22 May 2012

NZ talent for Chinese New Year

1/02/2012 10:03:00 a.m.

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Jenny Wollerman, guest soprano at the NZSO’s Chinese New Year concert.

Jenny Wollerman, guest soprano at the NZSO’s Chinese New Year concert.

THREE art forms will come together when Jenny Wollerman performs in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s concert celebration of  Chinese New Year.
The Wellington based soprano will sing New Zealand composer Ross Harris’ song cycle The Floating Bride, The Crimson Village. The music for the series was composed by Harris to accompany poems written by New Zealand poet Vincent O’Sullivan based on images from Chagall’s paintings.
“There are 11 songs,” Wollerman says,” and they’re written to be sung one after the other over 22 minutes. The poems and the music grab some of the images that are recurrent in Chagall’s paintings, such as his floating bride, and throw them back in a different form.”
Wollerman is a soprano in high demand. She’s appeared throughout Australasia, as well as in Britain, Belgium, Ireland and Taiwan. Her first love is performing, but since 2003 she’s also taught singing at the New Zealand School of Music where she’s currently head of classical performance. She’s always sung - “as a child I started singing as soon as I opened my mouth and they couldn’t shut me up,” she says. However, a musical career was not her first choice. She always wanted to be a research chemist and gained a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Victoria University.
“The turning point for me was when my singing teacher entered me into a competition for the experience and I got through to the national finals. It was then that I thought, well maybe I could do this as a career.”
She began vocal training at Wellington Polytechnic before heading to Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, graduating in 1991 with a Master of Music in Opera. She undertook further study in Canada and England before returning to pursue her career in Australia and New Zealand.
Wollerman says in the future she hopes to do music research and begin working towards a PHD in musicology.
The NZSO Chinese New Year concert will also feature young New Zealand pianist John Chen and Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Perry So. The concert will include one of China’s most beloved compositions The Yellow River Piano Concerto, and end with Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.
NZSO Chinese New Year Concert, Michael Fowler Centre, February 1.
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