Peace Project V: Reconciliation

Dr. James K. Bass, Artistic Director
2021 Grammy Award Winner for Best Choral Performance

The 63rd Grammy Awards were held on Sunday, March 14, 2021, and Long Beach Camerata Singers’ Artistic Director, Dr. James K. Bass, won in the Best Choral Performance category. He was chorus master, along with Adam Luebke, for the NAXOS recording of “The Passion of Yeshua.” The piece was written by Richard Danielpour and conducted by JoAnn Falletta. The principal performers were The Buffalo (New York) Philharmonic Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus (Luebke) and the UCLA Chamber Singers (Bass). Bass also appeared on the album as a baritone soloist. Dr. Bass has received three previous Grammy Nominations.

Dr. James K. Bass has been the Artistic Director of Long Beach Camerata Singers since 2017. In addition to his position with LBCS, he is Director of Choral Studies at UCLA, and Associate Conductor of the Miami-based chorus, Seraphic Fire. Bass received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Miami–Florida, Master of Music and Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of South Florida and is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy.

Bass received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Miami, where he was a doctoral fellow, and is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy.He has appeared with numerous professional vocal ensembles including Seraphic Fire, Conspirare, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Trinity Wall Street, Apollo Master Chorale, Vox Humanae, True Concord and Spire. He was the featured baritone soloist on the GRAMMY nominated recording Pablo Neruda: The Poet Sings with fellow singer Lauren Snouffer, conductor Craig Hella-Johnson and the GRAMMY winning ensemble Conpirare. He is one of 13 singers on the GRAMMY®-nominated disc A Seraphic Fire Christmas and appears on CD recordings on the Harmonia Mundi, Naxos, Albany, and Seraphic Fire Media labels.

Bass was selected by the master conductor of the Amsterdam Baroque Soloists, Ton Koopman, to be one of only 20 singers for a presentation of Cantatas by J. S. Bach in Carnegie Hall and was an auditioned member of Robert Shaw’s workshop choir at Carnegie.

During his tenure as Artistic Director for the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, the official chorus of the Florida Orchestra, he was responsible for five recordings and multiple world premieres. In 2012 he served as chorusmaster and co-editor for the Naxos recording entitled Delius: Sea Drift and Appalachia featuring the Florida Orchestra and conducted by Stefan Sanderling. In 2014 he was the preparer for the recording Holiday Pops Live! conducted by the principal pops conductor Jeff Tyzik.

His professional career has coincided with the development of Seraphic Fire as one of the premier vocal ensembles in the United States. He has been actively involved as soloist, ensemble artist, editor, producer and preparer for 14 of the ensembles recordings and routinely conducts the ensemble in Miami and on tour.

During the summer of 2011 he co-founded the Professional Choral Institute. In its inaugural year of recording, Seraphic Fire and PCI received the GRAMMY® nomination for Best Choral Performance for their recording of Johannes Brahms’ Ein Deuthches Requiem. As the Director of Education for the ensemble he has been involved with annual events that service more than 2000 students in the Miami-Dade county area each year. In 2017 Seraphic Fire and UCLA launched a new educational initiative entitled the Ensemble Artist Program that aims to identify and train the next generation of high-level ensemble singers.

DR. STEPHEN KARR

Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Dr. Stephen Karr is a compelling interpreter of opera and orchestral works. In 2011, Stephen co-founded Pacific Opera Project, for which he was music director until 2016. With POP, he led productions of Trouble in Tahiti, Così fan tutte, The Turn of the Screw, La Calisto (LA premiere), Ariadne auf Naxos and The Rake’s Progress (LA professional premiere), among others. The Los Angeles Times praised his performance of the Stravinsky as having kept orchestra, cast and chorus on “well-articulated rhythmic track.” He has worked with the OPERA Iowa tour, the Glimmerglass Festival, Opera New Jersey and Palm Beach Opera.

Stephen has taught at Chapman University, Michigan State University, USC and UCLA. His schooling includes degrees in organ performance (Mercer University and Westminster Choir College and orchestral conducting (UCLA). He lives in Long Beach with his wife, Hannah Waldman and their children Leonard and Eleanor.

TAMMI ALDERMAN

Tammi Alderman is Director of Choral and Vocal Music at for Temple City Unified School District Associate Conductor for the Long Beach Camerata Singers and an adjunct music education faculty member for the School of Music at CSU Fullerton. She directs the choral program at Arrowbear Summer Music Camp and is on staff for the Choral Camp through the Pacific Chorale and CSU Fullerton.

She is also frequently called upon as a professional chorister, adjudicator, guest conductor and clinician for choral sessions and festivals throughout the Southwest. Ms. Alderman has taught elementary, middle school, high school and college choirs in California and Colorado for nearly two decades. Her classroom teaching focuses on community building within the ensemble utilizing both traditional and unconventional rehearsal spaces and practices. She regularly mentors collegiate pre-service teachers as well as providing a program for beginning high school conductors. Her choirs consistently receive the highest ratings in festivals and competitions, locally and nationwide. Choirs under Ms. Alderman’s direction have toured extensively through the United States, Eastern and Western Europe, Canada, and China.

Students from her choirs have been selected as members of honor choirs at regional, state, divisional and national levels in every year of her teaching. For the last sixteen years Ms. Alderman has been an active member and served on the boards of the Southern California Vocal Association (currently serving as President-Elect) and California Choral Director’s Association (currently serving as Chair of Community and Professional Choruses ). Additionally, she hosts yearly honor choir auditions at her school site and serves as an adjudicator for High School and Middle School/Junior High SCVA Choir Festivals. Soon to be Dr. Alderman is working on the completion of her dissertation through the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. Her writing is on methods for pairing of appropriate high school choral repertoire to the musicianship level of the ensemble.

REX RICHARDSON

Vice Mayor Rex Richardson is a city councilmember and regional leader, known for advocating for our most vulnerable communities and taking innovative approaches to address local government challenges. Richardson represents the 9th District in North Long Beach and was recently re-elected to serve as Vice Mayor by the Long Beach City Council. Regionally, Richardson is the Immediate Past President of the Southern California Association of Governments, the largest Metropolitan Planning Organization in America, in addition to being a member of the South Coast Air Quality Management District Board of Directors.

As a councilmember, Richardson has fiercely advocated for healthy cities and working families. His record of accomplishment includes championing the Long Beach ‘Everyone In’ Economic Inclusion Initiative, establishing the City’s Office of Equity, expanding shelter capacity to address homelessness, creating the PATH Young Adult Diversion Program, and leading the Long Beach My Brother’s Keeper initiative. Vice Mayor Richardson has also secured major investments to support the revitalization of North Long Beach, such as the Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library, the new Doris Topsy-Elvord Community Center, the Ronald R. Arias Health Equity Center, and hundreds of millions of dollars in private commercial and industrial investment along the Atlantic Avenue and Artesia Boulevard corridors.

Vice Mayor Rex Richardson, his wife Dr. Nina Richardson, and two daughters, Alina and Mila, are residents of the Collins neighborhood in North Long Beach.

RICHARD DANIELPOUR

GRAMMY®-Award winning composer Richard Danielpour has established himself as one of the most gifted and sought-after composers of his generation. His music has attracted an international and illustrious array of champions, and, as a devoted mentor and educator, he has also had a significant impact on the younger generation of composers. He has received two awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters, a Guggenheim Award, the Bearns Prize from Columbia University, two Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, and The Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. He served on the composition faculty of Manhattan School of Music from 1993 to 2017. Danielpour recently relocated to Los Angeles where he has accepted the position of Professor of Music at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA. He is also a member of the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music where he has taught since 1997.

Danielpour is one of the most recorded composers of his generation; many of his recordings can be found on the Naxos of America and Sony Classical labels. Danielpour’s music is published by Lean Kat Music and Associated Music Publishers.

RITA DOVE

Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, on August 28, 1952. A poet and writer, she was a high school Presidential Scholar and graduated with a BA in English from Miami University of Ohio in 1973. She then studied German poetry as a Fulbright scholar at Universität Tübingen before getting an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa.

Her books of poetry include Collected Poems 1974-2004 (W.W. Norton, 2016), recipient of the 2017 NAACP Image Award, the 2017 Library of Virginia Award and a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award; Sonata Mulattica (W. W. Norton, 2009), winner of the Hurston Wright Legacy Award; On the Bus with Rosa Parks (W. W. Norton, 1999), named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Thomas and Beulah (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1986), which won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Dove is currently Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Sidney Hopson, Percussion

Sidney Hopson is a percussionist, composer, educator, writer, arts strategist, and cultural policy consultant. He is a member of WildUp, in addition to being the principal percussionist and
orchestra operations manager of the Spoleto Festival USA. A southern California native, he has performed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Opera,
ReCollective Orchestra, Jacaranda Music, Southeast Symphony, Soulful Symphony, Jacaranda Chamber Ensemble, Opera Santa Barbara, Juneau Symphony, Ensemble FIRE, and the Echo
Society.
An alum of the Ojai Music Festival, American Music Awards, Lincoln Center Festival, and Hear Now Music Festival, Sidney has been performed and recorded alongside a diverse range of artists, including: John Adams, Adele, Michael Abels, Billie Eilish, Burt Bacharach, Obba Babatunde, James Conlon, Deru, John Debney, Lamont Dozier, Danny Elfman, Peter Eötvös, Rhiannon Giddens, Philip Glass, MC Jin, Alicia Keys, the Kronos Quartet, Ricky Martin, Rickey Minor, the New York Philharmonic, Ellen Reid, Rhianna, Mr. Craig Robinson, Huang Ruo, Kaija Saariaho, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jermaine Stegall, Dara Taylor, Joseph Trapanese, Dionne Warwick, John Williams, Harry Gregson-Williams, Stevie Wonder, and more. He has performed on-screen and for the soundtracks of several films and TV shows, including: The Orville, Coming 2 America, Dolemite Is My Name, Made in Boise, Castle Rock, Men In Black: International, The Grinch (2018), Goosebumps, Why Women Kill, Big Eyes, Kedi, and GLEE.

As a strategist and consultant, Sidney builds arts programs, develops strategic plans and partnerships, and authors policy for cultural organizations, NGOs, and government agencies in the United States and abroad. His work focuses at the intersections of the arts and education, labor, institutional equity, financial ethics, government leadership, gentrification, racial justice, reproductive justice, migrant rights, mental health, crime prevention, counterterrorism, international development, refugee aid, geopolitics, and climate change.
He has been interviewed on podcasts including: Trilloquoy, Loose Leaf Notebook, Living With a Genius, and The Millenial Musician.

When he’s not working, Sidney can be found reading, bicycling, laughing at his own dad jokes (he’s not a dad), and perfecting recipes in the kitchen.

Xavier Wilson, Cello

Xavier Wilson is a former student of Andrew Mark at Boston Conservatory and completed an Artist and Performance certificate in Southern California. His past teachers include Barry Gold of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Marek Szpakiewicz, concert cellist and head of the String Department of Azusa Pacific University, Andres Diaz, prominent soloist and cello faculty at Southern Methodist University, Michael Corren, John Myers, and Mildred McShane all members and former members of the Dallas Symphony. Wilson has played with many prominent orchestras such as the Meadows Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Boston’s Tanglewood Institute Orchestra, and The Institute for Strings chamber orchestra. Wilson has also been a guest soloist with the Moscow Ballet. Most recently he won the Azusa Pacific Concerto Competition and toured with Midor Goto for a chamber series. He has performed and placed in other competitions such as Young Strings Friedlander competition, winning bronze and silver, and Dallas Symphonic Festival where he received a bronze medal. His dedication to performing has sent him to several top music festivals to enhance his chamber music skills as well as orchestral solo literature. These festivals include Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in New Hampshire, The Institute for Strings in Dallas, Texas, and Boston University Tanglewood Institute in Lenox Massachusetts. Before relocating to Southern California, he was a prominent teacher in the Greater Dallas Area in Texas with a studio of approximately 45 students ranging from ages 9-35, primarily teaching middle and high school students. His students went on to perform in local competitions and everyone who competed received superior and exemplary ratings, which is only given to students who performed their solos with technical and musical perfection.

Leonard Hayes, Piano

Pianist Leonard Hayes is a doctoral student at the University of Southern California. Previously, Leonard served as the Head of Piano Studies and Assistant Director in the Music Conservatory at the Booker T.
Washington HSPVA (Dallas, TX).

Leonard is a winner of numerous national piano competitions including first prize in the 2015 National Piano Competition sponsored by the National Association of Negro Musicians. As recitalist and chamber musician, Mr. Hayes has performed across the U.S. and abroad which include notable venues such as Sweelinkzaal at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Wisconsin Union Theater, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Hammond Hall at the Winspear Opera House, Steinway Hall, Hatch Hall and Kilbourn Hall (Eastman School of Music), Memorial Chapel (Lawrence University), Ayers Recital Hall (Texas Lutheran University) and Thrasher Opera House (Green Lake, WI). As a scholar, Leonard was awarded the prestigious 2015 Links Scholarship. The award, a cooperative effort between the Rochester, New York Chapter, The Links, Incorporated and the Eastman School of Music, recognizes and celebrates the extraordinary talent of an African-American scholar musician.

A deeply committed teacher, Leonard’s former students have been accepted into undergraduate music programs such as the University of Texas at Austin, University of North Texas, Peabody Conservatory, Berklee College of Music, Belmont University, Loyola University and University of Nebraska – Lincoln. His students have participated in summer music programs at the Interlochen Center for the Arts High School Piano Institute and the Miami Summer Music Festival. During the 2016-2017 School Year, the Booker T. Washington Piano Program achieved excellent ratings at the Texas State UIL Solo and Ensemble. Mr. Hayes’s students have been selected to perform in master classes for world renowned pianists such as Alexander Kobrin, Pamela Paul, Gustavo Romero, Artina McCain, and Daria Rabotkina. In 2017, Leonard received the distinction as a Steinway & Sons Educational Partner; and received the Steinway’s prestigious 2017 Top Teacher Award for his commitment to piano education in the Dallas community.

Leonard received a High School Diploma from the Interlochen Arts Academy. He holds a Bachelor of Music Degree from the Conservatory of Music at Lawrence University with additional studies at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam; and a Master of Music Degree from the Eastman School of Music.

JP Maramba, Bass

John Paul Maramba was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in Los Angeles within a musical family. JP picked up the electric bass in high school having been influenced by his older brother, who is also a bass player, and his mother, who is a concert pianist and teacher. After graduating from an art magnet high school in east Los Angeles, JP picked up the upright bass and studied with world renowned bassist, John Clayton at U.S.C. Since then, he has been recording and touring with some of the world’s finest talents on both instruments.

JP has toured and/or recorded with a wide variety of artists and songwriters such as; Van Hunt, Willie Nelson, LP, Zee Avi, De La Soul, Adam Rudolph, L’Esprit d’Afrique Pan African performance ensemble, Melissa Manchester, Rodrigo Amarante, John Carroll Kirby, and Paul McDonald.

Marcia Dickstein, Harp

Harpist Marcia Dickstein has been enticing new audiences to the harp in chamber music and solo with orchestra, and inspiring composers to write new works in classical and jazz genres. To date, she has
commissioned and/or premiered over 175 compositions by American composers. Her performance credits include: soloist with orchestras in Louisville (KY), Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and chamber
orchestras in Geneva (Switzerland), South Bay (Los Angeles), and with Los Angeles Master Chorale and over 1000 outreach concerts.

Marcia has recorded numerous chamber music and solo recordings including the award winning 3 Friends, Chamber Music of Arnold Bax and the latest with The Debussy Trio, Angles of Angeles (Klavier, Harmonia Mundi, and RCM labels), and played on over 500 film scores, including Toy Story 1,2,3 & 4, La La Land and First Man, Rogue One and Star Wars IX. She also plays for Mandalorian, American Dad and Green Eggs and Ham.

As Founder/Artistic Director of The Debussy Trio, now in its 31st year, she has performed worldwide: in the US, Canada, Europe, Scandinavia and Japan, over NPR radio, on commercial & PBS TV. She also plays with the Long Beach Symphony and San Luis Obispo Symphony.

Active as a composer/editor, her harp solos, transcriptions, and scholarly editions are sold internationally. Adjunct Professor of Harp at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, CA, Ms. Dickstein also holds Master Classes throughout the USA and maintains a private studio in Los Angeles.