Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season March-April 2016 | Page 31

program notes {
Laquita Mitchell
Bess

Soprano Laquita
Mitchell consistently
earns acclaim at
eminent international opera companies,
leading performances with Los Angeles
Opera, San Francisco Opera, Washington
National Opera and Opéra Comique in
Paris, among many others.
After her début as Bess in Porgy and Bess
with the San Francisco Opera, Ms. Mitchell has reprised the role with the Atlanta
Opera, the Tanglewood Festival, and the
Cleveland Orchestra.
Ms. Mitchell is also an active concert artist, and her performances include Over the
Rainbow — an evening honoring Harold
Arlen at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie
Hall, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915
with the Louisville Orchestra, a début with
the New World Symphony in Alberto Ginastera’s Cantata para la América Mágica,
and her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut
as the soprano soloist in Wynton Marsalis’
All Rise under the direction of Kurt Masur.
A native of New York City, Ms. Mitchell
was a 2004 Metropolitan Opera National
Council Auditions grand prize winner,
and was awarded a Sara Tucker Award.
She was also the first prize winner of the
Wiener Kammeroper’s Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition, making her the first
American to win this competition in more
than 20 years. Ms. Mitchell holds a master
of music degree and the professional studies
certificate from the Manhattan School of
Music and completed her undergraduate
studies at Westminster Choir College.

Ke ssan Wi nan

Laquita Mitchell is making her debut
with the BSO.

Onadek Winan
Clara

Onadek Winan, a
native of Paris, is
an undergraduate
student at The Juilliard School, where
she has been awarded an Alumni Fund
Scholarship and a Leona Gordon
L