If your musical tastes run from Handel to Cole Porter, then Jackson County Community Concerts has just the concert for you.
The Community Concert Association is a nonprofit organization that has been bringing outstanding, reasonably priced entertainment to the Rogue Valley for 66 years.
The fourth concert of its 67th season will feature the vocal talents of husband and wife performers baritone Philip Frohnmayer and soprano Ellen Frohnmayer. The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 1, at North Medford High School Auditorium, 1900 N. Keeneway Dr., Medford. Steven Spooner will accompany on piano.
Philip Frohnmayer is a Mary Freeman Wisdom Distinguished Professor of Opera and chair of vocal studies at Loyola University College of Music. He began his career singing leading roles in Mozart and Verdi operas in Germany, Luxembourg, and Holland. A regular soloist with the Louisiana Philharmonic, he has performed "Carmina Burana" and Mendelssohn's "Erste Walpurgis," as well as the new symphonies of Steven Dankner.
In addition, Frohnmayer has sung major roles in opera and oratorio under conductors Kubelik, Shaw, Comissiona, Abravanel, Rilling, Entremont, Nagano and Klauspeter Seibel. With New Orleans Opera he has sung roles in "Carmen," "Salome," "Turandot" and "Andrea Chenier." Born and educated in Medford, Frohnmayer is a graduate of Harvard University, the University of Oregon and the Stuttgart Hochschule fur Musik.
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Her concert appearances include the Britt Classical Festival, the Bethlehem Bach Festival, the Lake Tahoe Music Festival, the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, the Messiah Festival in Kansas, the Tennessee Williams Festival in the New Orleans French Quarter and many appearances with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. She is a graduate of Beloit College in Wisconsin and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
The Frohnmeyers have recorded together for Centaur Records, Viennese TV ORF, Dutch Radio KRO, Southwest German TV, Minnesota Public Radio and Louisiana Public Television.
Pianist Spooner is assistant professor of piano at the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho. He is now performing an enormous recital series akin to Anton Rubinstein's historic recitals of 1885. These concerts consist of 17 solo piano recitals embracing much of the standard piano literature.
He is a top prize winner at both the Hilton Head International Piano Competition and the Artlivre International Piano Competition. He also holds prizes from the New Orleans International Piano Competition and was recently nominated by the American Pianists Association to be one of two pianists to compete at the International Dvorák Piano Competition in Prague. In addition to accompanying the Frohnmeyers for the concert, Spooner will play two piano solos.
The program will feature selections from a variety of composers including, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Henry Purcell, George Frederick Handel, Richard Strauss, Johannes Brahms, Gaetano Donizetti, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, John Ireland, Virgil Thomson, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, Maurice Besly, Michael William Balfe and Ned Rorem.
The Frohnmeyers will sing three duets and a number of solos.
The final concert of the season for the Jackson County Community Concerts series will be organist Hector Olivera making his second appearance in Medford. His concert is scheduled for March 13.
Single tickets to the Frohnmeyer or Olivera concert are $20 at the door. See http://webpages.charter.net/communityconcerts or call 734-4116.


