Sinfonia Concert Presents: A Night at the Opera

The PRINCETON UNIVERSITY SINFONIA is a full symphony orchestra that unites eager, music-
loving Princeton University undergraduate and graduate students, as well as community friends, to explore diverse symphonic repertory from four centuries. Its members are passionate musicians with diverse interests and backgrounds who come together for the rich rewards of making music together and for others. Find out more about Sinfonia and ways that you might support our ongoing musical mission at: sinfonia.princeton.edu

DR. RUTH OCHS is a passionate and sought-after conductor and educator based in central New
Jersey. Since 2002 she has been conducting at Princeton University in various capacities. Soon after beginning graduate studies in the Department of Music at Princeton, she took over directorship of the Princeton University Sinfonia and quickly steered its growth from a chamber orchestra into a full-size symphonic orchestra performing repertory from the baroque to the most recent, including accompanying a fully-staged version Mozart’s Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe in 2019. Under Dr. Ochs’ leadership, the orchestra regularly premieres new compositions by Princeton University undergraduate
composers. She also serves as Associate Conductor of the Princeton University Orchestra and has led the ensemble in a variety of performances, including on its tour of Spain in 2019. Off the podium, her work in the classroom and introducing concert programs puts into action her belief that performers
and audiences alike benefit from a closer understanding of the materials and makers of a musical composition.

Passionate about nourishing and inspiring community and youth musicians, Dr. Ochs also shares her time with local musical initiatives in central Jersey. She is now in her eighteenth season as conductor and music director of the Westminster Community Orchestra, with whom she has led successful opera gala performances, collaborations with youth ensembles from the Westminster Conservatory of Music,
and popular family and holiday concerts. Musical outreach lies close to her heart, and she has taken
small ensembles of Princeton University musicians to perform in Mercer County elementary schools. In 2019 she received the Princeton University Pace Center for Civic Engagement’s Community Engagement Award. Ruth Ochs holds degrees in music, orchestral conducting, and music history, from Harvard University (magna cum laude with highest honors in music), the University of Texas at Austin, and Princeton University, respectively. As a Fulbright Scholar, she studied musicology at Humboldt Universität in Berlin, Germany, and, as a student of the Polish language, she studied at the Uniwersytet Jagielloński in Kraków, Poland. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Princeton University’ s Department of Music.

TALIA CZUCHLEWSKI is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is now in her second music-filled year at Princeton, planning on majoring in Comparative Literature. She is the three-time winner of the Vocal Artistry Art Song Festival, took first place nationally in the MTNA Senior Voice competition, and was a soloist with the Princeton University Glee Club. She can be seen this year as Sheila in PUP’
s A Chorus Line and Papagena in The Magic Flute.

LAURENCE DRAYTON is a sophomore in the Classics department from Cambridge, England. Outside of class, he sings in the Princeton Glee Club, Chamber Choir and the Katzenjammers. He also works at Mendel Music Library and is the Co-President of Ellipses, a student-run slam poetry group. He is very much looking forward to playing 3rd Spirit in The Magic Flute later on this semester.

AMELIA KAUFFMANN ’24 is a philosophy major from New York City, who is getting a certificate in Solo Vocal Performance. She started participating in choirs and taking piano lessons at the age of seven and has been training in classical voice since high school. She has been a part of multiple opera productions over the years, including a Princeton production of Dido and Aeneas in 2022. On campus, she is involved in the Glee Club, Chamber Choir, Decem, and the Princeton Tigressions.

MADELEINE MURNICK ’26 is a soprano in the Princeton Glee Club, Chamber Choir, and student-run vocal consort Decem. She is from Washington DC, where she grew up singing in the choirs of the National Cathedral and St. Paul’s K St. She is a graduate of summer choral programs in Newport, Charlottesville, DC, NYC, and Cambridge, UK. She is excited to make her operatic debut as 2nd Spirit in this spring’s MPP 219production of The Magic Flute.

Mezzo-soprano BARBARA REARICK whom Opera News singles out for her “tonal beauty” and Gramophone Magazine for her “charm and finesse,” has performed with orchestras throughout the U.S. and abroad including Chicago, Houston, Baltimore, American, St. Louis, Buffalo, Pasadena Pops, Hallé, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional, Costa Rica, and the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester, Berlin, where she performed the world- premiere performance and recording of Kurt Weill’s The Eternal Road under Gerard Schwarz.

A sought after recitalist, she has performed at Weill Hall and the Norwich, Aldeburgh, Buxton, Spitalfields (London), and Killaloo festivals in the United Kingdom, as well as at London’s Wigmore Hall where she sang A History of the Thé Dansant — a song cycle written for Barbara by the late Sir Richard Rodney Bennett with the composer at the piano. She is a founding member of the Britten- Pears Ensemble, a London-based chamber group specializing in contemporary music.

Barbara made her Carnegie Hall debut in Handel’s Messiah and has enjoyed performances at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), the Virginia Arts Festival, Spoletto, the Chicago Symphony’s MusicNow series and at Winter Park, Northwest, and Shenandoah Bach Festivals. She has performed many times with Voices of Ascension (NYC) under Dr. Dennis Keene. Recent engagements include Berlioz’s Les nuits d’eté and Mozart’s Requiem with the Louisiana Philharmonic and Handel’s Messiah with CharlotteSymphony. Performances this spring include Ravel’ s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé with the Richardson Chamber Players and in April she performs the exquisite Pie Jesu from the Duruflé Requiem with the Chapel Choir and orchestra at Princeton. Barbara is a native of Dillsburg, Pennsylvania and has been on the voice faculty at Princeton University for over 20 years.

Gilmore Young Artist, Young Steinway Artist, and Presidential Scholar in the Arts KASEY SHAO began piano at the age of 6 and is currently studying with Professors Ran Dank and Margaret Kampmeier. Kasey is a junior concentrating in Music with minors in Piano Performance and Engineering Biology. She made her concerto debut when she was 12 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nezet-Seguin as the first- place winner of the Albert M. Greenfield Concerto Competition.

She has won top prizes in numerous piano competitions and scholarships including the Princeton University Concerto Competition, New York International Piano Competition, Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, Hilton Head International Piano Competition, Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and was the Gold Medal Winner in the Classical Music Division of National YoungArts Week. She has been recognized as a 4-time Chopin Scholar, Cincinnati MacDowell Artist Grant recipient, and a 2-time Matinee Musicale Nancy F. Walker Memorial Scholarship Winner.

THEO WELLS-SPACKMAN is a junior in the English department, with minors in music and journalism. He is from Weybridge, Vermont. He is a member of the Princeton University Glee Club and the Katzenjammers, and sang Aeneas in the Music Department’s production of Purcell’ s Dido and Aeneas in 2022. He’d like to
thank Ruth Ochs, David Kellett, and Sinfonia for their work on this project.

For more information about the Department of Music and other upcoming events, and to sign-up forour mailing list, please visit music.princeton.edu.