Summer Opera Course

La Didone

 by Francesco Cavalli
June 16, 2018
Ganz Hall

Drew Minter debuted nearly four decades ago in both Europe and New York and has been regarded as one of the world's most renowned countertenors ever since.  He appeared in leading roles with the opera companies of Brussels, Toulouse, Boston, Washington, Santa Fe, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass, and Nice, among others.  A recognized specialist in the works of Handel, he has performed frequently at the Handel festivals of Göttingen, Halle, Karlsruhe, Maryland and sung with many of the world's leading baroque orchestras, including Les Arts Florissants, the Handel and Haydn Society, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Freiburger Barockorchester, and as a guest at festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia, Regensburg, BAM's Next Wave, Edinburgh, Spoleto, and Boston Early Music; other orchestra credits include the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.  Mr. Minter was a founding member of the Newberry Consort and My Lord Chamberlain’s Consort, and has sung and played early harps often with ARTEK, the Folger Consort, and Trefoil, the medieval trio he co-founded in 2000.  He teaches voice, choir and the opera workshop at Vassar College. For over two decades, Mr. Minter has directed much opera in America and Europe, and was founding artistic director of Boston Midsummer Opera from 2006-2011. His production of The Play of Daniel, premiered at the Cloisters in 2008, has been an annual event of the New York Christmas season as part of the Twelfth Night Festival at Trinity Church Wall Street. 

Artistic Director Craig Trompeter has been a musical presence in Chicago for more than twenty years. As an acclaimed cellist and violist da gamba he has performed in concert and over the airwaves with Second City Musick, Music of the Baroque, the Chicago Symphony, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Opera Theater, the Cal Players, the Oberlin Consort of Viols, and Great Lakes Baroque. He has performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Glimmerglass Festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Valletta International Baroque Festival in Malta. He has appeared as soloist at the Ravinia Festival, the annual conference of the American Bach Society, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and with Music of the Baroque. Trompeter has recorded works of Mozart, Biber, Boismortier, Marais, Handel, Greene, Henry Eccles, and a potpourri of Elizabethan composers on the Harmonia Mundi, Cedille, and Centaur labels. As a modern cellist, he was a founding member of the Fry Street String Quartet. He premiered several chamber operas by MacArthur Fellow John Eaton, performing as actor, singer and cellist. Most recently he served as Music Director for Francesca Caccini's opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina at Utah State University. He has taught master classes at his alma mater, the Cleveland Institute of Music, Grinnell College, and the Chicago Musical College. In 2003 he founded the Feldenkrais® Center of Chicago where he teaches Awareness Through Movement® andFunctional Integration®. He has given Feldenkrais workshops throughout the nation in universities, music conservatories, and dance studios.

David Schrader, Music Coach and Historian
David Schrader is a musician of wide-ranging interests and has performed music from the middle ages to the present, although he focuses in particular on historically informed music for the harpsichord, the clavichord, the organ, and the piano.  Mr. Schrader holds degrees from the University of Colorado College of Music and from Indiana University, where he also earned the Performer's Certificate for distinguished performance on the organ.

Schrader has been active in Chicago's musical life for over thirty-seven years—for thirty-five of those, he served as the organist for the Church of the Ascension, who liturgies command a national reputation for musical integrity.  He has performed many times for WFMT radio in the Levin Studio, including a complete traversal of Mozart's keyboard sonatas. He has also played with Music of the Baroque, Baroque Band, the Rembrandt Chamber Players, and the Newberry Consort.  He has been a soloist with many orchestras in the US and Canada, most notably with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on a number of occasions.

Mr. Schrader has made over twenty recordings for Chicago's Cedille Record label and has also recorded for London, CRI, Centaur, and Crest.  He is a Professor of Music at the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, where he teaches historical performance practice among other disciplines.  He has appeared as a soloist for four National Conventions of the American Guild of Organists, and has performed in England, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico and Japan.

Mr. Schrader lives in Chicago with his husband, Patrick Donnell and four cats:  Sophie, Lizzie, Alice, and Ralph.

*This is not a function of Roosevelt University.