Nancy Almquist, soprano
Jaewon Lee, piano 

BritHits: A Cabaret   

Music by British composers from Elizabethan times through superstars of today.

This fun and informal cabaret concert features music ranging from Elizabethan John Dowland through Gilbert and Sullivan and Benjamin Britten and includes works by the Beatles, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Coldplay, Adele, and more.

Soprano Nancy Almquist has soloed with the Washington Cathedral Choral Society, Washington Bach Consort, Hesperus, Folger Consort, Maryland Choral Society, Prince George's Choral Society, and the New Century Singers. Ms. Almquist has sung roles with Annapolis Opera, Opera Americana, The Other Opera Company, Interact Theatre Company, and the Washington Savoyards. She has been a recitalist at venues including The American Church in Paris, Harmony Hall, National Archives, Hammond Harwood House, and St. John's College. She has served as artist faculty at Northern Virginia Community College and St. Mary's College of Maryland. She is Director of Music at Good Shepherd United Methodist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland and on the faculty of the Washington Conservatory of Music.

More info: 301-320-2770 or online  

Haskell Small, piano 

Video of Haskell Small  

Program

Sonata in B-flat Major, K 333....Mozart

A Glimpse of Silence (world premiere)....Small 

Toccata....Holst

Intermission 

Prospect Hill Sonata, Op. 346....Hovhaness

Blue Job Mountain Sonata, Op. 340....Hovhaness

Pastoral No. 1....Hovhaness 

Hymn to Mount Chocorua  

from Mount Chocorua Sonata, Op. 335....Hovhaness

Small has concertized with great success in major European capitals, South America, Japan, and China, and has been enthusiastically received by American audiences in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Spoleto Festival. In 2010 he participated in an American Music Festival in Iceland.

A prize winner in the Johann Sebastian Bach International Piano Competition, Small has received numerous awards and has been featured in the nationally broadcast PBS special, "A Celebration of the Piano."

Following in the tradition of 18th- and 19th-century pianist/composers, Small is also an accomplished composer, who often performs his own works. He has received commissions from such organizations as the Washington Ballet and Paul Hill Chorale, and was the winner of the 1999 Marin Ballet Dance Score Competition. In 2005, Small completed Renoir's Feast, a commission by the Phillips Collection to celebrate the return of their beloved painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party. His The Rothko Room: Journeys in Silence received its world premiere at the Phillips Collection in February 2011.

Small has recorded a number of CDs, among them Mompou's Musica Callada (declared "A Golden Silence" by the Washington Post), a Gershwin disc, a children's CD with narrator Robert Aubry Davis, and Bach's Goldberg Variations.  

In June 2011, as a recipient of a Creative Communities Fund grant to participate in an "artistic blind date," Small experimented with improvisations in four performances at the Source Festival in downtown Washington.

In the next few years, Small will be furthering his fascination with music that is primarily quiet, spacious, and of a mystical nature with a series of concerts in a number of cities that will feature solo and chamber works by himself and other composers. Performances have already been set in Washington, New York, San Francisco, and at Houston's Rothko Chapel.

More info: 301-320-2770 or online