Brief Bios
Alabama-born Susanna Phillips, winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2010 Beverly Sills Artist Award, returns to the Met in the 2012-13 season to perform Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. Other 2012-13 highlights include Phillips’ return to Santa Fe as the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, performances of Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire with Lyric Opera of Chicago and in concert at Carnegie Hall opposite Renee Flemming, and a recital at Carnegie Hall in 2013.
American soprano Elizabeth Futral has established herself as one of the leading coloratura sopranos in the world today. With her stunning vocalism and vast dramatic range, she has embraced a repertoire that ranges from the Baroque to world premieres by the leading composers of today.
Pianist Margo Garrett is well known to audiences for her frequent performances in chamber, sonata, and vocal recitals. The large roster of internationally known artists with whom she has long performing relationships include sopranos Kathleen Battle, Barbara Bonney, Elizabeth Futral, Beverly Hoch, the late Judith Raskin, Lucy Shelton, Dawn Upshaw, Benita Valente, mezzo Shirley Close, tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, violinists Jaime Laredo and Daniel Phillips, violist Paul Neubauer and cellists Sharon Robinson, Matt Haimowitz, and the late Stephen Kates. Her recordings can be found on the Albany, CRI, Deutsche Grammophon (including the 1992 Grammy winner for Best Vocal Recital), Dorian, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch and Sony Classical labels. Active for many years in the world of contemporary music, she has premiered more than 30 works.
Noted for his highly poetic and lyrical compositions, Philip Lasser has crafted a unique sound-world, blending the subtle colors of French Impressionist sonorities with the crisp, direct sounds and rhythms of America’s jaunty musical palette. Standing apart from modernist trends and experiments, he seeks to achieve refinement of personal expression via economy of gesture and a blossoming of color. Born in NYC in 1963, Lasser began piano lessons and composing at the age of 5. At 16 he entered Nadia Boulanger’s famed Ecole d’Arts Americaines in Fontainebleau, France, where he also met and began working with the legendary pianist Gaby Casadesus. After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard College, Lasser worked with Narcis Bonet, Boulanger’s closest colleague and disciple in Paris, where he lived from 1985 to 1988. He then studied counterpoint with Jacques-Louis Monod at Columbia University, where he forged a seamless link between the French world of musical color and the great German tradition of linear contrapuntal development. Two years later, Lasser entered the DMA program at The Juilliard School, studying with David Diamond.
Philip Lasser’s music has been performed by many distinguished artists, and recorded by many different labels. His recent book, The Spiraling Tapestry: An Inquiry into the Contrapuntal Fabric of Music, offers a pioneering view of Bach’s compositional world. He directs the European American Musical Alliance Summer Music Programs in Paris, a school dedicated to training young composers, chamber musicians and conductors in the tradition of legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger. Lasser has been a distinguished member of the faculty of The Juilliard School since 1994.