Westminster Community Orchestra will open its season with a concert entitled Triple Play: Opera – Concerto – Symphony on Sunday, November 8, at 3 p.m. in Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall. The program features the orchestra, conducted by Ruth Ochs, performing the Overture to Mozart’s opera La Clemenza di Tito and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 6 in D Major. They will be joined by pianist Albert Lee, a sophomore at High School South, for the finale from Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto in G Minor; and Danielle Sinclair, a soprano from Plainsboro, for the final duet from Act III of Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier.
Lee, 15, who has studied piano for seven years, currently studies with Galina Prilutskaya. He has earned merit and distinction ratings from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and has passed ABRSM Grade 8. He also won a five-year award in the New Jersey Music Teachers Association Piano Festival, has received high honors in the NJMTA Recital Auditions, and has performed annually in the high honors recital. Lee has also performed at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York. At High School South Lee is a member of the track team and plays the violin in the school orchestra.
Sinclair, a Plainsboro resident for close to 13 years, has performed with orchestras throughout the country in works ranging from Bach’s Magnificat and St. John Passion to Respighi’s Lauda per la Nativita del Signore and Orff’s Carmina Burana. She has appeared in numerous operatic roles including Musetta in La Boheme, Despina in Cos fan tutte, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, and Mabel in Pirates of Penzance.
In 1990 she won Seattle’s Vocal Competition, and in 1995 she won the prestigious Opera at Florham Guild Competition. In July of that year she performed on the Apollo Muses Concert Series. A guest artist on Westminster Conservatory’s Concert and Recital Series, she performs frequently with the Princeton Society of Musical Amateurs and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Currently on the roster of New York City Opera, she performed in the ensemble of the world premiere performance of Charles Wuorinen’s opera Haroun and the Sea of Stories in 2004. She can be heard as soloist on the Seattle Symphony Chorale’s recording “Singing a Glad Noel.” She teaches voice at Westminster Conservatory in Princeton, and at her home studio in Plainsboro.
In 2000 Sinclair co-founded the Westminster Conservatory Youth Opera Workshop with her husband and has since served as its director. “Our Youth Opera Workshop is currently on hiatus, but our works are still being performed by children in opera workshops around the world,” she says.
Her husband, Michael, also on the faculty at Westminster Conservatory, is a Suzuki piano teacher with a very busy studio. “For fun, we both dance — but not together — I do Flamenco and Spanish dance, he takes ballet.” The couple has three cats.
For the concert, Sinclair is singing one of her favorite duets with mezzo-soprano Denise Mihalik. The duo perform together regularly as part of “Troupe du Jour,” a touring ensemble that presents themed classical concerts. “Although we have collaborated on many concert projects, this is a new piece for us,” says Sinclair. “Der Rosenkavalier is a beautiful opera about young love and growing old, and this duet is the very end of the opera where all ends happily — for some of the characters.”
Founded in 1985, the Westminster Community Orchestra is based at Westminster Conservatory of Music, the community music school of Westminster Choir College. Now in her fifth season as conductor and music director of the Westminster Community Orchestra, Ruth Ochs has led the orchestra in performances of major orchestral and choral-orchestral works, including symphonies by Brahms, Mozart, and Shostakovich.
Orchestra members are professional and gifted amateur musicians from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They come from all walks of life but share a common goal — the desire to make wonderful music for themselves and their community.
Westminster Community Orchestra, Westminster Conservatory, Richardson Auditorium. Sunday, November 8, 3 p.m. $15. 609-258-9220. www.rider.edu/arts.
