Opera legend to teach master classes
After watching a TCU Choir performance in New York, Marilyn Horne comes to Fort Worth to give private lessons to 12 TCU voice students.
by Rick Waters '95
TCU choir director Ron Shirey greets Marilyn Horne in PepsiCo Recital Hall following an opening reception for the legendary opera singer, who is making a three-day visit to campus.
Legendary mezzo soprano Marilyn Horne
is in Fort Worth today for a three-day visit with the TCU School of
Music. She is scheduled to teach a series of master classes tomorrow
and Thursday, along with a booksigning of her second autobiography Marilyn Horne, The Song Continues and a reception and dinner.
Twelve
TCU voice students, selected by juried audition, will have a 30-minute
private lesson with Horne and will sing in a closing public recital
Thursday.
The public is invited to observe the teaching sessions
tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. in PepsiCo Recital Hall at no cost, although
seating is limited. Patrons are asked to refrain from photography.
Following the teaching sessions, Horne will sign her book in the lobby
of the Walsh Center beginning at 5:30 p.m.
Thursday's master
classes, also free and open to the public in PepsiCo, run from 11 a.m.
to 1 p.m., with a 3 p.m. closing recital and closing remarks by Horne.
A private reception ($500 per ticket) and dinner ($50 per ticket) with
Horne follows in the ballroom of the Brown-Lupton University Union.
Horne,
75, spent 29 years with the Metropolitan Opera during a four-decade
career that took her to venues around the world. Today, she keeps a
full schedule teaching at universities and music academies. Her Marilyn Horne Foundation
which began in 1994 has introduced more than 30,000 aspiring young
artists to the art of vocal recital and classical song through
education programs across the country and full recital appearances.
In
December 2007, she attended opening night of the Fort Worth-TCU
Symphonic Choir's Christmas performance with Skitch Henderson's New
York Pops at Carnegie Hall in New York. Horne was so moved by the
performance that she returned to hear them again the second night and
sought out TCU choir director Ron Shirey to offer her compliments, even
offering to come to Fort Worth and work with his students.
This week, she makes good on her promise.