Celtic Christmas:
Outlander & Titanic Piper Eric Rigler with Dirk Freymuth
Sunday, Dec. 10 | 3 PM Soka Performing Arts Center at Soka University of America
Celtic Christmas “World’s Most Recorded Piper” Eric Rigler (Lord Of The Rings: The Rings of Power, Outlander, Braveheart, Titanic) and multi-talented guitarist Dirk Freymuth return to create a night of acoustic holiday cheer. Drawing from traditional Irish & Scottish melodies featured in their PBS Special, Celtic Journeys: Songs & Soundtracks, and themes from Eric’s motion picture & television soundtracks, the artists will highlight music from the Christmas tradition - both familiar and lesser-known pieces from the British Isles, Ireland, and other Celtic Nations around Europe. Featuring special guest Hannah Crowley from Dublin, Ireland, singing in English, Irish & Scots Gaelic, Breton and Latin. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Eric Rigler uilleann pipes, Scottish smallpipes, whistles Eric Rigler has become one of Celtic music’s most sought-after recording session artists, bringing the timeless, haunting sonorities of the uilleann pipes, the Great Highland Bagpipe, the Scottish small-pipes and the Irish whistle to film, television and recording audiences.Though best known for his work with composer James Horner as a soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra on the Oscar-winning films Braveheart and Titanic, Eric features on dozens of motion picture and television soundtracks including Men in Black 3, Million Dollar Baby, Cinderella Man, Troy, Ladder 49, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and The Road to Perdition. As a testament to his proficiency and reputation, The Reagan Family and Foundation requested Eric to lead former President Ronald Reagan’s casket with the bagpipe melody of Amazing Grace to its final resting place on June 11, 2004, witnessed by millions of television
viewers around the globe. Other live events have included performances with Paul McCartney (Tripping the Live Fantastic Tour), Bryan Adams (Bare Bones Tour), and Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells 2).Referred to as “the most recorded piper in history”, Eric has collaborated with numerous recording artists including Westlife, Faith Hill, Keith Urban, Bette Midler, Meatloaf, Charlotte Church, Barbra Streisand, Tracy Chapman, Phil Collins and Rod Stewart along with Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS Dirk Freymuth guitars Dirk Freymuth was born on February 12, 1965, in Frankfurt, Germany. Later that year his family immigrated to the United States, and after several moves between New York, Denver, and Chicago, they eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1972. He graduated from Palos Verdes High School in 1982 and went on to study music at the University of Southern California, receiving a BM in Studio Jazz Guitar in 1988, and a MM in Early Music Performance in 1990. In 1990 he moved to Dublin, Ireland, to become a member of the Baroque Orchestra of Ireland, and from 1991-94 lived in London and was a member of the renaissance ensemble, Circa 1500, and also worked as a librarian and editor for the Tallis Scholars. In 1994 he moved to Minneapolis to join the power-pop trio, Hindu Rodeo. Over the next several years he established himself in Minnesota as a prominent session guitarist and producer. In 1996 he became a staff producer for the Minneapolis-based record label, Compass Productions, for whom he produced more than 50 records for in a wide variety of styles, most notably Celtic and Classical music. In 2002 he returned to Los Angeles to pursue a doctoral degree in Early Music Performance, earning a D.M.A. from USC in 2005. From 2005-2008 he was an adjunct professor of music history at USC while continuing to
work as a guitarist, producer, and composer. In 2011 he accepted a full-time teaching position at Western Oregon University, where he teaches audio production, music history, and historical performance practice. He was awarded tenure in 2015. In 2016 he became a board member to the Cascadia Chapter of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, and is a member Cascadia Viols. In 2014 he started a duo project with uillean pipe/low whistle player, Eric Rigler, in Los Angeles. The two continue to perform regularly, often with prominent guest artists.
Celtic Christmas are members of the Siamsa Gael Ceili Band, one of the area’s oldest traditional Irish music groups.
Wanda Law fiddle, viola, button accordion San Diego native Wanda Law has a Master’s degree in Viola Performance. She studied at Northwestern University with Chicago Symphony violist Robert Swan and at the University of Nebraska with Robert Emile, former concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. She returned to San Diego in 1985, studying with Michael Tseitlin and performing regularly with the SDSO as a substitute musician. She was a long-time member of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra in Orange County and a member of the San Diego Opera Orchestra. She has been a fulltime member of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra since 2006. Wanda Law does double duty as fiddler and classical violist. Ms. Law has enjoyed playing Irish fiddle for over 20 years. She and her husband Ian, who plays Irish flute,
In 1986 Ms. Law won the Grand National Irish Fiddle Championship in Los Angeles and that same year joined the staff of the Lark in the Morning traditional music and dance camp in Mendocino, where she continues to teach fiddle classes every summer. (Ms. Law also took up the French diatonic button accordion there, and was even featured on a recent Summer Pops concert on this instrument.) She appeared several times as fiddle soloist with the SDSO for their popular “Celtic Celebration” Winter Pops concerts. Lily Honigberg fiddle Violinist and fiddler Lily Honigberg was born in Washington DC. Her father, Steven Honigberg, is a cellist in the National Symphony, and her mother, Jessica Honigberg, is a local piano teacher and director of baroque music series “28 Chairs” in the greater DC area. Lily began playing the violin at age 4 and took weekly lessons in DC until moving to Northern Michigan in 2010 to study violin as a full time student at Interlochen Arts Academy. Lily was fortunate to tour the United States with the National Youth Orchestra in 2014, performing in Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Hall, and many halls in between with Gil Shaham as soloist. Lily was
ABOUT THE ARTISTS always drawn to fiddle music and began learning traditional tunes by ear through the Suzuki method and recordings of music from Ireland and Scotland. Upon graduating high school in 2014, Lily enrolled at the New England Conservatory in Boston as a student of Lucy Chapman and Nicholas Kitchen in the classical department. She graduated from NEC with a Bachelor’s degree in Classical Violin Performance in May 2018. She most recently completed her Master’s degree at NEC in Contemporary Improvisation, studying with Hankus Netsky, Eden MacAdamSomer, Liz Knowles, Ran Blake, Lautaro Mantilla, Carla Kihlstedt and Tanya Kalmanovitch. She has been a part of ensembles at NEC including American Roots, the Persian Ensemble, the Contemporary Improvisation Chamber Ensemble, the Bluegrass Ensemble, the Film Noir Ensemble, Irish Ensemble, and John Zorn’s improvised game piece, Cobra Lily spent 2016-2019 touring with her band Night Tree, an acoustic sextet that performed original and improvised folk-based music, which formed in 2016 after winning the Conservatory’s WildCard Honors Ensemble. She spent the summers of 2015 and 2016 traveling across Europe working and learning folk music from Ireland, England, Hungary and Austria. Lily has played with and learned from Irish musicians such as Winifred Horan, Seamus
Egan and Martin Hayes. Lily also delightedly performs regularly with her father in settings that range from duets to chamber music to duo concertos with orchestra. They appear regularly together in the DC and Chicago areas. Lily has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, and she headlined the Korro Musikfestival in Sweden with Night Tree. Most recently, Lily joined the Palaver Guest Artist for Palaver Strings, based in Portland, Maine. Lily would have been joining the faculty at the Acadia Trad School in Bar Harbor, Maine 2020 teaching beginner fiddle alongside Liz Faiella. Lily continues to pursue her passions and curiosities in classical, folk, Irish fiddle, and improvised music in various contexts across United States and Europe. Lily plays on a French violin made in 1895 by William Chanot.
Celtic Christmas Hannah Crowley vocals San Diego native Wanda Law Hannah Crowley is a singer/ songwriter from Dublin, Ireland, who currently resides in Los Angeles. After being awarded a scholarship and graduating from Berklee College of Music in Boston, she moved to LA in 2017, where she has been regularly performing on the LA music scene. Hannah released her debut single ‘Scrolling’, followed by the song ‘Teeth in the Water’, and then her debut EP ‘Rewire’ in October 2021. She played at the renowned Hotel Cafe to a sold-out audience. Other venues include the Crypto.com Arena, formerly the Staples Center, for the LA Kings Ice Hockey team, where she performed her song ‘R Father’ on St. Patrick’s Day in 2022.
Renowned music blogs, including ‘Le Future Wave’ and ‘Come Here Floyd’, have praised Hannah’s songwriting as ‘mellifluously immersive’ with ‘memorable hooks’ and have highlighted her as a ‘promising artist to watch out for’. Hannah effortlessly blends the timeless allure of the past with the vibrant energy of the present in her music. By combining alternative pop elements with a nod to her Celtic influence, she delivers a refreshing and captivating sound that embodies what is intriguing about music today. Stay tuned for Hannah’s new music coming out this Autumn 2023. In the meantime, you can enjoy her existing music on all streaming platforms.
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A Thousand Thoughts:
Kronos Quartet & Live Documentary Film Narrated by Sam Green SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2024, 8 PM SOKA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER Featured Artists: Kronos Quartet Sam Greene, filmmaker Joe Bini, editor Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground), in collaboration with Emmy Award®-winning writer and editor Joe Bini (Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Grizzly Man), takes the stage with the legendary classical-music group Kronos Quartet to create a “live documentary” that chronologically unfolds the quartet’s groundbreaking, continent-spanning, multi-decade career. Wildly creative and experimental in form, A Thousand Thoughts is a meditation on music itself - the act of listening closely to music, the experience of feeling music deeply, and the power that music has to change the world. TICKETS AND INFORMATION Soka.edu/Pac | 949.480.4278 All programs are subject to change
SOKA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER MISSION STATEMENT
To Engage, Educate, and Elevate the Human Spirit… Soka Performing Arts Center strives to elevate humanity through transcendent experiences. Come experience our exquisite acoustics. Come to expand your understanding and appreciation of music. Come to forge community and emotional connections through the shared experience of live music. Come to Listen. Feel. Transform.
ABOUT SOKA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Soka Performing Arts Center is located on the beautiful hilltop campus of Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo. Our facility includes the 1,032seat Concert Hall featuring world-class acoustics designed by master acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, designer of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Suntory Hall in Tokyo, among many others. We also have an intimate 350-seat Black Box Theatre that allows for multiple seating configurations including club seating with bistro tables. More than 750 performances have taken place since the center’s dedication on May 27, 2011. The 2023-24 season marks our twelfth season presenting first-class programming in our world-class concert hall. We are continuing to expand our programming and outreach with the addition of a Children’s Concert Series, Blues Festival, and the only Great Pianists Series on the West Coast. From classical and jazz to world and contemporary music, the Soka Performing Arts Center has become a prized space for artists and audiences alike. We are proud to be the home of the Pacific Symphony Chamber Orchestra. Our Sundays @ Soka Series with Pacific Symphony continues to be one of our most popular series year after year. Our presentations with other Orange County arts organizations have enabled us to reach further into our community to offer arts education and programming. Our partnership with the Philharmonic Society of Orange County includes our PSOC Series, which brings superlative artists to our stage. We also partner with PSOC for our Outreach Program, bringing over 7,000 school children to Soka Performing Arts Center to experience live performances with outstanding musicians. With its world-class acoustics and first-class performances, Soka Performing Arts Center is quickly becoming one of the cultural jewels of Orange County.
CONCESSIONS
Concessions A wide variety of wine, beer, soft drinks and freshly prepared snacks will be available before the concert and during intermission in the lobby. Pre-order your concessions and skip the line ahead of time!
Click here for menu and to order
Concessions provided by FPG Events
FOOD DONATION DRIVE With the holidays approaching, Soka Performing Arts Center has partnered with the Laguna Food Pantry and will be collecting food donations for the most vulnerable in our community. Collection bins will be located in the lobby for all December concerts. If you are able to, please consider donating some of these highly requested items:
• Canned Proteins
• Pasta & Pasta • Tuna | Salmon Sauce Chicken | Beans • Rice • Breakfast Cereal • Dried Beans • Peanut Butter • Soup
SOKA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER DONORS
OUR SUPPORTERS
DIRECTOR’S CIRCLE ($75,000+) Dr. Kenneth & Sandra Tokita Sam & Lyndie Ersan CONCERTMASTER ($10,000+) Ms. Emi Maeda STAGE CHAMPION ($5000+) Anonymous STAGE BENEFACTOR ($1000+) John and Sue Prange Terumi Saito Jochen Schumacher GOLD CLEF ($500+) Jeffrey Hendrix Jane A. Lynch Alex & Sandy Scott SILVER CLEF ($200+) Lorraine Leiser Anson and Marilyn Wong BRONZE CLEF ($25+) Raquel Bruno Sammy Chang Judy Kaufman Jeannette Pease Thomas Prigorac Jonia Suri Naomi Uchiyama Joseph Whitaker Joyce M Wrice Taro Yamanashi Anonymous
List current as of 09/29/2023 The Soka Performing Arts Center deeply appreciates the support of its sponsors and donors, and makes every effort to ensure accurate and appropriate recognition. Contact Renee Bodie, General Manager at (949) 480-4821 to make us aware of any error or omission in the foregoing list.
CREATE YOUR OWN SUBSCRIPTION PACKAGE
This season, we have made exciting updates to our subscription and renewal program, providing you with even more flexibility in our season packages*. With our enhanced program, you now have the power to curate your very own unique experience. • 15% Discount for a 3 performance package • 18% Discount for a 4 performance package • 20% Discount for a 5+ performance package *full details online at soka.edu/pac
OUR PARTNERS • Blueport Jazz • Philharmonic Society of Orange County • Pacific Symphony • San Diego Symphony • Parnassus Society
SOKA PAC MANAGEMENT TEAM Renée Bodie General Manager & Artistic Director John Morgan Box Office Manager Jarmil Maupin Technical Services Manager Jenski Nguyen Stage Manager Madeline Webb Lighting Technician Hiroyuki Connor Miki Internal Events Manager Jaime Spataro Marketing & Communications Manager Joe Nicholls Marketing & Communications Assistant Steve Baker Interim Production/House Manager
SokaPAC @SokaPAC SokaPerformingArtsCenter @SokaPAC Website soka.edu/pac
SOKA UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA BOARD OF TRUSTEES Soka Performing Arts Center resides on the beautiful campus of Soka University of America. We thank the SUA Board of Trustees and the SUA Leadership Council for all of their support.
SUA BOARD OF TRUSTEES Steve Dunham, JD Chair Vice President and General Counsel Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University | Baltimore, Maryland Tariq Hasan, PhD Vice Chair Chief Executive Officer, SGIUSA | New York, New York Andrea Bartoli, PhD President, Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue | New York, New York Matilda Buck Benefactor | Los Angeles, California Lawrence E. Carter, Sr, PhD, DD, DH, DRS Dean, Professor of Religion, College Archivist and Curator, Morehouse College | Atlanta, Georgia Andy Firoved CEO, HOTB Software | Irvine, California Jason Goulah, PhD Professor of Bilingual-Bicultural Education and Director, Institute for Daisaku Ikeda Studies in Education, Director of Programs in Bilingual-Bicultural Education, World Language Education, and Value-Creating Education for Global Citizenship, College of Education, DePaul University | Chicago, Illinois Clothilde V. Hewlett, JD Commissioner of Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, State of California | San Francisco, California Lawrence A. Hickman, PhD Director Emeritus, The Center for Dewey Studies and Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Carbondale | Carbondale, Illinois
Kris Knudsen, JD Attorney | Wilsonville, Oregon Karen Lewis, PhD Sondheimer Professor of International Finance and Co-Director, Weiss Center for International Financial Research, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Luis Nieves Founder, Chairman Emeritus AUL Corp, Benefactor | Napa, California Gene Marie O’Connell, RN, MS Health Care Consultant, Associate Clinical Professor, University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing | Corte Madera, California Adin Strauss General Director, Soka Gakkai International-USA | Santa Monica, California Yoshiki Tanigawa Benefactor, Soka Gakkai | Tokyo, Japan Edward M. Feasel, PhD President, Soka University of America (ex-officio member) | Aliso Viejo, California