HOPE BRIGGS, a native of New Jersey, drew a rave review from Opera News for her San Francisco Opera debut as the Duchess of Parma in Busoni’s Doktor Faust “… Hope Briggs was stellar, delivering one of the evening’s highlights with her lusciously intoned, lovelorn aria.” 

Most recently, Ms. Briggs sang the role of Lucinda in Opera San Jose's workshop of Jake Heggie's newest opera, Intelligence, and made her debut with Reno Chamber Orchestra in Beethoven's Ah! Perfido. She also appeared as Marschallin in excerpts of Der Rosenkavalier with Fremont Symphony Orchestra, performed Bruckner’s Te Deum with Oakland Symphony, returned to Baton Rouge for Opéra Louisiane’s 10th Anniversary Gala, and made two important role debuts: Nedda in I Pagliacci with Festival Opera and the title role in Joplin’s Treemonisha with Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. She also sang Cio Cio San in Madama Butterfly with Opéra Louisiane, debuted at Carnegie Hall with the New England Symphonic Ensemble, and sang Verdi’s Messa da Requiem with the San Francisco Choral Society at Davies Symphony Hall.

​In 2021, she will perform the role of Madame Lidoine in Dialogues des Carmélites with Berkeley Chamber Opera as well as a solo recital with St. Ignatius Parish's Virtual Virtuoso Concert Series. In 2022 she will perform the soprano solos in Paul Moravec’ oratorio Sanctuary Road with Oakland Symphony. 

​As a critically acclaimed Verdi soprano, Ms. Briggs is known for the depth and beauty of her voluptuous voice. Ms. Briggs is hailed as “an artist of vocal sensitivity, theatrical wisdom, and integrity.” Her commanding stage presence and moving interpretations have brought her to great success singing the title role in Aida with Nevada Opera, Sacramento Opera and Cedar Rapids Opera and Leonora in Il Trovatore with El Paso Opera, Opera Roanoke and Festival Opera of Walnut Creek as well as Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera with Festival Opera of Walnut Creek.

​Other career highlights include Donna Anna in Don Giovanni and The First Lady in Die Zauberflöte at Frankfurt Opera, the Duchess of Parma in Busoni’s Doktor Faust at Staatstheater Stuttgart, the role of Paula in the world premiere of Hector Armienta’s River of Women/Rio de Mujeres with Theater Artaud San Francisco, Donna Elvira with Opera San José and Opera Company of Brooklyn, Serena in Porgy and Bess with Tulsa Opera and New Orleans Opera as well as the title role in Suor Angelica with Pacific Repertory Opera and Opera Company of Brooklyn.

Ms. Briggs is featured nationally on PBS performing the role of Emma Hyers in the multi-award-winning documentary film, Voices for Freedom, The Hyers Sisters' Legacy. She is also featured as a soloist on IDAGIO Global Concert Hall Series in Masters of the Spiritual. 

On the concert stage, Ms. Briggs has performed:  Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Requiem, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras, Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater, Hanna in scenes from The Merry Widow with Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Hailstork’s I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes with the San Antonio Symphony and Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (Marin Theater Company, Redwood Symphony and Symphony Parnassus).

As a featured soloist, Ms. Briggs’ numerous performances include The Opening Night Gala Concert with Oakland East Bay Symphony, The Symphony Parnassus at Herbst Theater, The Wondrous Sounds of Christmas at the San Francisco Symphony, Hope Briggs and Friends: A Musical Valentine at San Francisco’s Herbst Theater, and the world premiere of Marion J. Caffey’s Three Mo’ Divas at the Lyceum Theater. A highly-acclaimed recitalist, she has performed for Oberlin Conservatory, African-Americans for Los Angeles Opera, Madewood Music Festival, Afrosolo Music Festival at the Yerba Buena Performing Arts Center, Concerts at the Abbey in Seattle, and Caio Melissa in Spoleto (Italy). By special invitation, Ms. Briggs performed for Jessye Norman at Alliance Française Trophée des Arts Gala and Rev. Billy Graham at the Billy Graham Crusade.

Hope Briggs is a Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions National Finalist, Metropolitan Opera International Vocal Competition Award Winner, and recipient of an Encouragement Award from the Licia Albanese Puccini Foundation. Hope Briggs is also an ABC KGO-TV 2012 African American Salutes Honoree, Marion Anderson Historical Society Scholar, and a 2013 Heritage Keeper Award Recipient from Friends of Negro Spirituals. Ms. Briggs is featured on PBS nationally performing the role of Emma Hyers in the documentary film: Voices for Freedom - The Hyers Sisters' Legacy.

Tickets for the Nov. 7 concert are $25 for adults; $20 for seniors and $10 for students 26 and under with I.D. www.brownpapertickets.com/event/5234819

Violinist Pierce Wang looks forward to mixing up some mischief when he performs the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 1 with Symphony Parnassus at its Jan. 26 concert.

“When I get to express this ‘devilish’ side, it’s really fun for me,” he says, “where I get to be different characters in the music.”

He especially loves the humorous, “twisted giddiness” of the concerto’s fast and furious middle section. “It has so many really fantastically funny moments,” he says. “There’s a part where it sounds like a bumble bee and is really nasty in such a funny way.”

Pierce joins Maestro Stephen Paulson and the Parnassus orchestra in a concert that also includes “Psalm Without Words,” by composer-in-residence Preben Antonsen, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F Minor. The 3 p.m. concert is at Taube Atrium Theater, 4th floor, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco.

Pierce, 16, will be familiar to fans of Symphony Parnassus; two years ago, he performed the Conus Violin Concerto with the orchestra. He returns as a 2019 winner of the Symphony Parnassus / San Francisco Conservatory of Music Concerto Competition.

Pierce, who lives with his parents Evan and Karen Wang in the East Bay city of Fremont, is in the middle of his junior year with Stanford Online School, and he is also in the SFCM Pre-College Program, where he studies violin with Alena Tsoi-Barantschik.

He keeps himself busy with music and coding, sharing computer projects with his brother Austin, 21, who studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Pierce also has another brother, Ryan, 23. Both brothers play guitar and Ryan also plays piano.

A new pursuit for Pierce is conducting lessons. “It’s really hard but really fun,” he says. “I did it partly because a friend was doing it, and it’s really helping me grow in my appreciation for all kinds of music.”

Pierce is a member of the Bach Piano Trio, named not for the composer, but for their first coach, Tim Bach. The trio performed the Shostakovich Piano Trio No. 2 last year at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition in Indiana.

He is, of course, studying new violin repertoire. Besides Prokofiev, he is learning pieces by Bach, Paganini, Saint-Saëns and perhaps the granddaddy of them all, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. “I’ve wanted to play it for a long time,” he says.

He started listening to the Prokofiev in a bid to expand his musical knowledge and became “obsessed” with the piece, asking his teacher to learn it. “I love going crazy with this piece. It’s so fun,” he says.

The concert with Parnassus will be his second time performing the Prokofiev concerto; in November, he played it with the Sonoma County Philharmonic. “I hope I can contribute something new to the piece for sure,” he says. “I hope the audience will be walking away from the concert smiling.”

Tickets for the Jan. 26 concert are $25 for adults; $20 for seniors and $10 for students 26 and under with I.D. www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4363762

Alexander Hersh, cello

Guest artist Alexander Hersh performs Bloch’s “Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque” cello concerto with Symphony Parnassus on Sunday, November 17 at SF Conservatory of Music.

Having already performed as soloist with the Houston Symphony and the Boston Pops, cellist Alexander Hersh has quickly established himself as one of the most exciting and versatile talents of his generation. He has received top prizes at competitions worldwide including the: 2019 Astral Artists National Auditions, National Federation of Music Clubs Biennial Young Artists Competition, New York International Artists Association Competition, Friends of the Minnesota Orchestra, Ima Hogg, Schadt, Artist Concerts Series National Solo Competition, Luminarts Classical Music Fellowship, Borromeo String Quartet Guest Artist Award, Hellam Young Artist Competition, Boston Pops/New England Conservatory Competition, Jefferson Symphony International Young Artists Competition, Society of American Musicians, Saint Paul String Quartet, and the Fischoff National Chamber Music competition.

The Musiq3 critics of the RTBF Belgian Radio company gave Hersh’s performance at the inaugural Queen Elisabeth Cello Competition in Belgium in 2017 a rave review: “With his scenic presence and charm, Hersh has everything to become the darling of the public.”

A passionate chamber musician, Hersh has performed the complete string quartets of Béla Bartok and Alban Berg and much of the rest of the chamber music canon at music festivals worldwide including: Marlboro, Caramoor, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Music@Menlo, I-M-S Prussia Cove, Perlman Music Program Chamber Music Workshop, Piatigorsky International Cello Festival, Amsterdam Cello Biennial, Kneisel Hall, Lucerne, New York String Orchestra Seminar, Domaine Forget, and the Meadowmount School of Music.

Hersh is co-artistic director of NEXUS Chamber Music, a collective of international artists committed to stimulating interest in serious chamber music. NEXUS presents a two week chamber music festival across the city of Chicago each August, featuring new and obscure works alongside standard works of the chamber music canon. NEXUS plays to unusual and intimate venues with the mission of breaking down the barriers that often separate performers from audience members.

 A 4th generation string player, Alexander’s parents, Stefan and Roberta, are both active professional violinists. His grandfather, Paul Hersh, is professor of viola and piano at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and his great grandfather, Ralph Hersh, was a member of the WQXR and Stuyvesant String Quartets, and principal violist of the Dallas and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras.

Raised in Chicago, Alexander Hersh began playing the cello at the age of 5. He studied with Steve Balderston and Hans Jørgen Jensen, and attended the Academy at the Music Institute of Chicago. Hersh received his B.M. from New England Conservatory (with academic honors) where he was a student of Laurence Lesser and recipient of the Clara M. Friedlaender Scholarship. In May of 2017, he received his M.M. from New England Conservatory where he studied under the tutelage of Paul Katz and Kim Kashkashian. Hersh was a recipient of the Frank Huntington Beebe fund for studies in Berlin during the 2017 - 2018 academic year where he studied with Nicolas Altstaedt at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule for Musik Berlin. He plays a G.B. Rogeri cello on generous loan from a sponsor through Darnton & Hersh Fine Violins in Chicago, IL.

At its final concert of the season on June 9, Symphony Parnassus will feature guest soloist Mark Inouye performing the Grace Williams Trumpet Concerto, a piece that was new to both him and to Maestro Stephen Paulson, who came across the “hauntingly beautiful concerto” on YouTube while he was searching for newer, or less-well-known works for the orchestra to perform.   

Once Paulson found the Williams’ concerto, he asked Inouye, his colleague at the San Francisco Symphony, to be the soloist. (Inouye is principal trumpet and Paulson is principal bassoon at the Symphony.)  

This is Inouye’s first performance with Parnassus, and he looks forward to working with  Paulson. “He’s a great colleague, and I’m more than happy to do this,” Inouye said. “I am flattered that he would ask me to play the concerto with his ensemble.”

Perhaps surprisingly, one of Inouye’s biggest challenges of performing the concerto is taking the center spotlight.

“I’m used to sitting in the back of the orchestra, rather than standing in front,” Inouye said. “I can play the exact same passage in the back of the orchestra. If I have to do it standing in front, well, that’s rarefied air up there.”

But he’s ready for the task at hand. “It’s always good to go outside of your box, or expand your box,” he said. “It’s a good musical challenge.”

The fact that the concerto was unknown to both Paulson and Inouye isn’t as uncommon as one might think.

It happens often, Inouye said, when conductors or other musicians at the symphony find lesser-known pieces and re-introduce them to the public. “It’s always an incredible discovery to find these gems,” he said, “and it’s a joy going through the process of learning the concerto.”

Written in 1963, the trumpet concerto has three movements; the first two are anxious in feeling, but also have a softer lyrical side that comes as somewhat of a surprise with a trumpet, not always the quietest instrument, Inouye said. The third movement is more dance-like and spirited.

“It’s accessible for an audience,” Inouye said, and said there’s even one part that sounds a bit like John Williams’ (no relation) “Star Wars” music.

Inouye has been familiarizing himself with other Grace Williams compositions (including symphonic works, film scores, choral and chamber pieces) by watching a YouTube channel devoted to her music. She is widely regarded as one of the most influential 20th century Welsh composers.

Williams (1906-1977), was born in the coastal town of Barry, Wales, to two schoolteachers. Her father, William, was a well-respected amateur choral director who encouraged his children’s music studies; Grace, who played piano and violin, was the oldest of three children. After graduating from University College, Cardiff, she went to London and studied composition with Ralph Vaughan Williams (no relation) at the Royal College of Music. Grace Williams’ first film score (“Blue Scar,” 1949) also marked the first time a British woman had scored a film.

She was known for her love of the sea, the theater and the trumpet, which figured prominently in several of her pieces. “I found it interesting that the trumpet keeps appearing in a lot of her works throughout her career,” Inouye said.

In addition to playing with the San Francisco Symphony, Inouye keeps busy as a member of the trumpet faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

A native of Davis, Calif., Inouye attended UC Davis for two years as a civil engineering major before transferring to the Juilliard School to study trumpet. He has also played with the New World Symphony and was principal trumpet with the Charleston Symphony before joining the San Francisco Symphony in 1999. When not performing classical music, he likes to play jazz, too.

His solo work with the San Francisco Symphony includes Copland’s Quiet City,  Bach’s Cantata No. 51 and the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, to name a few. He has performed his own jazz pieces with the SFS chamber music series. He has a debut jazz CD here, www.inouyejazz.com.

In his free time, Inouye enjoys running and surfing, and says he likes to compete against himself to better his own performances. “The competition is always there, but it’s always internal,” he said in this video produced by the San Francisco Symphony. “I’m not necessarily trying to run faster or surf a bigger wave than the guy next to me. I’m trying to surf a bigger wave than I’ve ever done before.”

In the video, he also talks about the parallels between playing in the orchestra and catching waves on a surfboard. “The excitement of catching a wave is very similar to the adrenaline rush of playing a symphony or a climactic moment in the band,” he said.

“It’s awesome. I cannot think of doing anything else.”

 CONCERT INFORMATION
Symphony Parnassus in concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 9 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Concert Hall, 50 Oak St., San Francisco, Calif. Also on the program is Shostakovich Symphony No. 6 and “Arthur Machen’s Childhood,” a world premiere from Symphony Parnassus resident composer Preben Antonsen.

Advance tickets are available from BrownPaper Tickets: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4216912 Cost is $25 for adults; $20 for seniors and $10 for students & under 26.