Events Calendar

IN RECITAL - Carlos Avila, Pianist, and Vincent Grana, Bass Voice

Saturday, 17 September, 2022

7:30 p.m., Houlihan McLean Center (Mulberry St. at Jefferson Ave., open to the public, admission FREE

Be sure to check our website within 24 hours before each concert for information regarding concert hall requirements for audiences, as policies regarding Campus Health & Safety may change throughout the season.

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Vincent Grana (Bass) is based in Phillipsburg, NJ.  He has received his B. M. Magna Cum Laude in Music Education and an M.M. in Vocal Performance from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.  At Rutgers, Mr. Grana has received many awards for academic and performing achievements including the Presser Foundation award and the Michael Fardink Memorial Award.  He has also performed with the Castleton Festival under the baton of Maestro Lorin Maazel covering such roles as Alcindoro and Benoit (La Boheme), Simone (Gianni Schicchi), and Escamillo in a concert performance of Carmen.  Mr. Grana has performed in the Crested Butte Music Festival’s production of L’elisir d’amore (Dulcamara) and has worked with eminent artists such as Samuel Ramey. 

In 2013, Mr. Grana was named a Philadelphia District winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Mr. Grana has also sungwith Sarasota Opera as one of their apprentice artists for the final season of the Verdi Cycle.  Mr. Grana received an encouragement award from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in the Los Angeles District.  He also that same year was a grant recipient of the Opera Buffs in Southern California.  Mr. Grana debuted at Dayton Opera performing the role of Zuniga in their production of Bizet’s Carmen.Mr. Grana performed the role of Simone in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi with Martina Arroyo’s Prelude to Performance program in the summer of 2017.  Mr. Grana was invited back to Dayton in the fall of 2017 to sing a concert of Bach’s Cantata 80 and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. His 2018 engagements include perfo

rming the role of Noye in Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, and the officer in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia with Opera Santa Barbara.  This summer, Mr. Grana performed the role of Bartolo in Il barbiere di Siviglia with the Aspen Opera Center as a Fellowship artist. This fall, he returned to Opera Santa Barbara for their 25th anniversary season singing the role of Colline in Puccini’s La Boheme.  He then reprised the role of Colline with Pacific Opera Project in their annual production of La Boheme. Recent engagements include covering the role of Gardiner in Opera San Jose’s production of Moby Dick, singing Il Priore in Bellini’s La Straniera and covering Podestà in Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra both with Teatro Nuovo, and returning to Dayton to sing Rafael and Adam in Haydn’s The Creation and Colline in La Boheme. Upcoming engagements include singing the role of Elder Ott with Annapolis Opera in their production of Floyd’s Susannah.

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BEETHOVEN LISZT III - Carlos Avila | Montreal Chamber Music Festival
Hailed for his “beautiful command of tone and mood…and unruffleable savoir-faire” (San Francisco Chronicle), his “layers of emotional expression” (The Examiner) and his “level of artistry that seem far beyond his years” (Contra Costa Times), Carlos Avila is one of the most in-demand pianists on the classical music scene. His concerts have taken him across North and South America, Europe, and Asia.
Carlos began his professional career in 2001 when he stepped in for an ailing Stewart Goodyear at 24-hours-notice to play the Rachmaninoff First Piano Concerto with the California Symphony, a “pinch-hit homerun” (San Francisco Chronicle).

Since then, Carlos has been a guest at festivals such as Schleswig-Holstein, Tanglewood, Sarasota, Aspen, Banff, Music Academy of the West, Pianofest, Holland, ChamberFest Dubuque, Atlantic Music Festival, Lake George, and the Carnegie Hall Workshops where he had the opportunity to work and study with the late Isaac Stern, Daniel Barenboim, Michael Tilson Thomas, Emanuel Ax, Richard Goode and members of the St. Lawrence, Tokyo, Guarneri, Juilliard, Ying, and Borodin String Quartets.
 
Carlos is also an avid collaborator, he shares a 20-year partnership with acclaimed violinist Jay Oh, with whom he has given over 80 recitals across Asia and the United States. These past seasons, he performed in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s All-Access Chamber series and the New York Philharmonic’s Leonard Bernstein salon series. Prior to that, he embarked on a country-wide 29-city tour with award-winning Baritone Leon Williams. Carlos was also recently showcased on New York’s WQXR, where he gave an all-transcription recital broadcast as one of the winners of Juilliard’s prestigious Gina Bachauer Piano Competition.

A dedicated member of community outreach, he also collaborates frequently with the New York Philharmonic’s Assistant Concertmaster Michelle Kim and participates in the promotion of her Doublestop Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing young musicians with no-cost loans of high-quality instruments. He has also made a large part of his musical home in South Korea where he was recently awarded Honorary Ambassadorship of the city of Chuncheon for his work in the chamber music initiative “New York in Chuncheon” and promoting and supporting national and international activities in the fields of policy, tourism resources, culture and art.

Carlos is on Collaborative Piano Faculty at the Heifetz Institute, where he makes his summer home and for which he works year-round on American tours to promote the innovation of cross-disciplinary learning and communication in student training. Since the spring of 2018, he is also the new pianist of the Boreal Trio, represented exclusively by Sciolino Artist Management. In addition, he is also the studio pianist for Joel Krosnick at the Juilliard School.

A proud Filipino-American, Carlos is a graduate of the Juilliard School where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal and did prior studies at Yale with Peter Frankl and Claude Frank. He currently resides in New York City.
 

 

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 Scranton, PA 18510