Samantha Hankey, mezzo-soprano
Timothy Long, piano
Saturday, March 17, 2018 at 7 pm
Ticket: $50
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with Irish beauty Samantha Hankey, one of the most exciting new singers on the operatic scene. After winning the 2017 Grand Finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and First Prize in the 2017 Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition, this up-and-coming diva is jet-setting all over the globe performing the roles of Siebel in Geneva, Rosina in Oslo, not to mention a recital in New York City’s Alice Tully Hall.
Acclaimed pianist/conductor Timothy Long will be accompanying Samantha in a riveting program of Strauss, Prokofiev, and DeFalla. Wine and light fare (with an Irish twist!) will be served.
Her luscious, amber-toned mezzo zipped through the evil queen’s machinations with a dazzling combination of assurance and glamour.
Opera News
serious and penetrating
New York Times
In the midst of so much young talent and promise, there was also mature, accomplished artistry as Samantha Hankey became Richard Strauss’s Composer — voice and presence — in an affecting performance.
San Francisco Classical Voice
Samantha Hankey
© Jiyang Chen
American mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey, Grand Finals winner of the 2017 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and First Prize winner of the Dallas Opera Guild Competition is quickly making a name for herself at home and abroad. Acclaimed byOpera News as an “ingenious square-shouldered beauty with a maple-flavored mezzo” and as “serious and penetrating” by The New York Times, she was recently an artist at the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco, and performed the title role in La Cenerentola. In the 2017/18 season, Ms. Hankey makes her debuts as Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia at Den Norske Opera and as Siébel in Faust at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. She will also make her Carnegie Hall debut in Handel’s Messiah with Musica Sacra.
Recent engagements during the 2016/17 season included the title role in Handel’s Agrippina at The Juilliard School, about which Opera News wrote she “zipp[ed] through Agrippina's punishing music with beautiful tone, immaculate prosody and queenly authority”, as well as Varvara in Stephen Wadsworth’s production of Káťa Kabanová. Equally gifted in recital, Samantha presented two concerts at the Alice Tully Hall: 'Juilliard Songfest: Songs of Richard Strauss’ curated by Brian Zeger; and a program of Liszt, Schumann, and Strauss songs that she presented as winner of the Vocal Arts Honors Recital. She also appeared in a concert of the Rossini Stabat Mater with The Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle in North Carolina and the workshop, The Wake World, a new commission by David Hertzberg for Opera Philadelphia.
In prior seasons, Ms. Hankey has appeared as Diana & Diana in Giove (La Calisto), Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Marcellina (Le nozze di Figaro), and Mercédès (Carmen). Additionally, she was featured in the HBO documentary A YoungArts MasterClass with soprano Renée Fleming, and has been heard on NPR’s From the Top as a recipient of a Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award, as well as on radio broadcasts played on WQXR and BR Klassik. Other notable accolades include a 2017 Leonore Annenberg Arts Fellowship, a 2015 Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation, and prizes from The James Toland Vocal Arts Competition, The Carolyn Bailey and Dominick Argento Vocal Competition, the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation, the Gerda Lissner Foundation Opera and the Lieder & Song Competitions, and Opera Index.
A recent graduate of The Juilliard School, she was awarded the Peter Mennin Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music upon receiving her Bachelor of Music degree and went on to become a Kovner Fellow during her Master of Music degree. Ms. Hankey is a native of Marshfield, Massachusetts and attended the Walnut Hill School for the Arts.
Timothy Long
Timothy Long is a Native American musician of Muscogee Creek and Choctaw descent from the Thlopthlocco Tribal Town. He has been praised by critics for his “sharp conducting” (Washington Post), and his orchestras have triumphed with displays of “breadth, depth and color” (Riverfront Times) and “brilliant playing” (Rocky Mountain News).
Recent seasons have encompassed performances in both the United States and Europe and have highlighted Mr. Long’s diversity as a conductor, pianist, harpsichordist, speaker and educator. He made a highly successful debut at Utah Symphony and Opera conducting Die Zauberflöte. In the same year he made a debut at the Moab Music Festival as both a pianist and narrator for a program focusing on Native American issues. Performances for Stony Brook Opera have included Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw and Hansel and Gretel. Along with famed violinist Gil Shaham and the Sejong Soloists he toured Germany, Luxembourg and France as harpsichordist for Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons while other recital performances have included concerts in New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Oklahoma.
Previous engagements have included performances with Opera Colorado, The Companion Star Ensemble, the Oregon Bach Festival, Wolf Trap Opera, The Juilliard School, the Maryland Opera Studio, Boston Lyric Opera, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, the Théâtre Municipal de Castres in France, Long Beach Opera, the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, Shreveport Opera, and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
He was music director, pianist and conductor for The Music Teacher, an off-Broadway play/opera by Wallace Shawn and Allen Shawn for The New Group, which ran at New York City’s famed Minetta Lane Theater. Bridge Records released a recording of this highly unique show with Parker Posey and Wallace Shawn in the leading roles.
Trained as a pianist, Tim’s performances have been described as “dramatic, fiery” and “dazzlingly forceful” (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle). He has performed throughout the world at venues such as the Caramoor Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C., the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall and the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series in Chicago and an appearance on NBC’s Today Show with Salvatore Licitra.
Tim is currently an Associate Professor at SUNY-Stony Brook and Artistic Director of Voices of Hope. His former posts include Associate Conductor at the New York City Opera and Assistant Conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. He is a graduate of Oklahoma City University and the Eastman School of Music.
