CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Jessye Norman
Mark Markham

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 8:00 PM

Jessye Norman, Soprano
Mark Markham, Piano

BRAHMS "O Komme, holde Sommernacht"
MAHLER "Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft"
BERG "Sommertage"
LEGRAND "The Summer Knows"
WOLF "Geh, Geliebter, geh jetzt’"
BERG "Im Zimmer"
R. STRAUSS "Lob des Leidens," Op. 15
BRAHMS "Meine Liebe ist grün," Op. 63, No. 5
WOLF "Ich hab in Penna einen Liebsten"
BERLIOZ "Villanelle," Op. 7, No. 1
MESSIAEN "Le Collier"
DUKE "April in Paris"
BERG "Die Nachtigall" from Seven Early Songs
R. STRAUSS "September"
SCHUBERT "Die Liebe hat gelogen," D. 751
WEILL "September Song"
KOSMA "Autumn Leaves"
SCHOENBERG "Galathea"
GERSHWIN "Love Walked In"
ARLEN "A Sleepin' Bee" from House of Flowers
RICHARD DANIELPOUR "I Envy Public Love"
WAGNER "Träume"

Encores:
R. STRAUSS "Zueignung," Op. 10, No. 1
BIZET "Habeñera" from Carmen Suite No. 2
ELLINGTON "Solitude"

Sponsored by Deloitte LLP

Program Notes:

By Susan Youens

As summer beckons just around the corner, we begin with Johannes Brahms’s “O komme, holde Sommernacht,” in which we hear “Naturläute”—Nature-sounds—in the piano’s rustling figuration. At the beginning, the piano also doubles the singer’s melody, softly intensifying the plea, “O come, gentle summer night.” On such a night as this, the poetic persona hopes, his wanton beloved will accede to his desire; had he sung her this enchanting song, success would be assured.

The great fin-de-siècle Viennese composer Gustav Mahler gravitated to earlier Romantic poetry for his songs, including verse by the poet and Orientalist Friedrich Rückert, fond of word-play and a creator of intricate verse-forms. In “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft,” Mahler turns Rückert’s pun on “lind” (gentle) and “Linde” (linden tree, the traditional site for lovers’ rendezvous in German poetry) into one of the most wistful, delicate songs he ever wrote.

In the fall of 1904, Alban Berg’s older brother Charley gathered together Alban’s songs and took them to Arnold Schoenberg, who had placed an advertisement in the newspaper for students of composition and music theory. The family was unable to pay the lesson fees, but Schoenberg was so impressed that he agreed to teach the tall, shy boy (who became one of the 20th century’s greatest composers) anyway. The Seven Early Songs were all composed after Berg began studying with Schoenberg, and they reflect an astonishing “leap forward” stylistically. “Sommertage” is one of the more expansive songs in the set and is poised somewhere on the boundary between late Romanticism’s richest, most ecstatic strains and the atonal procedures that would follow after works such as these. In the piano introduction, we hear harmonies that expand outwards in both directions to tell wordlessly of summer’s reign spreading throughout the world. A little later in the first half, we hear two other songs from this set, including the small, exquisitely restrained “Im Zimmer,” which begins by evoking autumnal light at sunset and loving tranquility in a quiet chamber; this song will make some listeners recall Wolf in his most intimate moments. And just before intermission comes a setting of the 19th-century poet Theodor Storm’s tiny ode, “Die Nachtigall,” with its sensuously curving phrases lifted higher and higher in rapture and then sinking sweetly down. The nightingale of love has transformed a “wild young maid” into a pensive creature who carries her summer hat in her hands and does not yet know what has begun for her.

Michel Legrand is a French-Armenian composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist who studied with Nadia Boulanger. He has written numerous film scores, including the 1971 Summer of ’42 for which he won an Academy Award; “The Summer Knows” is the theme song of the movie. The young Hermie—the screenwriter Herman Raucher on whose reminiscences the story is based—falls in love with a married woman named Dorothy; when he comforts her after she learns that her husband has been shot down over France, they dance to this beautiful song.

Gustav Mahler’s contemporary Hugo Wolf, who specialized in song composition post-Bayreuth (he was an ardent Wagnerite) and who carefully dictated the order of the songs in his anthologies, chose “Geh’, Geliebter, geh’ jetzt!” to be the culmination of his Spanish Songbook. This impassioned poem, with its paradox of dawn light creating anguished darkness of soul for the persona, is the most dramatic expression of love in the entire volume, and for it, Wolf created a song of orchestral richness and dramatic intensity. The low pedal F-sharp in the bass throughout much of the refrain countermands the plea “Geh’ jetzt” by remaining fixed in place; only when “Trennung bang” (sorrowful parting) becomes “Hoffnung fern in Strahlen” (hope from afar in radiance) can the lover at last bear to relinquish the beloved in one of Wolf’s signature “dying away” postludes.

“Actually, I like my songs best,” Richard Strauss once said to the great singer Hans Hotter, a statement that should perhaps have been accompanied by a pinch or two of salt, given his dedication to opera. But it is true that within the concentrated brevity of song forms, he could experiment with concepts to be transferred later to the broader canvas of opera, and he knew that many of his songs are artistic gems. Adolf Friedrich von Schack, whose splendid collection of paintings can be seen in Munich, was a poet and literary historian whose verse appealed to Strauss in his earlier song-writing days. In “Lob des Leidens,” the persona bids us not be ashamed of sorrow and then compares the beauty of autumn’s falling leaves to the ardent kiss of those who must part forever. For such grandly melancholy sentiments, Strauss devised a late-Romantic pearl of a song, its somber ending particularly noteworthy.

Looking at the poet’s name and dates for Brahms’s “Junge Lieder I,” one opens a door to multiple tragedies: the poet was Felix Schumann, Brahms’s godson and the youngest child of Robert and Clara Schumann, conceived not long before Schumann had to be committed to a mental institution. His son, who would die of tuberculosis at the age of 25, turned to poetry when bad health made a musical career impossible; in this poem, an ardent swain proclaims that his love is as green as the lilac bush and as fair as the sun shining upon it. Brahms’s setting was a Christmas Eve gift to Clara, with whom he had fallen in love as a young man coming to study with Robert Schumann in 1854 and who remained one of his dearest friends for the rest of their lives (they died a year apart). In the letter accompanying his gift of song, Brahms told Clara that he had recalled her husband’s “Schöne Fremde” (the sixth song of the Liederkreis, Op. 39) when he read Felix’s verses, and he quotes it at the beginning of his own masterpiece, in which youthful ardor comes to sounding life.

Hugo Wolf reinvented humor in music for the world after Bayreuth, giving his comic characters—who often have a strong streak of malice or anger in their make-up—all the late-Romantic complexities the 1890s had to offer. In the final show stopper of his Italienisches Liederbuch (an anthology of 46 songs to Paul Heyse’s translations of Italian rispetti and other anonymous poems), “Ich hab’ in Penna,” a woman of irresistible verve and ingenuity boasts of her multiple conquests in this, that, and the other town. The final count may be less than Don Giovanni’s “mille e tre” (1, 003) but more than enough for bragging rights. The extended piano postlude is emphatic revelry in which one can hear both mockery of the protagonist and delighted collusion with her excesses.

Théophile Gautier gave his poem heralding both spring and love the title “Rhythmic Villanelle,” but the composer Hector Berlioz had no need to remind anyone that he trafficked in rhythm as well as sound, so the first song in his cycle Les nuits d’été became simply “Villanelle.” Gautier and Berlioz knew each other (they lived nearby); the six songs of the cycle all came from an anthology entitled La comédie de la mort (The Commedia of Death) published in 1838. In it, we hear the throbbing pulse of love’s gentle excitation and Nature awakening to new life, but there are telltale hints of melancholy and tension perceptible as the song wends its way.

Olivier Messiaen, born in Avignon to a poet (his mother) and a translator of Shakespeare (his father), was inspired by birdsong, Hindu philosophy, Catholic mysticism, plainchant, and more to create a unique “voice” in 20th-century music. The song cycle Poèmes pour Mi, settings of nine poems by Messiaen himself, was dedicated to Claire Delbos, the violinist and composer who became his wife in 1932; Messiaen’s affectionate nickname for her was Mi. The eighth song, “Le collier,” hymns a singular and lovely necklace: Mi’s arms around the composer’s neck one fine spring morning. Fulfillment in love has rarely been more beautifully rendered in sound.

The White Russian aristocrat Vernon Duke’s life would require no embroidery to become a novel; born Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dukelsky in a small town in Minsk into a noble family of Georgian/Austrian/Spanish/Russian descent, he came to New York with his family, where he befriended Gershwin—it was Gershwin’s suggestion that he Americanize his name to Vernon Duke. Duke dashed off “April in Paris” at a speakeasy piano; it typifies his brand of Broadway art song influenced by jazz. The small erotic “slide” upwards on the word “Paris” each time is drenched in longing for that jewel of a city.

The 20th-century writer Hermann Hesse did not like Strauss’s settings of three of his poems in the cycle Four Last Songs, saying that the composer’s undeniable virtuosity, refinement, and craftsmanship had no deeper purpose than itself. The celebrations of Strauss under Hitler, said Hesse in 1957, had made the composer anathema to him. But for the rest of us, these four works are among the consummate specimens of the orchestral Lied, and the fourth song, “September,” is an exquisite farewell to life’s season of summer plenitude. Fain would Summer (and all of us) linger among the roses and autumn’s golden leaves, but she is tired and closes her eyes by song’s end. Strauss’s magical way with harmonic shifts, touching lightly on now this key, now that, is deployed here in a manner beyond sentimentality or mere lushness to tell of the inevitability of death and the grave beauty of the passage from one season to another, from life to death.

Count August von Platen-Hallermünde was destined by his family for military life, but left the garrison to study philosophy and philology. Escaping from Germany’s refusal to understand his aesthetic of poetry (he and Heine famously took exception to one another), he went to live in Italy from 1826 on, but the poem of “Die Liebe hat gelogen” comes from earlier in his life. A homosexual who endured enormous suffering in his erotic life, he enclosed his agonies in verse of impeccable formal precision and purity. Schubert, who knew something of Platen through his friend Franz von Bruchmann’s encounter with the poet in 1821, set this poem to music whose strict rhythmic straitjacket is the concomitant to Platen’s aristocratic dignity and whose incandescent harmonies almost burn holes through the pages on which they are printed.

Kurt Weill studied composition with Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin and then gravitated more and more to musical theater, especially after fleeing Nazi Germany in March 1933. “September Song,” one of Weill’s most famous songs, was composed for the Broadway musical Knickerbocker Holiday, both a romance set in the “New Amsterdam” of Washington Irving’s day—Irving narrates the tale—and a thinly-veiled critique of Roosevelt’s “New Deal;” the playwright Maxwell Anderson saw fascism in its concentration of power. The jazz classic “Autumn Leaves” was originally a song entitled “Les feuilles mortes” (Dead leaves) for Marcel Carné’s film Les portes de la nuit of 1946, with words by the poet Jacques Prévert and music by Joseph Kosma, born Jozsef Kozma in Budapest. The song, first sung by Yves Montand and then taken up by the likes of Juliette Gréco and Edith Piaf (among many others), became an international hit and no wonder, with its unforgettable evocation of longing and loss. The 1956 film Autumn Leaves, starring Joan Crawford, featured this song sung by Nat King Cole throughout the title sequence.

Shortly after the new century began in 1900, an amateur poet named Baron Ernst von Wolzogen opened the cabaret Überbrettl in Berlin and hired artists to create works for it, including Arnold Schoenberg. (“Brettl” was the term for mini-stages, halls, or cafés where singing and dancing took place; Wolzogen—a fan of Nietzsche’s writing—added the prefix “über,” with the Nietzschean “Übermensch,” or “superman,” in mind.) In “Galathea,” the singer yearns to kiss the cheeks, hair, hands, knees, and feet of the enchanting Galathea—but this is fantasy, not reality. No matter how often this music rises and swells in chromatic desire, reciprocity (much less consummation) is not to be; the myth of the one-eyed monster Polyphemus, hopelessly in love with the beautiful Galatea who loves the shepherd Acis, comes to life in modern dress.

Near the end of his tragic death at age 38, Gershwin—the child of a Russian immigrant named Gershovitz—was working on The Goldwyn Follies (1938), for which he and his brother Ira wrote “Love Walked In” and “Love is Here to Stay”; we hear this wonderful song about a coup de foudre against the backdrop of poignant realization that its creator did not live for long after its creation. “A Sleepin’ Bee” comes from the 1954 Broadway musical House of Flowers, with the musical score by Harold Arlen—he was, of course, the composer of “Stormy Weather,” “My Blue Heaven,” “Over the Rainbow,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” and other iconic songs—and text by Truman Capote (his only musical). The show itself, a tale of two rival bordellos in the West Indies, was not a success, but most critics agree that the score is one of Arlen’s finest. In the musical, this song about a charm to know whether true love is truly yours—catch a bee in your hand and see if it stings you—was sung for the first time by Diahann Carroll as the virginal Ottilie, who turns down a rich man to marry a poor mountain boy named Royal.

After studies at the New England Conservatory and The Juilliard School, Richard Danielpour (a member of the composition faculty at the Manhattan School of Music) has received commissions from most of this country’s prestigious orchestras and from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, as well as composing works for Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Thomas Hampson—and, of course, Jessye Norman. His song cycle Spirits in the Well to poems by Toni Morrison was composed at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs in the last week of November 1997 for Jessye Norman; an earlier Morrison-Danielpour song cycle, Sweet Talk (composed in 1996), was premiered at Carnegie Hall in April 1997. “So, why did this piece need to be written?” Mr. Danielpour wrote. “Simply because of my deep identification with Ms. Morrison’s lyrics and my profound appreciation for the way Ms. Norman approaches and sings my music.”

We end with the gorgeous final song in Richard Wagner’s cycle, the Wesendonck-Lieder. Wagner cared little for song composition after his student years in Leipzig—he was on a mission to reform opera in his own image—and found no occasion to compose lieder again until 1857, at the time of his affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a music-loving silk merchant named Otto Wesendonck. Wagner set five of her sensual-ecstatic or sorrowful poems to music as he was composing Tristan und Isolde, and two of the songs are studies for that opera, including “Träume.” At its beginning and end, we hear an anticipation of the love-duet, “O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe,” in Act II. Wagner told Mathilde in a letter of 1861 that he had placed a copy of the song next to the operatic duet: “As God is my witness, the song pleased me more than the noble scene! Heavens, it is more beautiful than everything else I’ve made!” One suspects him of exaggeration in order to flatter her as poet and Muse, but the song is wonderful, a distillation-in-a-nutshell of the tonal revolution Wagner brought into being.

Copyright © 2007 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Susan Youens’s writings on lieder include Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin and Schubert’s Late Lieder: Beyond the Song Cycles, both published by Cambridge University Press.

Jessye Norman, Soprano
Jessye Norman is “one of those once-in-a-generation singers who is not simply following in the footsteps of others, but is staking out her own niche in the history of singing.” This rich history continues to be made as she brings her sumptuous sound, her joy of singing and spontaneous passion to recital performances, operatic portrayals, and appearances with symphony orchestras and chamber music collaborators to audiences around the world. The sheer size, power, and luster of her voice share equal acclaim with that of her thoughtful music making, innovative programming of the classics, and fervent advocacy of contemporary music. Miss Norman’s innovative collaborations with artists on the cutting edge in their fields, including Robert Wilson, Andre Heller, Bill T. Jones, and Steve McQueen, serve to add new dimensions and exciting new challenges to her work.

Her recent performances of a staged version of Schubert’s Winterreise by Robert Wilson and the unique double-bill of Erwartung of Schoenberg and La voix humaine of Poulenc staged by André Heller, allow Miss Norman to continue the singular expansion and deepening of her artistic vision.

The integrity and depth of Jessye Norman’s performances are often characterized as in a New York Times article, which stated, “This is an amazing voice, a catalogue of all that is virtuous in singing,” and about which the Jerusalem Post, wrote, “The immensity of her voice struck like a thunderbolt . . . it was like an eruption of primal power.”

In September 2003, the Jessye Norman School of the Arts in Miss Norman’s hometown of Augusta, Georgia, opened its doors to talented middle school students for studies in music performance, drama, dance, and art. The students attend this after-school program tuition-free. A fellowship and master class series in her name established recently at the University of Michigan School of Music further attest to Miss Norman’s encouragement and support of emerging talent.

Miss Norman is the recipient of many awards and honors. In December 1997, she was invested with the US’s highest award in the performing arts, the Kennedy Center Honor, making history as the youngest recipient in the Honors’s 20-year existence. Her many other prestigious distinctions include honorary doctorates at some 30 colleges, universities and conservatories around the world. In 1984 the French government bestowed upon Miss Norman the title Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris named an orchid for her.

In October 1989 she was awarded the Legion d’Honneur by French President Mitterand, and in June 1990 she was named Honorary Ambassador to the United Nations by U.N. Secretary Xavier Perez de Cuellar. Miss Norman was awarded the Radcliff Medal in June of 1997. In the autumn of 2000, Miss Norman was honored with the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal in recognition of her humanitarian and civic contributions. In Augusta, Georgia, her hometown, the Amphitheater and Plaza overlooking the tranquil Savannah River have been named for her.
Miss Norman’s distinguished catalogue of recordings has won numerous awards, including France’s Grand Prix National du Disque for albums of lieder by Wagner, Schumann, Mahler, and Schubert; London’s prestigious Gramophone Award for her outstanding interpretation of Strauss’s Four Last Songs; Amsterdam’s Edison Prize; and recording honors in Belgium, Spain, and Germany. In the US, her Grammy Award–winning recordings include Songs of Maurice Ravel and Wagner’s Lohengrin and Die Walküre. Bluebeard’s Castle with Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra received the Grammy Award for best opera in February 1999. She was the winner of an “Ace” Award from the National Academy of Cable Programming for Jessye Norman at Notre Dame, as seen on the Arts and Entertainment Network in the US.

In January 2000, Jessye Norman released her first jazz CD to wide acclaim, I Was Born In Love With You, featuring music of Michel Legrand, with Mr. Legrand at the piano, bassist Ron Carter, and percussionist Grady Tate.

In addition to her busy performance schedule, Miss Norman serves on the Boards of Directors for the New York Public Library, the New York Botanical Garden, Citymeals-on-Wheels in New York City, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Howard University. Miss Norman is a member of the board as well as National spokesperson for the Lupus Foundation, and national spokesperson for the Partnership for the Homeless. In her hometown of Augusta, Georgia, she serves on the Board of Trustees of Paine College and the Augusta Opera Association. A relentless Girl Scout cookie seller, she is a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts of America.

In 2004, Miss Norman was presented in performance in Thailand, Spain, France, Austria, and in Japan, where she appeared in a reprise of her unique opera double bill of Schoenberg’s Erwatung and Poulenc’s La voix humaine. In the US, Miss Norman’s performances included engagements in Washington, Cleveland, and New York. In November 2004, a documentary of Miss Norman’s life and work to date was completed. This film, directed by Andre Heller, with Othmar Schmiderer as director of photography and produced by DOR-FILM of Vienna, chronicles the music, the social and political issues, the inspiration and dreams that combine to make this singer unique in her profession.

In 2005, Miss Norman performed in recital in the US, including performances at Royce Hall at University of California in Los Angeles and the Concert Hall of Tampa, Florida. In Europe, her performances included an orchestral concert of the music of Purcell, Saint-Saens, and Bizet at the Schleswig Holstein Festival of northern Germany. She also gave a jazz concert at this festival of the music of Bernstein, Gershwin, and Ellington. These concerts were followed by a series of Master Classes at the Music Academy of Villecroze in the South of France with six outstanding young sopranos. Miss Norman also performed with the Prague Chamber Orchestra for a gala event in Europe’s largest castle, the Castle of Prague in the Czech Republic.

Miss Norman’s 2006 spring recital tour of Europe included performances in Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Munich, Frankfurt, Lucerne, and Budapest. In Germany, Miss Norman was also a guest on the widely-viewed television variety show, Wetten Dass.

Her performances at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris in June consisted of Bartók’s BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE under the direction of Pierre Boulez, with the Orchestre de Paris as well as “Les Nuits d’ete of Berlioz and Purcell’s DIDO and AENEAS on the same evenings, conducted by Marc Minkowski with the Orchestre de Louvre.

In the summer of 2006, Miss Norman collaborated in a program of the music of Duke Ellington at the Vail, Colorado International Dance Festival with the Trey McIntyre Dance Company: THE DIVA, THE DUKE and the DANCE. with Miss Norman bringing her special interpretations of the great songs of Duke Ellington with choreography by Trey McIntyre.
Further performances of the music of Duke Ellington in the summer took place at the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad and the Peralada Festival in Spain, with programs entitled, THE DIVA and THE DUKE.

In May 2006, Miss Norman was awarded the Edison Prize in Amsterdam for her outstanding contribution to recorded classical music, which includes some seventy-five CD’s of her eclectic repertoire.

In the autumn, Miss Norman’s tour in Asia included her first performances in Mainland China, where she presented orchestral concerts in Shanghai and Beijing.
In Beijing Miss Norman was honored by being made an honorary professor of The
Central Music Conservatory of Beijing.

In February of 2006, Jessye Norman became only the fourth opera/classical music singer in the forty-eight year history of the GRAMMY AWARDS Celebration, to be presented THE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD for Classical Music. Creating her own place in this legendary list of awardees, Miss Norman joins the illustrious company of Enrico Caruso, Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price.

In the early months of 2007, Miss Norman’s European performances included a recital in Paris at The Salle Pleyel entitled LES VOIX FRANCAISES, her homage to the great tradition of music in this country and her special place in the hearts of French music enthusiasts.
She was presented in the opening performance of the CELEBRATION OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS in Barcelona at the Palau de la Musica and in recital for the closing performance of THE FESTIVAL OF CLASSICAL MUSIC in The Hague.

Miss Norman was guest ‘artist-in-residence’ at the 2007 IDEAS FESTIVAL
of Walter Issacson in Aspen, Colorado, where she offered three talks on
her life in music to this point, the importance, indeed the absolute necessity of arts education in the public schools and the political and social elements required to make the arts available for all to explore and experience.

Jessye Norman was presented in Spain in a jazz concert featuring the music of Duke Ellington at the FESTIVAL OF CAP ROIG and in recital in EL Escorial.

Later in the year, Miss Norman was heard in performance at the Opera House of Detroit, Michigan and offered the official opening performance for the Grand Theatre of Aix-en-Provence, France, in December
Again in the United States, she will also presented music programs in schools where arts education is absent from the school system’s curriculae.

Also in 2007, Jessye Norman was elected as a fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences at a ceremony at Sanders Theatre at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
She was made a ‘living landmark’ of New York City by the Landmarks Conservancy, and was awarded the Nelson A. Rockefeller Award for the Arts by the State University of New York at Purchase College.

Early in 2008, Miss Norman performed a recital tour in Germany, including Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin, as well as a recital in Paris. The theme for these performances was The Five Seasons—Summer, Winter, Spring, Fall, and the eternal season of Love. She will also be heard in recital at Carnegie Hall and Royce Hall at The University of Calfornia in the spring, where her recitals will have the theme: The American Song and The French Melodie.

In the summer, Miss Norman will perform the opening concert of the Festival of Sacred Music of Fez, Morocco, and will return to the Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado.

Mark Markham, Piano
Born in Pensacola, Florida, pianist Mark Markham made his debut in 1980 as soloist with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra and in the same year was invited by the renowned Boris Goldovsky to coach opera at the Oglebay Institute, hence the beginning of a multi-faceted career. His teachers at the time, Robert and Trudie Sherwood, were supportive of all his musical endeavors from solo repertoire, vocal accompanying, and chamber music to Broadway and jazz. During the next 10 years as a student at the Peabody Conservatory, where he received bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in piano performance, this same support for the diversity of his musical gifts came from Ann Schein. While under her tutelage he won several competitions including the First Prize and the Contemporary Music Prize at the 1988 Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition in New York City. He has given solo recitals at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the New York Public Library; the Baltimore Museum of Art; and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In 1987 Mr. Markham was appointed pianist of the Contemporary Music Forum of Washington, DC. During five seasons he gave numerous premiere performances at the Corcoran Gallery with this ensemble. This work led to other premieres throughout the US by composers Shulamit Ran, Larence Smith, and Richard Danielpour. Mr. Markham has also performed with the Brentano, Mozarteum, Glinka, and Castagnieri quartets and the Baltimore Woodwind Quintet, as well as with Edgar Meyer, Ron Carter, Grady Tate, and Ira Coleman. While a student at the conservatory Mr. Markham toured with soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson. This collaboration resulted incritically acclaimed recordings of works by Messiaen, Carter, Dallapiccola, Schuller, and Wuorinen. In addition, he has toured the US, Europe, and Asia with countertenor Derek Lee Ragin.

Since 1995 Mr. Markham has been the recital partner of Jessye Norman, giving over 150 performances in 22 countries, including recitals in Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, La Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, London’s Royal Festival Hall, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Salzburg Festival, Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo, Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus in Greece, and at the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize presentation to President Jimmy Carter in Oslo. This season he gives recitals with Ms. Norman in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Aix-en-Provence, New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Much appreciated by the public for his improvisational skills, Mr. Markham performed at the Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany, where he collaborated with Sir Peter Ustinov for a live television broadcast throughout the country. His gift for jazz has been recognized in the Sacred Ellington, a program created by Ms. Norman in which he serves as pianist and musical director and which has toured Europe and the Middle East. In 1990 Mr. Markham was invited to join the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory, where he served for ten years as vocal coach and professor of vocal repertoire and accompanying. A former faculty member of Morgan State University, the Britten-Pears School in England, and the Norfolk Chamber Festival of Yale University, he has presented master classes for pianists and singers throughout the US, Europe, and Asia and has been a guest lecturer for the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Johns Hopkins University. In fall 2008 will join the faculty of Grand Valley State University as assistant professor of piano.