I am thrilled to announce that Garth Baxter has agreed to accept a commission to compose three Irish songs. Garth and I have been Facebook friends for awhile now, and he has written some pieces for a good friend of mine, soprano Annie Gill, and so I thought I’d check out some of his work on YouTube.
The first song that came up was a choral setting of “Wild Mountain Thyme,” which I posted the other day as the song that has meant a lot to my husband and me at our regular pilgrimages to Milwaukee Irish Fest. I thought that this was a sign, so I contacted Garth immediately.
I’m in the process of getting the poems pronounced for me and I’ve ordered an Irish-English dictionary from Amazon to help me do a word for word translation.
This is very exciting. I don’t know when we’ll get started, let alone finished, but I think this will be a fantastic collaboration!!
Now to decide whether the recital they’ll be on will be the originally intended “outside the box” theme or if I’ll just go with a Celtic theme and reprise some of the things that I did with MacDowell Club a few years ago….
More info to follow!
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Published by Mezzoid Voice Studio
Christine Thomas-O'Meally, a mezzo soprano and voice teacher currently based in the Baltimore-DC area, has performed everything from the motets of J.S. Bach to the melodies of Irving Berlin to the minimalism of Philip Glass.
As an opera singer and actress, she has appeared with companies such as Charm City Players, Spotlighters Theatre, Chicago Opera Theater, Opera Theater of Northern Virginia, Opera North, the Washington Savoyards, In Tandem Theatre, Windfall Theater, The Young Victorian Theater of Baltimore, and Skylight Opera Theatre. She created the role of The Woman in Red in Dominick Argento’s Dream of Valentino in its world premiere with the Washington Opera and Mary Pickersgill in O'er the Ramparts at its world premiere during the Bicentennial of Battle of Baltimore at the Community College of Baltimore County. Other roles include Mrs. Paroo in Music Man, Mother Abbess in Sound of Music, Dorabella in Cosi Fan Tutte, Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro, both Hansel and the Witch in Hansel & Gretel, and many roles in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. Her performance as the Housekeeper in Man of La Mancha was honored with a WATCH award nomination.
Ms. Thomas-O'Meally received an M.M. in vocal performance from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. She regularly attends master classes and workshops in both performance and vocal pedagogy, and is certified in all three Levels of Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method. Her students have performed on national and international tours of Broadway productions, at prestigious conservatories, and in regional theater throughout the country.
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