I am excited to announce that Ms. Steelman and Mr. Vote will join me in Fleeting Moments as guest artists to perform Volkslied and Die Lotosblume. (You can read about Volkslied and Die Lotosblume here.) Please see their biographies below:
Rachel Steelman expects to graduate from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 2021 with degrees in psychology and in music. Having graduated high school first in an unweighted class ranking, Rachel has been a member of the Dean’s list at the completion of each of her college semesters. She has continued and built upon her high school singing, acting, and music writing and production in college. Rachel is currently an active member of St. Mary’s College’s Chamber Choir and Ping Vocal Ensemble under the direction of Larry Vote and direct instruction of Joan McFarland. Specifically, she performed the soprano solo in the fifth movement of the Brahms Requiem in Spring ’18, “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth” from Handel’s Messiah in Fall ’18, and the soprano solo in the seventh movement of the Rutter Requiem in Spring ’19. She is a Music Department intern in addition to a past and present paid choir member in local churches.
Larry Edward Vote is Professor of Music at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. An accomplished vocal soloist and conductor, he has performed throughout the United States and Europe. As a member of The Tidewater Ensemble he has been heard on and conducted concerts in Weil Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Baltimore Museum of Art and Jordan Hall in Boston, as well as on regional and national broadcasts of this group. A founding member of The Maryland Bach Aria Group, Mr. Vote may be heard in music of Bach, Handel and Telemann on two Compact Discs published by Crystal Records. He has conducted or performed as baritone soloist in the premiers of works by Gian Carlo Menotti, William Thomas McKinley and David Froom among others. He recorded McKinley’s Dallas, 1963 with the Slovak Radio Orchestra, which has been released on MMC Recordings. Hearing the Call, featuring new brass music conducted by Mr. Vote was released on Sonora records in September of 1999. Mr. Vote served as Resident Musical Director to Interact; a Washington D.C. based Theater Company. With Interact he has performed and directed productions for The National Gallery of Art, The Folger Shakespeare Library, The Landsburg Theater, Arena Stage, and in a tour of the United Kingdom.
The 1993 production of The Pirates of Penzance, for which he was Music Director and Conductor, won the award for Best Musical in the 1994 Helen Hayes Awards. He was nominated for Outstanding Musical Director for the production of H.M.S. Pinafore in 1996 and again in 2000 for Pirates of Penzance. He is also holder of the Norton Dodge Award for Creative and Scholarly Achievement presented by St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Mr. Vote is resident guest conductor of The River Concert Series and former Co-Artistic Director of The Alba/USA International Music Festival.
In his performance with Voices of the Golden Age, the Washington Post noted that “His reverberant reading of Bouvard’s Le Temple de Bachus filled this aria with so much nobility and fervor that some real life thunderbolts outside seemed anticlimactic.”
Rie Moore 