Contralto Daphne Alderson And Pianist Norma Meyer Return To Perform At Next Maurice River Music Salon Concert On January 13

MAURICETOWN, NJ—Renowned contralto Daphne Alderson and pianist Norma Meyer will return as the featured performers at Maurice River Music’s next salon concert on Sunday, January 13, at 2:30 p.m., at a residence in the Mauricetown, NJ area. 

Meyer will perform music by Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Alderson and Meyer will perform songs by Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Maurice Ravel.

Alderson, making her third Maurice River Music salon concert appearance, has had a career that includes opera, cabaret, oratorio, and chamber music. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called her “an artist of dignified passion” after a performance of Handel’s Messiah. “Daphne’s voice gives me shivers,” Ted Sohier of WQED-FM in Pittsburgh said. “She’s really magical, and when she sings in French, you’ll want your sweetheart nearby.”

Among her opera credits are Mere Jeanne in Pittsburgh Opera’s acclaimed premiere of Francis Poulenc’s The Dialogues of the Carmelites. With Microscopic Opera, she has performed Agnes in Fantastic Mr. Fox and Abby Borden in Thomas Albert’s Lizbeth. More recently, she created the role of Helen Cooper in the world premiere of Todd Goodman’s Night of the Living Dead at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh. 

Her performance of Madame Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music for Opera Theatre of Pittsburgh’s SummerFest in July 2013 was called “an accomplished reading” with “luscious, dark tones.” She has also performed in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar with Quantum Theatre and Miss Baggott in Benjamin Britten’s The Little Sweep.

Alderson’s cabaret debut, An American in Paris, World War II, toured the mid-Atlantic region. In the 2013-14 season Alderson is toured with A Piaf Songbook, her collection of iconic French ballads and folk songs of Leonard Cohen, commencing with guitarist John Marcinizyn in Central and South America. She has also performed Piaf concerts to acclaim with the Pittsburgh Symphony’s Paris Festival. Her Love Café concert series at Heinz Chapel is an annual event in Pittsburgh’s cabaret scene. Commissioned works include Songs That Oscar Taught Me, a show based on the music of Oscar Hammerstein II, and All Heart, all Judy with musical director Douglas Levine. She is a roster artist at Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour.

Recently, her cabaret performances have included a tribute show to Marlene Dietrich with the Pittsburgh Festival Opera, a show with accordionist Vladimir Mollov celebrating the artists Van Gogh, Monet, and Degas at The Frick Pittsburgh, and a program of the songs of Leonard Cohen at the First Unitarian Church in Pittsburgh, among other shows. 

Other projects have included appearances at the Club Café, Whittaker Center for the Performing Arts in Harrisburg, opera outreach educational tours with the Pittsburgh Opera, Bricolage Theatre, IonSound Project and chamber music at Chatham College with members of the Pittsburgh Symphony. 

Her repertoire includes works by Bach, Vivaldi, the chamber works of Schumann, Brahms and Mahler, Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Pergolesi’s and Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater. She has performed chamber Music at the Frick Museum pianist Yeeha Chiu and cellist Elisa Kohanski.

As a concert artist, Alderson has performed in New York’s Avery Fisher Hall and Merkin Hall and Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as at venues throughout the United States, Canada, and Italy. She has toured with Chatham Baroque and performed at the Bach Aria Festival in Stonybrook, NY. 

Her opera credits include Central City Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Opera North, Berks Grand Opera, and the Opera Theatre of Pittsburgh, among others. Her roles include Hansel, Purcell’s Sorceress, Nicklausse, Isabella, Rosina, Orfeo, Lucretia, Suzuki, Maddalena, and roles in various Handel opera.

Alderson’s recordings include Words of Love, a tribute to Buddy Holly; Daphne 16, a collection of songs toured in cabaret over 16 months; Songs from the Heart, a collection of love songs; and A Matinee at the Love Café, another collection of cabaret songs.

She is Adjunct Instructor of Voice at Seton Hill University. She resides in Pittsburgh with husband, guitarist and composer John Marcinizyn.

Pianist-conductor Norma Meyer is making her 12th Maurice River Music salon concert appearance and her second as featured recitalist. She is a founding member of Piano4 (www.piano4.org), a four-piano quartet, and has toured with them throughout the United States since 2001. Tracks from their CD, Piano4 Christmas, have been aired nationally. This CD includes arrangements featuring Bunny Sigler, an internationally-known, Grammy-Award- winning Philadelphia vocalist. In this venture, she has worked as co-arranger/composer as well, along with performances with her son.

She has performed at the Honeywell Center in Wabash and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia for the past four years as the resident pianist for the WaBASS programs directed by her son Ranaan Meyer. A respected collaborative pianist, her current work also includes performances with Ranaan Meyer, cellist Nancy Stokking, soprano Sarah Joanne Davis and cellist Jonathan Beiler of The Philadelphia Orchestra in sonata and ensemble performances. Venues of recent seasons have included Verizon and Carnegie Halls. 

Additional performances include recitals with Ranaan Meyer, featuring his 5 pieces for Double Bass and Piano, Piano4 performances in West Virginia, Arizona and Michigan, La Musique des Amis (with violist Judy Barnett, clarinetist Paula Rothman, and featuring soprano Charlotte Barnett, soprano), as soloist with the Ambler Symphony, and in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Jonathan and Lynne Beiler with the Main Line Symphony. 

A former orchestra director in the Washington Township Public Schools, Meyer continues her lifelong commitment to music education in outreach programs, as an accompanist and as a collaborative coach.
Future Maurice River Music salon concerts will include repeat appearances by pianists Allison and Carlos Franzetti on February 17, clarinetist Christopher Di Santo with violinist Ruotao Mao and pianist Michael Sheadel on March 24, and, in his salon concert debut, marimba virtuoso Makoto Nakura, on April 7. All concerts will be at 2:30 p.m.
Seating is very limited, so reservations are required. Donations to assist in covering expenses will be accepted. To reserve seats, receive directions, or receive more information on the series, please call Maurice River Music at 856-506-0580, e-mail them at info@mauricerivermusic.com, or visit their website at www.mauricerivermusic.com.