Rachmaninoff – All-Night Vigil

Rosella Ewing, mezzo-soprano, is delighted to be performing with the Chattanooga Bach Choir and Orchestra again. Ms. Ewing has performed many opera roles, and has appeared professionally with Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, New Orleans Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Tri-Cities Opera, and at the Rose Theater in Lincoln Center. She brings her passion for opera to her performances in concerts, chamber ensembles, and art song recitals. In recital Ms. Ewing has performed works by a wide variety of composers. She has been a guest soloist in concerts with several ensembles including the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, Asheville Lyric Opera, Opera in the Rock, and Choral Arts of Chattanooga.

After earning a BA in Music from The University of the South, Ms. Ewing earned her MM in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy from Westminster Choir College and her DMA in Voice and Opera from Louisiana State University. Dr. Ewing is currently teaching voice at Lee University and Dalton State College. Her previous teaching positions include Assistant Professor of Voice and Opera at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock and Visiting Professor of Music at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia.

Tenor Blaine Tooley is quickly making Chattanooga his second home. He served as Director of Music at Hixson United Methodist Church from 2012–2014 before accepting his current position as Director of Worship at Collierville United Methodist Church, a large suburban church just east of Memphis. Having returned multiple times to the Chattanooga area since his move, Blaine has appeared in concerts with Voci Virilli Men’s Consort and the Tennessee Chamber Chorus, a professional chorus based in Cleveland, Tennessee. Blaine studied voice at Austin Peay State University with Dr. Sharon Mabry and appeared on the opera stage throughout his time there. He continued his studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he completed his Master of Music in Choral Conducting with Dr. Kevin Ford. Blaine has served churches throughout Tennessee and Mississippi, and every day lives out his personal mission of helping people of all ages explore, develop, and share their artistic gifts.

Born in New York and raised in Philadelphia, Theodore Tsaltas has served as bass soloist for many major works, including Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Handel’s Messiah, the Requiem settings of Mozart and Duruflé, and as a soloist or chorister for many other concert and staged operatic performances. He sang for six years with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, making seven Carnegie Hall appearances, including one as bass soloist in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. When not singing, he is a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Tennessee.

Laurie Redmer Minner – a violinist, violist, and vocalist – holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education from Atlantic Union College and Master of Music degrees in both Viola Performance and Conducting from New England Conservatory of Music. She has conducted a variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles and her performance experience includes concert tours of Europe, Australia, Asia, Russia, and the United States as a violinist, violist, vocalist, and conductor.

Mrs. Minner has performed with the Boston Philharmonic, Symphony Pro Musica, the Salisbury Lyric Opera, and the Salisbury Chamber Orchestra. She was assistant professor of music at Columbia Union College, and also administered the college’s Preparatory School of Music. Mrs. Minner joined the faculty of Southern Adventist University as associate professor of music in 2000, and serves as conductor of the SAU Symphony Orchestra and teaches viola, violin, and conducting.

Jeff Parker, a native of Marion, Illinois, holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Belmont University and a Master of Church Music degree from the former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has been in full-time church music for almost 30 years, serving a number of churches in North Carolina, including College Park Baptist in Winston-Salem and Immanuel Baptist in Greenville. He was also the founding director of the Greenville (NC) Choral Society Youth Chorale. He will soon complete his 10th year at First Baptist Church of Chattanooga, where he serves as Minister of Music and Executive Director of the School of Fine Arts.

Harv Wileman is a tenor, producer, and singing teacher/coach. After over twenty years of soloing in hundreds of performances and as a professional chorister in a dozen ensembles, he founded Voci Virili Men’s Consort as a one-off opportunity to reconnect with friends he hadn’t sung with in years. After a fun and successful first concert, the group became long-term and now no fewer than fifty different men have sung as members of the group. Voice of Reason Women’s Ensemble was founded in 2016 to be part of a concert and CD recording with VV. Again, the singers decided they would like to keep making music together, and they gave their first performance of all women’s literature in March 2017 with another performance scheduled for March 2018. Harv loves to program and produce vocal chamber music and other smaller-scale events to create performance opportunities for the multitude of local talented and highly-trained musicians and to bring under-heard repertoire to Chattanooga venues.