Bel Canto Boot Camp: March Sunday Matinées

Rachelle Jonck received her musical training at the Conservatory of the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. In her native country she was awarded a FNB/Vita award for her contribution to opera in South Africa and the Nederburg Opera Prize – South Africa’s premier opera award.

Rachelle moved to New York City as Head Vocal Coach and Assistant Conductor of Bel Canto at Caramoor. Her private coaching studio includes established professionals whose careers take them to the largest opera houses of the world, and younger singers still on the verge of a professional career. Her master class topics, while related to her main study field of bel canto, explore the wider application of the bel canto way of singing. rachellejonck.com

Photo: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

Derrick Goff is an alumnus of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and has returned as member of the MET music staff. He has enjoyed many years of collaboration at Teatro Nuovo, a continuation of the young artist program of Bel Canto at Caramoor, where he is resident as a coach, chorusmaster, and Italian teacher. In addition to his work as a pianist, coach, and conductor, Derrick holds degrees in organ and voice from Westminster Choir College, and is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.

Photo: Jiyang Chen

Missouri-born tenor Steven Tharp’s operatic credits include performances with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Netherlands Opera, among many other houses. Handel and Mozart are well represented in Mr. Tharp’s repertoire of more than 60 operatic parts, and his keen interest in 18th- and early 19th-century opera has led to many roles in operas of Gluck, Haydn, Scarlatti, Conti, and others. In concert, Mr. Tharp has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra, among others. His concert repertoire includes the Bach, Mozart, Handel, and Haydn masterpieces of the 18th and 19th century and extends to Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder, the Verdi Requiem, and Britten’s War Requiem. A dedicated song recitalist, Mr. Tharp has appeared at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 92nd Street Y, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, venues in Europe, Japan, and South America. His interest in musical theater and cabaret led to his appearance in 3 Tenors in Search of an Act in a sold-out run at Don’t Tell Mama in New York. Steven has recorded for Decca, Delos, Newport, Albany and Naxos, earning a Grammy Award nomination. He has also served as stage director for the Manhattan School of Music and for Caramoor. He lives in Columbia, Missouri with his adorable Westie, Hector, and is Associate Professor of Voice at the University of Missouri. 

Dr. Kimberly Gratland James, Mezzo-Soprano, joined the UNLV School of Music faculty in 2017 as an Assistant Professor with more than 20 years of professional performance and teaching experience in vocal music. Previously, she was an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Montana, where she primarily taught applied voice, voice pedagogy, and diction for singers. 

Dr. James maintains an active performance career, particularly as a concert artist and recitalist. She has performed in concert with the London Sinfonietta, the New World Symphony, the Los Angeles Symphony, and on stage with New Orleans Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, among other organizations. Her performance repertoire is quite diverse, encompassing oratorio works by Bach, operatic repertoire from Purcell to Adamo, and concert works by Verdi, Mahler, Ravel, and contemporary composers. She is passionate about culturally-situated art and looks forward to exploring Las Vegas and the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, and the Central & South Americas in performance venues and repertoire. 

James’s growing passion for bridging the gap between the hard sciences and singing began in 2008 when she completed a vocology certificate program at the National Center for Voice and Speech under Dr. Ingo Titze. Her work has been published in the Journal of Voice(multi-institutional research study) and Journal of Singing (book review). She presents posters and invited sessions regularly at regional, national, and international conferences. Dr. James is a member of the Pan American Vocology Association (PAVA) and has been an active leader in the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) at the local, regional, and national levels, as well as the College Music Society (CMS). 

In addition to her vocology certificate, James also earned degrees from Texas Christian University (B.S.), Rice University (M.M.), and Indiana University (Performer Diploma, D.M.A). 

An active recitalist and concert performer, Dana Long Zenobi’s work as an interpreter of art song by women composers has garnered both regional and national attention. On the opera stage, she has earned critical acclaim for roles ranging from Mozart heroines Donna Elvira and Konstanze to Verdi's Violetta Valéry. She appeared in the American Premiere of Philip Glass’s Waiting for the Barbarians with Austin Opera, and performed with Lyric Opera Cleveland in the first production of Mark Adamo’s Little Women directed by the composer. 

Zenobi has taught Vocal Diction, Vocal Pedagogy, Song Literature and first-year Theory and Ear Training, as well as an interdisciplinary course in Music and Gender Studies. Her studio teaching was nationally recognized in 2014, when The American Prize competition issued her an "Inspiration in Teaching" award. 

Zenobi created Southwestern University's Sarofim Vocal Competition for high school singers. She also founded BELTA.org, a nonprofit that provides free crowdfunding services and entrepreneurial support to artists and musicians. She holds a dual degree in Music and Women's Studies from Duke University, as well as both an MM and a DMA from The University of Texas at Austin. 

Will Crutchfield has divided his opera career between conducting, musicology, and education. As Director of Opera for the Caramoor International Music Festival from 1997 to 2017, he has conducted over 30 titles by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and soloists including Lawrence Brownlee, Angela Meade, Vivica Genaux, Ewa Podleś, Sumi Jo, Jennifer Larmore, Georgia Jarman, John Osborn, Michael Spyres, and Hei-Kyung Hong. He has also held posts as Music Director with the Opera de Colombia (Bogota) and Principal Guest Conductor of the Polish National Opera (Warsaw), and has made guest appearances with many theaters, including the Rossini Opera Festival (Pesaro), the Canadian Opera Company, the Washington National Opera, and the Minnesota Opera among others. For Ricordi and the Fondazione Rossini he prepared the critical edition of Aureliano in Palmira, also conducting the production at Pesaro that won first place as “Best Rediscovered Work” in the 2015 International Opera Awards. In the same year he was named a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation in recognition of his operatic work, and in 2017 he was named as one of Musical America’s thirty “Movers and Shapers” for his leadership in innovative training and performance. He has contributed articles on historical performance practice to the New Grove Dictionaries of Music and numerous scholarly journals, and is currently completing a book on the same subject for Oxford University Press.