Twenty-six-year-old American mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, winner of the 2009 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and a fast-rising star at the Metropolitan Opera, makes her New York recital debut, sponsored by the Peter Marino Debut Prize, in the Young Concert Artists Series on Monday, May 2, 2011, at Merkin Concert Hall, accompanied by pianist Christopher Cano. The program includes Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer, Argento's From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, and Ravel's Cinq Mélodies Populaires Grecques.
As with the other concerts in this season's YCA series, the program will feature a special YCA "alumna," in this case the Dutch harpist Gwyneth Wentink, who will join Ms. Cano in the Ravel work.Displaying the great range of her talent this season, Ms. Johnson Cano has appeared with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic in Mendelssohn's Elijah, and in three roles at the Metropolitan Opera including Wellgunde in Wagner's Das Rheingold. She also performed Schumann's Frauenliebe und leben at the Chicago Opera Theater and tours in chamber music programs with Musicians from Marlboro.Dutch harpist Gwyneth Wentink has won first prize in the most prestigious harp competitions in the world: the Princess Christina Competition in the Netherlands, the Nippon Harp Competition in Tokyo, the Israel International Harp Competition, and in 1999 at the age of 17, the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. Since then, Ms. Wentink has performed recitals and concertos with top orchestras all over the world, and is frequently featured as a chamber musician. She is principal harpist of John Eliot Gardiner's Orchestre Révolutionaire et Romantique.
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