MarshStream Presents SCIENCE FAIR

Acclaimed mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn brings her eclectic musical science show to The Marsh with Science Fair: An Opera with Experiments, available via livestream 5:00pm, Saturday March 6. Conceived and performed by Chinn with pianist Erika Switzer, Science Fair pairs luscious operatic vocals with light-hearted humor and science lectures.

Demonstrations of basic scientific concepts, familiar classroom experiments, a wearable model of the solar system, and slideshows illustrated by comic artist Maki Naro, are all offered up in this uniquely original approach, set to a sprightly musical score with libretto created from the words of scientists and teachers. Science Fair, which was previewed last November on MarshStream's Solo Arts Heal series, celebrates the formation of the solar system, the structure of an atom, and the ancient legacy of DNA, in a brilliant new musical format.

Science Fair: An Opera with Experiments will be presented 5:00pm, Saturday, March 6, 2021 on MarshStream, and feature a post-performance Q&A with The Marsh Founder/Artistic Director Stephanie Weisman.

Prior to the Solo Performer Spotlight performance of this work, Hai-Ting Chinn will appear on Stephanie's MarshStream at 7:30pm, Thursday, March 4 to discuss this innovative work. For more information, the public may visit www.themarsh.org/marshstream.NOTE: The FREE performance will be available for viewing only until midnight PST, March 7. After that, the archived video will be available to purchase for video on demand (VOD) access.

Seen on stages around the world, Hai-Ting Chinn has performed with New York City Opera, in a world tour of Philip Glass/Robert Wilson's Einstein on the Beach, as a soloist with American Symphony Orchestra, on the stages of Carnegie Hall, The Mann Center in Philadelphia, and London's West End as Lady Thiang in The King & I. In addition to her lauded works on mainstages around the world, Chinn is known in New York City as an advocate of classical music in unusual and accessible settings. She starred in the Wooster Group's first opera, La Didone (music of Francesco Cavalli), an experimental retelling of the Dido and Aeneas story set in and against a Sci-Fi movie from the 1960s. It premiered at the Edinburgh Festival, where the Scotsman newspaper called her "glorious, poised, and poignant," and then debuted in New York City at St. Ann's Warehouse, where Timeout New York declared: "Chinn has it all: breathtaking beauty, poise, comic timing and a voice of pure gold." She has also performed the roles of Medea in Cavalli's Giasone and Poppea in Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea in a nightclub (Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan's West Village, productions by OperaOmnia) and Nicklausse/The Muse in Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann at an active shipping dock on the Brooklyn waterfront (a production by Vertical Players Repertory in collaboration with the Brooklyn stevedores). She created and performed Science Fair: An Opera with Experiments as an Artist in Residence at HERE Arts Center in New York City. Of mixed Chinese and Jewish ancestry, Chinn is a native of Northern California and currently resides in New York City. She holds degrees from the Eastman and Yale Schools of Music.

Hailed by The New York Times for her "precise and lucid" performances, Erika Switzer is an accomplished collaborative pianist who performs regularly in major concert settings around the world, including at New York's Weill Hall (Carnegie), Geffen Hall, Frick Collection, and Bargemusic, among others. From 2000-2007, Switzer performed and studied in Germany, an experience that profoundly inspired and shaped her work. During that time, she appeared at Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and in the Munich Winners & Masters series and won numerous awards, including best pianist prizes at the Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and Wigmore Hall International Song Competitions. In 2009, in collaboration with soprano Martha Guth, Switzer founded the organization Sparks & Wiry Cries, which commissions new works, presents the songSLAM festival in New York City, and publishes The Art Song Magazine. She is an active teacher, serving on the music faculty at Bard College and the Vocal Arts Program of the Bard Conservatory of Music. Switzer holds a doctorate from The Juilliard School, and lives in New York's Hudson Valley. She is the musical director of Science Fair: An Opera with Experiments.

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