Wind Ensemble
October 10 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Program
Jonathan Caldwell, conductor
Janinah Burnett, vocalist
Erik Santos, composer
FLAGELLO Bravado
PURRINGTON apricity
SANTOS The Seer
BERNSTEIN Profanation from Symphony no. 1, “Jeremiah”
The UNCG Wind Ensemble is a highly select concert band of fifty performers majoring in music at the UNCG School of Music. Performers in the current Wind Ensemble are drawn from sixteen states, Slovenia, and Hong Kong. The ensemble has enjoyed a distinguished record of performance throughout its history. In January 1992, the UNCG Wind Ensemble performed “A Tribute to John Philip Sousa” to a capacity crowd of 2,700 at the Concert Hall of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Twice, the Wind Ensemble earned critical acclaim from The Washington Post following concerts in the nation’s capital. The Wind Ensemble has performed throughout the eastern United States in recent years including the first-ever performance, in 1987, by a North Carolina collegiate ensemble in Lincoln Center, New York City. The Wind Ensemble performed that same year in West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. The Wind Ensemble has recorded nineteen commercially-available albums which have received widespread praise.
A versatile singer, actor, musician, writer, arranger, and educator, Janinah Burnett is in demand and has thrilled audiences domestically and internationally in opera, recital, musical theatre, jazz, television, and film. Some of her signature operatic roles include Mimí in La bohème, Leila in Les pêcheurs des perles, Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Micaëla in Carmen, Marguerite in Faust, and Violetta in La Traviata. An original cast member of Baz Luhrmann’s La Bohème on Broadway as Mimí, she won a Los Angeles Theater Alliance Award and performed on the Tony Awards Presentation.
Burnett was on the roster of principal artists at the Metropolitan Opera for eight consecutive seasons debuting as Bianca in La Rondine. She was a member of the closing cast of Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, making appearances as “Carlotta Giudicelli” since 2016.
In February 2021, Burnett released her debut album, Love the Color of Your Butterfly, which features musical arrangements and collaborations with some of the world’s finest jazz musicians including Christian Sands, Sullivan Fortner Jr., Casey Benjamin, and Terreon Gully who produced the project. Released on her own record label Clazz Records, Love the Color of Your Butterfly is an amalgamation of jazz, opera, art song, oratorio, rhythm and blues, and spirituals and introduces her concept of “Clazz,” which encourages collaboration and redefines the parameters of genre while embracing parts of history that are erased, widely unknown and forgotten. Love the Color of Your Butterflyhas been featured in numerous publications including the Financial Times, Playbill, Broadway World, Downbeat Magazine, and Opera News.
Burnett has been a guest artist and taught masterclasses at Eastern Mennonite University, The Cinema School, Clark University, and Bar Harbor Music Festival. She holds an MM from the Eastman School of Music and a BA from Spelman College.
Free
