolchildren with the Auburn Symphony, Mozart’s Requiem with Harmonia Orchestra and Chorus, Bach’s Magnificat with University of Washington Choirs, and The Fence in Considering Matthew Shepard with Choral Arts Northwest. Notable opera roles include Faninal in Der Rosenkavalier (Pacific Northwest Opera), Dr. Falke and Herr Frank in Die Fledermaus, Silvio in I Pagliacci, and creating the roles of Manfred in Janice Hamer’s Lost Childhood and Padre Antonio in Carla Lucero’s Juana, both world premieres. Justin was a 2020 winner of UCLA Philharmonia’s All-Stars Concerto Competition and a 2018 recipient of Anchorage Festival of Music’s Ted Stevens Young Alaskan Artist Award. Birchell holds a Master's in Voice Performance from UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music. He also remains active as a composer, choir director, ensemble singer, and educator; he is the former Music Director of Wallingford United Methodist Church, and has been engaged as a pre-concert lecturer by the Seattle Symphony, and as season lecturer by Tacoma Opera. Birchell holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Washington, where he studied and taught choral conducting. Justin will soon be seen on the Tacoma Opera stage again, singing the title role in Gianni Schicchi, a production that will also mark his stage-directing debut.
Victoria Kirsch is a Southern California-based collaborative pianist and vocal coach known for creating and performing innovative programs, including concerts based on museum exhibitions and staged art song/poetry programs. She is delighted to share the stage with her former student and now dear friend, baritone Justin Birchell.
Victoria served as the onstage pianist for a wide variety of theatrical programs with soprano Julia Migenes (Carmen in the award-winning opera film directed by Francesco Rosi), touring the world for many years with the celebrated singing actress (Diva on the Verge, Schubert, Migenes Sings Bernstein, La Vie en Rose).
She has worked with national and regional opera companies, including LA Opera, serving as a member of the music staff and as a teaching artist for LA Opera’s Community Programs Department, presenting over 35 programs to educators and students.
She has served as an official pianist for the Operalia Competition and the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions, among others.
In 2008 Victoria received a Chairman’s Grant from then-NEA Chair Dana Gioia to support the co-creation of the musical-theatrical piece, Emily Dickinson: This, and My Heart, which premiered at Grand Performances in downtown Los Angeles in September 2009 with actress Linda Kelsey and soprano/stage director Anne Marie Ketchum.
Between 2007 and 2016 Victoria curated and performed twelve music/spoken word programs linked to exhibitions at the USC Fisher Museum of Art, as part of the campus’ renowned Visions and Voices program. She has also created exhibition–inspired programs for the Huntington Library and Gardens, the Getty Museum, the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art at CSU San Bernardino, and the Long Beach Museum of Art.
Since Fall 2015 Victoria has been a faculty vocal and opera coach at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music, where she is now a Continuing Lecturer. In addition to her continuing faculty position at UCLA, Victoria returned to the USC Thornton School of Music in Fall 2024, this time as a member of the Keyboard faculty, working with pianists in the Keyboard Collaborative Arts department. She was previously a member of the Vocal faculty at the Thornton School (1995-1999).
Victoria was the music director of OperaArts, a Coachella Valley-based vocal performance organization; a faculty member at the Angels Vocal Art and SongFest summer programs; She was associated with the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara for many years, playing in the studio of renowned baritone and master teacher Martial Singher and serving as a member of the vocal faculty.