Love Songs and Aphrodisiacs

What: Dinner and Music
When: Sunday 17 February 2019 at 5pm
Where: the home of Paul Cassedy in Baltimore Maryland.
Who: Melissa Wimbish, Soprano; and Nark Markham, Piano
Program: Love Songs and Aphrodisiacs dinner
Menu: A selection of common foods which have been considered to be aphrodisiacs
Cost: $20 per person
Dress: informal
Hold the Date(s)!

Hey all,

After a break for the holidays, I am looking forward to re-starting our Evenings of Dinner and Music. I would be delighted if you could join me for an evening of love songs on Sunday, 17 February.2019. Our artists for the evening are soprano Melissa Wimbish, who will be very familiar to regular attendees from her stunning performances here at Evenings of Dinner and Music, as well as many venues in Baltimore and beyond. Melissa’s collaborator for our evening of love songs will be the very distinguished pianist Mark Markham. Those of us who are opera and art song fanatics will be very familiar with Mr. Markham’s work from his long time collaborations with Jessye Norman and many others. It will certainly be an exciting and stimulating evening of wonderful music: both traditionally classical, operatic, and current and contemporary.

Menu: Common foods which have been considered to be aphrodisiacs:
As many of you will remember from previous years, I love to pair our Valentines concert of love songs with a menu of common foods that have, at one time or another, been considered to be aphrodisiacs. It’s always a lot of fun to research and prepare these dishes. Some dishes are quite common, while others are less common. As usual, I will make my mothers oyster stew, and a vegan dish of asparagus, roasted red peppers, and shallots. And, of course, there will be saffron rice. I also hope to serve a couple of special appetizers, one meat (rocky mountain oysters) and two vegan (truffles with hummus on toast; and a vegan caviar).

Timing: Disciplined
As usual, we will make a point of starting the recital promptly at 5:20pm. The goal is to end the evening, both the recital and the dinner, in plenty of time for the DC folk to travel home and be snug in bed by about 9:30pm on a "school night."

RSVPs: by 14 February (Valentine’s day!)
Please let me know if you can join me for this wonderful evening of dinner and music by 14 February (Valentine’s day!) as that is when I will begin making final preparations for our menu and seating; If you need directions and parking suggestions, please let me know in your response. Significant others (or just others you think might be interested) are always warmly welcome. Just let me know if you are bringing someone with you so that I can keep track of our numbers.

Cost: $20 per person

Dress: informal
As many of you know, my place is 'teeny tiny' and our seating space is limited. Please wear comfortable clothing. As we can get a little warm, even in February, you might want to wear layers.

Hold the Dates!
A tentative schedule for the next few months is
March 10th: Lura Johnson performing a brilliant selection of JS Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier” and Shostakovich’s “Fugue and Variations for piano.” Our menu will be a selection of heavy Russian appetizers called “Zakuski.”
17 March: A musical reading of Jerome Kern’ and PG Wodehouse musical from 1920 “Sally.” This brilliant early American musical was a Ziegfeld Follies hit and one of the longest running musicals of its day. We may also sing a few Irish songs in honor of St. Paddy’s day. Of course, our menu will be traditional foods in honor of St. Patrick!

Performer Bios:
In the world-premiere of Josephine with Urban Arias, The Washington Post gushed, “... the afternoon belonged to Melissa Wimbish, who was creating the role of Josephine Baker in this world-premiere of ‘Josephine.’ Beautifully prepared, vocally stunning, and theatrically riveting, Wimbish effortlessly held the audience in her hand throughout this one-woman show.” She earned the following remarks from The New York Times in On Site Opera’s North American premiere of The Marriage of Figaro by Marcos Portugal: “The wonderful cast includes ... the soprano Melissa Wimbish in a show-stealing turn as the hormonal pageboy Cherubino”. The young soprano could not even go unnoticed as Barbarina in Lyric Opera Baltimore’s Le nozze di Figaro with Opera News noting her “promising soprano” and The Baltimore Sun praising her “bright voice” and “knack for animating phrases”. The Boulder Daily Camera described her Cunegonde as “simply incredible…the highlight of the entire evening.”

In October, Melissa made her Carnegie Hall solo recital debut with a program of works by Jake Heggie, Tom Cipullo, André Previn, and the world-premiere of Space in Chains by Jessica Meyer set to poetry of Jessica Kasischke. She made her Baltimore Symphonysolo debut as a featured soloist, performing Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre on the BSO Pulse Series with Lower Dens. At the Kennedy Center Opera House she was the soprano soloist for Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Washington Ballet. Past season highlights include the soprano soloist in Carmina Burana at the Kennedy Center with Washington Ballet, Mysteries of the Macabre with Baltimore’s The Occasional Symphony and Concert Artists of Baltimore, the Sheep in Candide with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony, and soprano soloist in Mozart’s Requiem withRichmond Symphony.

Melissa Wimbish was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2014 NATSAA Competition along with the Franco-American Award for best interpretation of French repertoire. She was a 2012 winner of the Vocal Arts Society Discovery Series and made her Kennedy Center recital debut as a result. Melissa has also received awards from the Dante Alighieri Music Scholarship Competition, Denver Lyric Opera Guild Scholarship Competition, Denver Philharmonic Concerto Competition, and Kennett Square Symphony Competition.

Melissa fronts the indie pop, female-fronted duo Outcalls who were recently awarded aBaker Artist Award for Best Overall Set by 89.7 WTMD. She lives in Baltimore with her mute cat, Billy. Learn more at www.melissawimbish.com.

Pianist Mark Markham is considered one of the finest artists of his generation and the breadth of his repertoire is unrivaled. Equally at home as a soloist, a collaborator with great singers, a chamber musician, a jazz pianist, or a vocal coach, his interpretations have been praised by the public and press alike. His international career encompasses performances in North and South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, while the artistry of his playing has been described as “brilliant”, “exquisitely detailed” and “in full service to the music”.

Mr Markham begins the 2018-19 season with a solo recital at the Lexington Bach Festival - “Bach and the Art of Improvisation”, followed by a recital with mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He returns to Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall twice this season in performances with soprano Leah Crocetto and mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges. With Ms Bridges he will also perform on the Spire Series in Baltimore. In February he will be music director for a program celebrating the music of Kurt Weill and George Gershwin entitled “Mack the Knife is the Man I Love” at the Kansas City Opera and in March he returns to New York City for a solo recital - “My Songs without Words”- on the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series.

As the recipient of the 2016 Distinguished Alumni Award from The Johns Hopkins University, he opened the 2017-18 season with a solo recital at the Peabody Conservatory. Other performances included Prokofiev’s Concerto #3 with the Eastern Connecticut Symphony, a vocal recital with soprano Leah Crocetto and baritone Zachary Nelson at the Morgan Library in New York City, Ravel’s Concerto in G with the Harrisburg Symphony, plus a solo recital on the Market Square Concert Series in Harrisburg and a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto #3 with Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra. The summer of 2017 marked the first season of his vocal workshop, Singing in Sicily - a non-profit intensive training program for talented young singers from around the world.

Starting in 1995 for twenty seasons, Mr. Markham was the recital partner of Jessye Norman, giving nearly 300 performances in thirty countries, including recitals in Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Philharmonie in Berlin, La Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, London’s Royal Festival Hall, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Salzburg Festival, Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo, Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus in Greece, the Baalbek Festival at the Temple of Bacchus in Lebanon, and at the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize presentation to President Jimmy Carter in Oslo.

What's the music?

Melissa Wimbish Soprano