Camerata New York To Present The Messiah

Camerata New York, now in its 18th year, kicks off the holiday season with the glorious and eternal masterpiece, Handel's Messiah with the St. Jean Baptiste Festival Chorus and top soloists in St. Jean Baptiste Church, NYC on Sat. Dec. 15 at 7:30PM "The audience is in for an exceptional presentation of all three segments of Handel's masterpiece; starting with the Annunciation, Passion, and concluding with the celebration of our Lord's resurrection. It is a great honor and glorious opportunity for the orchestra, myself, the singers and soloists to present this Beautiful work which celebrates our savior in selections from the Old and New Testament."

All tickets: $25; $20 Students/Seniors at Eventbrite.com, or CamerataNY.org, or by calling the Church Office (212.288.5082). Tickets are also available at the door before each of the performances.

Maestro Richard Owen combines a successful career as a conductor, entrepreneur, pianist and organist. Owen is currently music director of Camerata New York Orchestra, St. Jean Baptiste Church and the Adelphi Orchestra. He was formerly on the conducting staff of the NY Philharmonic (cover conductor) as well as the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. This season, Mr. Owen has a busy schedule which includes Nutcracker with the Donetsk State Ballet, Brahms Symphony No. 2 with the Adelphi Orchestra and the Messiah with Camerata New York and the St. Jean Baptiste Festival Chorus. In past seasons, Mo. Owen has conducted the Little Opera Theater of New York, Rioult Dance (M. Torke's Iphigenia) the Center for Contemporary Opera and Carmina Burana with the Montreal Symphony, conducting alongside Mo. Kent Nagano. Among others, Mr. Owen has conducted the Belgrade National Philharmonic, Europa Symphony, Camerata Internazionale, Monterrey Symphony (Mexico), the Rzeszow Philharmonic, and the New York Philharmonic (Reading). Owen graduated from Dartmouth College, where he was a winner of a piano scholarship, received his master's from the Manhattan School of Music and studied conducting at the University for Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna. Owen performs regularly with his wife, who is a cellist, singer, and organist and they have three musical sons with whom he also performs.

Camerata New York, which is resident orchestra of St. Jean Baptiste, promotes the finest young musicians. Under the baton of music director Richard Owen, Camerata has successfully performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, St. Paul's Chapel, Merkin Hall and St. Patrick's Cathedral, among others. Critics have hailed Camerata New York's "lustrous tone-quality" and "near-definitive" performances and they have been featured in the New York Times, Newsday, Huffington Post, Opera News and Forbes. With a current release on Albany Records, Camerata New York's acclaimed recordings have been aired on three continents including on New York's WQXR (classical radio station of The New York Times), WMNR and SiriusXM.

Katherine Whyte has performed on opera and concert stages across her native Canada, the United States and Europe. Opera Today has hailed her for her "keen artistic sensibility" while the San Francisco Classical Voice has praised "her glamorous, vibrato-rich voice". Her 2018-2019 season includes a return to the Met opera in Suor Angelica and Don Giovanni as well as singing Donna Anna in Don Giovanni with Opera Hong Kong. She will appear in recital in Boston, Colorado and New York. The 2017-2018 season included her return to the Metropolitan Opera in their production of Parsifal as a Flowermaiden and recitals at the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Belgrade and with the Mountain View festival in Calgary. She debuted with the Charlottesville opera in Le Nozze di Figaro as the Countess.

Margaret O'Connell enjoys a versatile career in opera, contemporary music, musical theatre, oratorio, and recordings. Favorite recent roles include Older Alyce in Tom Cipullo's Glory Denied aboard an aircraft carrier (NY OperaFest 2017); and Matilde in Ray Luedeke's tango opera, My Life with Pablo Neruda. Ms. O'Connell has many concert premieres to her credit including Listenings and Silences by Dinos Constantinides (Carnegie/Weill Hall debut) and Six Lyrics to Poems of Marilyn Hacker by Tamara Cashour (NY Composers Circle). Additional world-premiere roles include the Evil Stepmother in Josh Ollswang's The Juniper Tree, Grandmother in Waundell Saavedra's Sweet Dreams, and a Greek Elder in Michael Sirotta's adaptation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon at La MaMa Theatre. Other credits include the title role in Carmen, Dulcinée in Don Quichotte, Nicklausse in Tales of Hoffmann, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, Florence in Albert Herring, and Wellgunde in Götterdämmerung. She holds degrees in violin and voice from Oberlin Conservatory and McGill University.

Known for his silky, warm tone, American tenor John Ramseyer is an emerging young star residing in New York City. Well-versed in operatic repertoire spanning the musical eras, roles include Bill (Dove's Flight), Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Fenton (Sir John in Love), Lysander (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Fenton (Falstaff), and Chanon (Mandelbaum's The Dybbuk). Most recently, Ramseyer sang the role of Tamino in Mozart's The Magic Flute with Resonanz Opera in Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Ramseyer has performed leading roles with The Bronx Opera Company, Resonanz Opera, LoftOpera, Apotheosis Opera, Christman Opera Company, The Midwest Institute of Opera, and others. In addition to opera, he is also a highly sought-after performer of concert music and sacred music. Mr. Ramseyer is a recent graduate of Mannes School of Music.

Waundell Saavedra, bass, is a singer of classical and jazz music, composer, and director of Empire Opera. He was a guest artist in 2017 at the US Embassy in Vienna, Austria where he premiered his new song collection, Song Leaves, selected poems by Walt Whitman. Some of his favorite operatic roles include Don Alfonso in Cosí fan tutte, and Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail by Mozart, Archibaldo in L'amore dei tre re by Montemezzi, and the Verdi's roles of Attila, Zaccaria in Nabucco, and Banco in Macbeth. Concert works include soloist in Requiems by Mozart, Fauré, Brahms, and Duruflé as well as the masses and oratorios of Bach, Haydn, and Handel. His discography includes, Stained Glass Windows, available at iTunes, and Amazon, and recordings of jazz standards available on YouTube. Mr. Saavedra's original compositions include String Quartet No. 1 in G Major, The Great Supper, an opera in two acts, and Sweet Dreams, a children's opera.