Noontime Concert

12:50pm - TODAY - Tue, Dec 9
Featuring Old St. Mary’s Cantors and Musicians

Come celebrate this season of Advent, as we prepare for Christmas,
with the richness and beauty of music. It will be an afternoon of beautiful music to warm our hearts and fill joy in our souls, for this is a season of hope.

George Frideric Handel, arr. Larry Shackley: For Unto Us a Child is Born from The Messiah

J. S. Bach, Martin Luther: Chorale from Christmas Oratorio

George Frideric Handel: Let the Bright Seraphim from Samson

Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky, arr. Eduard Langer: Three Movements from The Nutcracker

Adolphe Adam: Oh Holy Night

Camille Saint-Saëns: Ave Maria

Pietro Alessandro Yon: Gesu Bambino

George Gershwin, arr. Joseph Turrin: Someone to Watch Over Me

Jester Hairston: Mary’s Boy Child

John Rutter: Angels’ Chorus

George Frideric Handel: Joy to the World

Program Notes

by Sylvia Park O’Neill

To select the music for today’s program, I asked each musician, “What is your favorite music for the holiday season that you would like to perform?” I expected this method would result in a program of old chestnuts that would bring back memories of Christmases past.

To a certain extent, my prediction came true. Some numbers evoke nostalgia, such as “O Holy Night” and the excerpts from The Messiah and The Nutcracker. Surprisingly, some numbers are new to me this year, such as Angels’ Carol, even though I have been playing the piano in churches at Christmas for more than 65 years.

“Ave Maria” is a special selection to remember December 8, which is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. At its dedication in 1854, this church was named the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception. We chose the Saint-Saens setting of “Ave Maria” instead of a more familiar version such as the Schubert or Bach-Gounod. It is a duet featuring the beautiful voices of our cantors, Kelsey and Melissa.

Certain piano four-hand arrangements are credited in the program. In other instances, you will see and hear Russell and me playing together when there is no credit for a four hands arrangement. We made these arrangements ourselves and jokingly call them “derangements.”

We wish everyone every blessing at the holidays and in the new year!

Musicians Of Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral and Chinese Mission

Kelsey Debner, Soprano                                 Chris Grady, Trumpet

Melissa Wong Renati, Mezzo-Soprano          Russell Ryan, Piano

Kevin Dusek, Tenor                                        Sylvia Park O’Neill, Piano

Nicolas A. Garcia, Baritone

Born in North Dakota, USA, Russell Ryan received his first piano lessons at the age of six. He was a prize winner several times at the San Francisco Junior Bach Festival and performed as a soloist for four consecutive years. After his studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he participated in masterclasses at the Juilliard School in New York, and subsequently moved to Austria, where he studied piano chamber music under Prof. Georg Ebert at Vienna’s University for Music and the Performing Arts, graduating with honors.

In 1985, he became a member of staff of the vocal department at Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts, where, as of 1991, he worked as an assistant in the lied class of Edith Mathis. For several years, he was also an accompanist of the Wiener Singverein and frequently gave master classes for lied, opera, and musical theatre at international festivals, such as the Jugendfestival Bayreuth, the Wiener Meisterkurse, the Gino Bechi Festival in Florence, and the Oslo Music Academy. In 2008, he received a Professorship of Practice for Collaborative Piano at Arizona State University and is a guest instructor at the Institute for the International Education of Students (IES) in Vienna, where he oversees the Vocal Performance Class. He is also a guest artist at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival and the Middlebury Summer program.

He performs regularly as a soloist and collaborative artist throughout Europe, the USA, Israel, Japan, and China. He has appeared in many radio and television broadcasts and has recorded several CDs, including the most recent recording of Schulhoff’s Concerto Doppio with Ulrike Anton and David Parry with the English Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Ryan has concertized at the Wiener Festwochen, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, the Grieg Festival Oslo, Bergenser Festspillene, the Lincoln and Kennedy Center Series, and the Schleswig-Holstein Musikfestival in Germany, to mention only a few venues. In addition, he performed in the Weill Recital Hall at New York’s Carnegie Hall, accompanying Hugo Wolf’s major song-cycles on several evenings.

Sylvia Park O’Neill currently holds a position as a pianist for services at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral and Chinese Mission in San Francisco. She assumed this position after retiring from the practice of law. Sylvia is delighted to collaborate on today’s program with her old friend and piano partner from high school and college, Russell Ryan, together with Old St. Mary’s musicians Melissa Wong Renati, Nicolas A. Garcia, Kevin Dusek, and Chris Grady.

Sylvia was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Reedley, California, in rural Fresno County. After graduating with Highest Honors from the Department of Music, University of California, Berkeley, she went on to obtain her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She worked as a lawyer in the Bank of America Legal Department in San Francisco for 38 years, specializing in commercial real estate finance.

Sylvia studied piano with Dr. Alan Rea in Fresno, Alexander Liberman in Berkeley, Christopher O’Riley in Boston, and Dr. Patricia Taylor Lee in San Francisco. For three decades while practicing law, Sylvia was heard in multiple venues playing piano four hands with Dr. Alan Rea, including Noontime Concerts, Old First Concerts, Performances at Six, and Moment Musical. Today marks Sylvia’s 16th appearance at Noontime Concerts.

Sylvia and Russell express sincere thanks to Dr. Patricia Taylor Lee for coaching them to prepare for today’s concert.

Soprano Kelsey Debner received a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from Southwestern University in 2016 and a Master of Music degree in Opera Performance from Boston University in 2018.  She has sung in the chorus of Austin Opera’s production of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette and has performed the roles of Despina in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Beth in Mark Adamo’s Little Women, and Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, all Southwestern productions. At BU, she performed the roles of Barbarina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Miss Wordsworth in Britten’s Albert Herring.  She was recognized as a national finalist in the 2014 Hal Leonard Vocal Competition, was a finalist in the Tuesday Musical Club Young Artist Competition in Voice 2015, and was the winner of the Southwestern University Concerto Competition in 2015.

Nicolas A. Garcia has performed roles with many companies, including Opera San Jose, Pocket Opera, Festival Opera, Berkeley Opera, Oakland Lyric Opera, Oakland Opera Theater, Boston Publick Theater, The Jarvis Conservatory, The Lamplighters, Theaterworks, Golden Gate Opera, and San Francisco Lyric Opera. He began his directing career with one-act operas for Pocket Opera, where he has been steadily directing ever since.  Mr. Garcia has also directed extensively for Lamplighters Music Theatre, where his feminist version of Pirates of Penzance was one of the most TBA award-nominated productions in the Bay Area that year. He was the assistant director for Les Pecheurs de Perles at Michigan Opera Theatre and has worked as an assistant director at San Francisco Opera Center and Opera San Jose.  In 2013, he directed Gianni Schicchi for Sacramento Opera. Since 2016, he has been working as Assistant Director on productions (Madama Butterfly, Cenerentola, Great Scott, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, La Boheme) at San Diego Opera.  He worked at the Royal Swedish Opera as Assistant Director of Cenerentola, and most recently directed an acclaimed production of Iolante for The Lamplighters.  Since 2018, Mr. Garcia has been the General Director at Pocket Opera in San Francisco. His award-winning animated film opera, A Pocket Magic Flute, is currently on the film festival circuit.

A native of San Francisco, Melissa Wong Renati is directing the choir and serves as one of the cantors at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral and Chinese Mission in San Francisco. This will be her first appearance at Noontime Concerts, and she is looking forward to performing different repertoire with her fellow Old St. Mary’s musicians. She has studied voice with Terry Yee, Eugene Fulton, Janet Parlova, Patricia Diggs, and Susan Benner in San Francisco, and Peter Gregg in Novato, CA. Melissa was a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus for ten years. She performed with the Bracebridge Singers at Yosemite National Park, with the San Francisco Chamber Singers in the Old First Concerts series, and toured with them to the Newport Music Festival in Rhode Island. She also toured with the Byron McGilvray Chorale to Juneau and the Fairbanks Arts Festival in Alaska. In oratorio and operatic solo repertoire, Melissa has performed Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols”, “Hymn to Saint Cecilia”, and “Rejoice in the Lamb”, Handel’s “Dixit Dominus” and “Messiah”, and Vivaldi’s “Gloria”. She toured regularly to schools and libraries with Oakland’s Opera Piccola/Small Works in a variety of original musical shows and an adapted version of Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel”. Her dramatic theater work includes performing as part of the Word For Word Theater Company’s eight-member cast of Amy Tan’s “Immortal Heart”, with a five-week run at the Magic Theater in San Francisco, tour performances at multiple California sites, at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and culminating in a multi-week France tour in Paris, Angers, and Nancy. Outside of the performance realm, Melissa graduated with a B.A. in Art Practice from U.C. Berkeley. She worked in the corporate sector in payroll and human resources. In the nonprofit sector, she recently retired as the Administrative Manager of Streetside Stories, which provided underserved San Francisco public school elementary and middle school students the opportunity to write original short stories for a published anthology, and to create video movies of their stories.

Trumpeter Chris Grady has been performing and recording music in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 35 years. Chris has studied at San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and has performed and recorded with many Bay Area classical groups, Jazz, and recording artists, including Tom Waits, Jewel, SF Chamber Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony, and the Oakland Symphony.  Currently, Chris records and performs in the San Francisco Bay Area.