ETHOS presents Clara O'Brien with pianist Howard Lubin and composer Lance Hulme

Lance Hulme

Ethos New Music Society will be hosting a concert featuring renowned mezzo-soprano Clara O’Brien and composer Lance Hulme on Wednesday, Mar. 3 at 8 p.m. in Rosch Recital Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Ms. O'Brien will be singing three works on the program: "Wine from these Grapes," written by her husband Lance Hulme; "Trois chansons de Bilitis" by Claude Debussy; and "The Book of the Hanging Gardens,” a massive song cycle by Arnold Schoenberg, which will be accompanied by renowned pianist Howard Lubin, who teaches at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music..

Critics praise Ms. O'Brien for her effortless vocal perfection and warm mezzo timbre, as well as her "towering" ability as a singing actress. Along with consistently positive reviews, her operatic performances received Opernwelt's Best Performance citations in both the Emerging and Established Artist categories.

She is also a recitalist and won the Grand Prix Paul Derenne, International Concours de chant de Paris for her interpretation of Impressionist and post-Impressionist French mélodies. She is also a noted interpreter of late-Romantic and Modernist German Lieder. O’ Brien studied at the Eastman School of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music, the Dana School of Music, and the Hochschule fur Musik, Heidelberg/Manneheim. She was an apprentice with the Chicago Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, the Aspen Music Festival and the Boris Goldovski Opera Institute. She received a Fulbright Grant to Germany and was awarded a fellowship to the Münchener Singschul.

Dr. Hulme is a “chameleon composer” (Gilles Quental) whose musical oeuvre encompasses a “wide range” of musical genres and styles. Along with chamber, choral and concert works, he has written for such diverse mediums as jazz, opera, music theater, liturgical, commercial and computer music.

His music has received awards from the International Witold Lutoslawski Competition, ASCAP/Rudolf Nissim Prize, Composición Musical Cuitat de Tarragona, Citta di Trieste Orchestra Competition, International Trumpet Guild Composition Competition and others, and has been performed by ensembles and orchestras throughout Europe, Japan and the United States. Dr. Hulme studied at Yale University, the Eastman School of Music and the Universität für Musik in Vienna, Austria. He has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar and was a guest artist at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM). A pianist, harpsichordist and conductor, he has premiered his own works as well as that of other composers, living and historical.