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Bringing works by living female composers to the brew hall...
Powerhouse duo Carson Rose Schneider and Kara Morgan bring the music of living female Minnesotan composers out of the concert hall and into your local beer hall! Leave your stuffy expectations at the door! Experience Edie Hill’s captivating setting of Amy Lowell’s love poems and the charm Linda Tutas Haugen brings to Judy Garland’s words. Sip a beer, savor the music, and soak up the experience at Forgotten Star, Urban Growler, and Omni!
Now Streaming
Schedule
The Ladies previously performed at the following breweries:
L to R: Carson Rose Schneider, Kara Morgan, Edie Hill
The Artists
Kara Morgan
Mezzo-soprano
Based in Minneapolis, Kara is a mezzo-soprano pursuing her passion for storytelling through music, both in the opera house and on the concert stage. Most recently, Kara made her West Coast debut with Pacific Opera Project as Hansel in their Fairytale Season production of Hansel and Gretel - a performance met with critical acclaim for her “warm, attractive voice” and “impeccable timing” (Opera News). In 2021, Kara returned to Sarasota Opera for their reimagined Winter Festival covering and singing one performance each as Dido (Dido and Aeneas) and Marianna (Rossini’s Il signor Bruschino). Other roles of note include Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Mercédès (Carmen), Ottone (Agrippina), Madame de Croissy (Dialogues of the Carmelites), Dritte Dame (Die Zauberflöte), and Mrs. Soames (Our Town). Kara was recently named one of two Winners in the North Dakota-Manitoba District of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition and earned the First Place Arlene Didier Scholarship Award in the 98th Annual Schubert Club Competition. She has been heard as a solo performer with the Oratorio Society of Minnesota, the Bach Roots Festival, and with the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra as a winner of The American Prize Oratorio Award. Kara is a graduate of Drake University and the New England Conservatory as well as apprenticeships with the Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Sarasota Opera, and the Santa Fe Opera. Some of her upcoming projects have yet to be announced! Stay tuned at kmorganmezzo.com or on Instagram @kmorganmezzo.
Carson Rose Schneider
Collaborative Pianist
Dr. Carson Rose Schneider is a versatile pianist who works as a duo partner, coach, music director, and rehearsal pianist with opera companies, chamber groups, and choirs. Her performing career has taken her around the United States and abroad. Based in the Twin Cities Metro Area, she has collaborated with companies around the Midwest including Lyric Opera of the North, AOT, Skylark Opera Theatre, Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Lakes Area Music Festival, OOPS MN, Bay View Music Festival, AOT, Out of the Box Opera, and Really Spicy Opera. Up next, she is returning to Skylark Opera Theatre for Eugene Onegin, her third production as Music Director and Pianist. This summer, she will join the coaching faculty at Taos Opera Institute. In addition to an active performing life, she has a home recording and coaching studio called Carson Rose Studios, is a staff pianist at the University of Minnesota, and is the pianist and choir accompanist at Union Congregational Church in Elk River, MN. Dr. Schneider graduated with her D.M.A. in collaborative piano and coaching from the University of Minnesota in 2017, where she studied with Dr. Timothy Lovelace. Website: www.carsonrosestudios.com
The Music
The Giver of Stars
Composer: Edie Hill
Librettist: Amy Lowell
The Giver of Stars is a set of songs written for mezzo-soprano and piano composed in 2012 by Minnesota composer Edie Hill. Based on poems by Amy Lowell (1874-1925), these songs explore a woman's love from a woman's perspective. The songs were dedicated to the artistry of Glenda Maurice, a singer and retired professor of the University of Minnesota School of Music.
(A note from the composer) The Giver of Stars is excerpted from a larger theatrical work entitled Amy Lowell: A Rare Pattern. Lowells’s life as a poet and how it was woven into her life with the actress, Ada Dwyer Russell, fascinated me. Lowell’s stern exterior is counterpoint to a tender heartedness and vulnerability which she shared with her beloved Ada. This cycle represents the arc of their love and life together.
I. Pyrotechnics
II. Flame Apples
III. Vernal Equinox
IV. The Giver of Stars
V. Autumnal Equinox
VI. A Sprig of Rosemary
Edie Hill
Composer
Described as “flat out beautiful” and “full of mystery,” (Stereophile Magazine), Edie Hill’s music is performed all over the world. Venues have included Lincoln Center, Musis Sacrum in Arnhem, Holland, LA County Museum of Art, Library of Congress, Minneapolis’ Walker Arts Center, St. Paul’s Schubert Club, The Cape May Festival (NJ), The Downtown Arts Festival (NYC), Liviu Cultural Center (Romania), Feszek Müvészklub (Budapest), concert halls in Bangkok (Thailand), Dublin (Ireland), Reykjavik (Iceland), Moscow (Russia) Brazil, France,Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Baltic States and The United Arab Emirates. She has been commissioned to compose for solo voice to choir, solo instrumental to orchestral and mass band, miniature to full evening drama; and loves the challenge of exploring all combinations including electroacoustic and mixed media. A three-time McKnight Artist Fellow and a two-time Bush Artist Fellow, Hill has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, ASCAP, New Music USA, Meet The Composer and Chamber Music America. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota where she free-lances and runs Hummingbird Press through which all of her works are available for perusal and sale. Website: www.ediehill.com
Amy Lowell
Librettist
Born on February 9, 1874 in Boston, Massachusetts to a wealthy family, Amy Lowell was an American poet of the Imagist school. She published over 650 poems in just over a dozen years and posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Lowell was known for her tireless efforts to awaken American readers to contemporary trends in poetry and is also credited with bringing polyphonic prose into American poetry. While Lowell's poetry was not much recognized during her lifetime, it was recovered during the women's movement of the 1970s and she is now acknowledged as the first American woman poet to see herself as part of a feminine literary tradition.
The Garland Songs
Composer: Linda Tutas Haugen
Librettist: Judy Garland
The Garland Songs were composed in 1998 and premiered at the International Judy Garland Festival in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. (Judy Garland was born in Grand Rapids and lived there during early childhood.) The songs were commissioned by the Judy Garland Children’s Museum and underwritten by the American Composers Forum through its Rural Commissioning Program and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Commission was part of a pilot program of the ACF for its “Continental Harmony” project, and included composer-in-residence activities which resulted in contact with over 1100 music students in the public schools, composition and songwriting workshops and teaching a core group of student composers in grades six through twelve to write and perform their own music. The texts of The Garland Songs are based upon poems written by Judy Garland in her late teens -- poems that she had printed and bound in leather and given to a few friends and relatives. They reflect the thoughts and feelings of a bright, sensitive and insightful young woman. While much of the poetry is quite dramatic, it is mature beyond her years, and above all, honest and direct.
Linda Tutas Haugen
Composer
Linda Tutas Haugen has composed for all major classical genres. Her music has been critically acclaimed as “music of character and genuine beauty.” [Minneapolis StarTribune.] Opera Today praised Pocahontas, as “superbly crafted,” “engaging,” and “beautiful and often powerful.” She has received awards, fellowships and commissions from American Composers Forum, Meet The Composer, Bush Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, NEA, National Kidney Foundation, Jerome Foundation, American Guild of Organists, San Francisco Girls Chorus, and Virginia Arts Festival/Virginia Opera. Performers of her works include Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and Chiara String Quartet. 2011/12 includes commissions for Two Rivers Chorale, ACDA Minnesota, Partners In Praise, and performances at the National Collegiate Choral Organization and National ACDA Conferences. Website: www.lindatutashaugen.com
Judy Garland
Librettist
Born on June 10, 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, Judy Garland was one of the most popular singers and movie actresses of the 20th century, with a career spanning 45 years from her stage debut at only 2 years old to her death. At only 13 years old, Garland signed a contract with MGM and began acting with 20th Century Fox a year later in her first full-length motion picture, quickly establishing herself as a rising star. Best known for her performance as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz and Esther Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis, Judy was a recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Juvenile Award, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Garland was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and hosted her own Emmy-nominated television series, The Judy Garland Show.
