The American Prize in Vocal Performance—Friedrich and Virginia Schorr Memorial Award honors the memory of the greatest Wagnerian baritone of his age, Friedrich Schorr, who commanded the operatic stage between the world wars, and his wife, Virginia Schorr, who taught studio voice at the Manhattan School of Music and the Hartt School of Music for nearly fifty years. The Prize recognizes and rewards the best performances by classically trained vocalists in America, based on submitted recordings.
The American Prize in Vocal Performance—women in opera (professional division), 2022, The Friedrich and Virginia Schorr Memorial Awards
The American Prize Winner: Olga Perez Flora, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
Opera roles include performances with Opera Company Middlebury/A Streetcar Named Desire (Eunice), Opera Columbus/Madama Butterfly (Suzuki), Arizona Opera/Die Zauberflöte (Third Lady), Opera in the Heights/Don Giovanni (Zerlina), and more.
Internationally known as a recitalist, Dr. Flora has performed several recitals with companies across the United States, Cuba, and Italy. She has most recently created a Cuban Song Recital named Canciones de mi Isla: Songs from my Island.
Heterophony: Texture, Technique, and Social Commentary
This lecture is in two parts: the first draws from my research on the 1960s jazz avant-garde and musicians’ interests in heterophonic musical textures. For the second part, I perform original music that utilizes heterophony and “noise” in a solo electronic and improvised format.
The Gay West: From Drug Store Cowboys to Rodeo Queens
The masculine ideal represented by the American cowboy is variously interpreted by spectators, dancers, musicians, and contestants at gay rodeos and country western dances across the U.S. Examining embodied gender practices within these communities, this talk articulates the sonic, social, and geographical spaces of the gay American West.
The Cruelty of Jazz: Toward a Hemispheric Politics of Sound
Rooted in concepts of affect and Empire, this paper argues that jazz operated in various 20th century Latin American settings as a vital touchstone bearing the risks and benefits of urban modernization, hemispheric geopolitics, and transnational cultural production, “cruelly” echoing the United States’ cultural, political, and economic dominance in the hemisphere and beyond.