GUEST ARTISTS

 

SARA COUDEN, CONTRALTO

La Femme Française - March 2, 2025

Georges Bizet • “Seguidilla” and “Habanera” from Carmen

Jacques Offenbach • “Dites-Lui” from La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein

 
 

Praised for her “unusually rich and resonant voice” (Opera News), contralto Sara Couden is a premiere interpreter of operatic, concert, and song repertoire. Opera engagements for 2024 included Baba the Turk with Lakes Area Music Festival, as well as her San Francisco Opera debut as Rita in The Handmaid’s Tale (and Serena Joy cover). Concerts include Beethoven 9 with Seattle Symphony, Mass in B Minor with Santa Cruz Symphony, Duruflé Requiem with the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, and a concert of art songs and piano chamber music with Jenny Lin and Philip Setzer at the Manchester Music Festival. In 2023, Sara sang the roles of Ottavia in West Edge Opera’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Catiscià in Il Ducato (the Lamplighters’ Renaissance Italian setting of The Mikado), and Osmiro in Olimpia vendicata with Ars Minerva. She was the alto soloist in the Mozart Requiem with Eureka Symphony, Alma Mahler’s Five Songs with the California Symphony, and Messiah with the Grand Rapids Symphony, Tucson Symphony, and at Duke University. 

Ms. Couden holds a MM in Opera from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and an AD in Early Music, Chamber Music, and Oratorio from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.She completed the Lindemann Young Artist Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 2017, and has been a fellow at the Marlboro Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Music Academy of the West, and the Institute for Young Dramatic Voices.

Learn more about Sara at saracouden.net


KATE OFFER, NARRATOR

The Magic of Music - November 9, 2024

Victoria Bond • The Frog Prince

 
 

Kate Offer is the Music & Movement Specialist for the Pacific Primary School, a preschool in San
Francisco. She holds a master’s degree in Music Education as well as a fellowship in songleading
from Virginia Theological Seminary where she trained with Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in
the Rock and composer Alice Parker. She grew up singing with the Piedmont East Bay Children’s
Choir, and has gone on to sing with a number of local organizations including the San Francisco Symphony, 21V, Cappella SF, Oakland Opera Theater, West Edge Opera, and the Oakland Symphony. 

She is a founding member of the International Orange Chorale where she met her favorite tenor and husband, Seth Arnopole. As her alter ego, Kate Offer, Very Melodramatic Soprano, Kate performs a comic recital titled “Aria Kidding” along with contralto Sara Couden at venues throughout the Bay Area.

She also runs Songs from the Sandbox, a YouTube channel of sing-along songs for children and families. Check it out at www.YouTube.com/songsfromthesandbox.


 

JULIANNA DI MICELI, PERCUSSION SOLOIST

Music With Friends - June 2, 2024

Adolph Schreiner • The Worried Drummer: Humoreske

Julianna Di Miceli grew up surrounded by music. Though neither of her parents played instruments, they were avid music appreciators and helped both of their daughters explore the musical inspiration found in the many branches of their family.

Recognizing that she was a handful and needed many activities (for everyone’s sanity), her mom started Julianna on the piano at age 8.

That led to percussion in drum set in middle school under the expert guidance of conductor Bob Athayde. She continued percussion and jazz in high school and college, played in the Walnut Creek Concert Band and then at the University of Oregon in the Campus Band and the Eugene Symphonic Band. Since returning to the Bay Area for graduate school, she has enjoyed playing with many ensembles including the Oakland Civic Orchestra, West County Winds, Prometheus Symphony Orchestra, and the Albany Chamber Orchestra.

Julianna is (finally) finishing her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley and is endlessly grateful to her friends and family and especially her partner Charlie, who have demonstrated unwavering patience and support throughout her many years in school.

She loves brains and neuroscience and integrates these principles into her clinical work with families and children in private work and schools, as well as practicing psychogastroenterology. She also contributes to advocacy work for people who are incarcerated or impacted by the carceral system. When she’s not playing music or working, Julianna loves being outside (backpacking, camping, hiking, birdwatching, horseback riding, you name it!).

Julianna and her partner Charlie celebrated their 10th anniversary this year and are relocating back to Eugene, Oregon in August. She was excited when Marty proposed the idea of playing The Worried Drummer: Humoreske as a fond farewell performance and tribute to her joyful time in the Bay Area. She is grateful to share one more concert with the Community Women’s Orchestra and she has appreciated participating in the wonderful world of making music with Marty Stoddard and the many musicians of CWO over the years!

Though Julianna’s mom, Catherine, passed away 5 years ago, Julianna continues to play music with her in her mind and heart. Catherine never missed a performance (dance or music), and Julianna always plays with an honor and joy of her spirit.

 

 

MARY FINEMAN, SOLOIST AND COMPOSER

It’s About Love - March 3, 2024

Mary Fineman • It's About Love

Mary Fineman's artistic spirit moves easily between two worlds, from the intimate universe of singer/songwriter to the expansive territory of the neo-classical world, bringing passion and a love of melody, whether for song, piano, chamber, ensemble, or orchestra.

Originally from Baltimore, where she studied music theory with Grace Newsom Cushman, Mary is now an Oakland based musician. She spent ten years in Montreal in piano studies with Lauretta Altman and Phil Cohen at Concordia University, where she also taught. She studied jazz at McGill University and accompanied instrumentalists, singers, and dancers as a freelance pianist.

Her music trajectory changed radically in 2003 after visiting an energy healer. Mary suddenly started to hear her own music, and began composing in diverse genres.  Performances include works for brass quintet, piano trio, concert choir (with Bryan Baker, conductor) and Pierrot ensemble with concerts at the Paramount Theater, Piedmont Piano Company, Center for New Music, the Marsh Berkeley and Old First Church in San Francisco and other venues.

2014 saw the world premiere of It’s About Love, commissioned by the Oakland Symphony under the late Michael Morgan, with support from the James Irvine Foundation.

Ms. Fineman received First Place in Music from the Biennial Competition of the National League of American Pen Women, and was a semi-finalist in recent orchestral and international piano composition events.  She has composed more than 80 songs and many piano works and she is a proud member of ccpas.org and nacusasf.org. Her CD recordings include Everyday Secrets, You and Me, Mary Fineman Solo Piano. Fineman's music has been featured on radio KDFC, Internet Archive, wosradio.com, and in the Call for Scores: Solo Piano by e4tt.org.


To learn more or listen visit:
www.maryfineman.com  
YouTube.com/maryfineman
Mary Fineman on Spotify

 
 

CADENCE LIU, FLUTIST AND COMPOSER

Young Artist Showcase - November 12, 2023

Cadence Lui • World Premiere Concerto for Flute and Orchestra

Cadence Liu is a high school senior from Foster City, California. She studies flute under Catherine Payne and composition under Arkadi Serper and June Bonacich in the precollege division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is a member of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and has been honored for her flute playing by the National Flute Association, YoungArts Foundation, and Peninsula Symphony. 

She most recently composed a work for wind trio and piano as well as an a cappella setting of portions of the Requiem mass. Her practice focuses on reinventing the genre of sacred vocal music. Her compositions evoke ecstatic movement and song in order to open a channel to the divine for the performers and the audience.

Cadence Liu, Composer and Flute Soloist