About the Artists
Angela Powell Walker
Critically acclaimed throughout the United States and Europe for her "quintessential lyric soprano voice," soloist Angela Powell Walker personifies the highest standards of artistic performance in today's classical music world.
She has appeared in numerous operatic roles, including the title role in Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, Le Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro, Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus, Micaela in Carmen, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni and is a long-time favorite of concert audiences at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C, Strathmore and the Clarice Smith Center.Her work has also been enthusiastically received at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, and by audiences in Rome, Prague, and Vienna.
Ms. Powell Walker has been a preeminent competitor, taking several first place awards, including the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition, the Paul Robeson Competition, the National Society of Arts and Letters Vocal Competition and the Sigma Slpha Iota National Vocal Competition. Angela was honored as the recipient of the Post Master General’s award commemorating the release of the Marion Anderson Postal Stamp. She is also a recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council's highest grant awarded to a vocalist.
A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory (BM) and the University of Maryland (MM), Ms. Powell Walker has appeared with leading orchestras in performances of music by such classicists as Bach, Brahms, Handel, Faure, Mozart and Verdi, and has premiered several works, including Adolphus Hailstork’s Done Made My Vow, Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s-Common Ground and Luigi Zaninelli's opera Snow White, bringing to life the role of the Evil Queen. Ms. Powell's oratorios include the Brahms' Requiem, Szymanowski's Stabat Mater, Faure's Requiem, Donald McCullough's Holocaust Cantata and Mozart's Requiem.
Her lyrical soprano voice has been hailed by critics as "impressive, sultry, and rich toned," and can be heard, in its many tonal shades, on several recordings, as well as her solo CD, A City Called Heaven. She currently serves as Assistant Professor and Chair of the Classical Voice Department in the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University in Washington, DC.
Kit Young
Pianist/improviser-composer Kit Young centers her musical practice on unwinding listening and performing biases among communities of musicians and audiences as they venture into deeper meanings equalizing the unfamiliar with their familiar.
With a background in Thai music, culture and language, Ms. Young in 1987 began studying Burmese language, music and particularly the performance of Sandaya - Burmese music and techniques played on the western piano. Ms. Young learned her first repertoire from tape cassettes before traveling to Myanmar. Later she studied with Myanmar’s most celebrated pianists: Gita Lulin U Ko Ko and Sandaya U Yee Nwe and performed as an accompanist for singers Htar, Shwe Man Win Maung, U Tin Maung Win and others.
Along with Burmese colleagues and students, Ms. Young founded the Gitameit Music Institute in Yangon in 2003 when she moved to Myanmar from Thailand to live for five years. Ms. Young’s improvising collaborative performance partners include Thai violinist Nop Sotthibhandu (Here Records: Akhanee Keeta), Myanmar Tayaw (violin) player U Tin Yee, Dancer Shwe Man Chan Thar, Chinese Gu Qin performer Wu Na, among many other performers such as Noraath Chanklum with whom she recorded pieces by composers in Thailand (Tri) including Bruce Gaston. Between 1992 and 2003 Ms. Young taught on the piano faculties of Sri Nakarin Wirot University in Bangkok and Payap University in Chiang Mai.
As a composer, her larger works include an improvised opera “What Miss Dickinson Heard - And Didn’t”, a song cycle setting the poems of U San Oo “Visiting U San Oo”, two music theater works performed in Yangon in 2006 and 2010, “Nya La Ka” and “Ye Bawe: The Monsters of Inya Lake”.
Ms. Young holds degrees from New England Conservatory and Bennington College, pursued doctoral work at the University of Michigan. She is currently a piano faculty member in the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University in Washington, DC.