‘I’ve wanted to do a concert in the area for a long time,” says Cecelia Tepping of West Windsor who coordinated a classical music benefit concert to aid tsunami victims to be held at Dutch Neck Presbyterian Church on Friday, March 11.##M:[more]## A soprano, she and mezzo soprano Celeste Mann have created an evening of opera, oratoria, duets, and arias featuring music of Mozart, Mendelssohn, Puccini, and Humperdinck. Bobbie Boulware accompanies on piano. Although the concert is free, donations for the tsunami victims are invited.
A West Windsor resident for five years, Tepping lives in the Dutch Neck area with her husband, Norman Goldschmidt, an engineer at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Plainsboro. They have a two-year old daughter, Hannah, and are expecting their second child in June.
Born in Virginia, she was raised in Gilford, Connecticut, where her father, an engineer, was director of management at Yale New Haven Hospital. (He is now at Bridgeport hospital). Her mother, a former stay-at-home mom, piano teacher, and substitute teacher, is now a financial planner.
She was brought up with music as her mother played piano and her father played trumpet. His brother, an aspiring opera singer, is on the faculty at a conservatory in Wisconsin. Her great uncle, Paul Katz, is the director of the Dayton Philharmonic.
“I really wanted to be on Broadway but I didn’t want to wait tables,” Tepping says. “I wanted something to fall back on.” Her first degree from Syracuse University is in occupational therapy. While working on her second degree in classical music, she was able to support herself by working part time in occupational therapy. She continues to work part time in occupational therapy now.
Last summer, Tepping was in the emerging artist program with New Jersey Opera Theater. She played the role of La Chouette in “L’enfant et les Sortileges,” sang in the Art Song & Lieder concert, the Arias & Ensembles concert, and Dream with Me: A Concert of Songs from Musical Theater.
“I met Celeste and Bobbie when we all sang in Italy several summers back,” she says, “We sang an original opera based on St. Francis of Assisi and later did a concert at a nursing home. Last year we started talking about singing together again.”
“The idea for the concert came to me while I was reading a recent issue of ‘Classical Singer’ magazine” she says. “The article was about how Hollywood and rock stars come out to benefit huge tragedies and how great it would be if classical singers joined it. I immediately E-mailed Celeste and we planned the benefit concert as a nice evening together. It was the push we needed to do the concert that we wanted to do.”
— Lynn Miller
An Evening of Opera for Tsunami Relief, First Presbyterian Church of Dutch Neck, 154 South Mill Road, West Windsor, 609-799-0712. Benefit concert featuring opera, oratoria, Mozart, Humperdinck, duets and arias. Works by Rossini, Mendelssohn, Puccini. Donations invited. Friday, March 11, 7:30 p.m.
