LiveArts Progran

Biographies Chelsea Helm Joining the Grand Rapids Symphony for the third time this season as a featured soloist is soprano Chelsea Helm. Also this season, Ms. Helm was heard with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra on Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music. Chelsea was the 2013 first prize winner of Opera Grand Rapids’ Collegiate Vocal Competition, and was twice presented with the Jessye Norman Award for Most Promising Young Artist by the Great Lakes Chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. She studied in the opera studio at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, and received her BM from Western Michigan University. She has performed internationally with WMU’s Gold Company and she released her first full-length album, The Four Corners, in 2013 with the vocal jazz ensemble. Ms. Helm will be pursuing her master’s in voice performance at Rice University in Houston.

Philip Horst, bass-baritone Hailed by Opera News for a “theatrical intensity [that] was harmonized by sheer vocal beauty in his first performances of Orest in Elektra, Philip Horst makes his Seattle Opera debut in a long-awaited return to the role of Scarpia in Tosca in the 2014-15 season. He also returns to San Francisco Opera as Panthée in Les Troyens and for Tutino’s Two Women, sing Lieutenant Horstmayer in the European premiere of Putz’s Silent Night, and creates the character of Tortsheiner in the world premiere of world premiere of Moore’s Enemies, A Love Story with Palm Beach Opera. Last season, he made house and role debuts with English National Opera as Pizarro in Fidelio and the Lyric Opera of Chicago as the Gamekeeper in Rusalka. Mr. Horst was the first prize winner of the Wagner division of the Liederkranz Competition and the second prize winner in the Wagner division of the Gerda Lissner Foundation International Vocal Competition, both in 2011.

Sean Ivory Verduin Charitable Foundation Chair Sean Ivory is a choral conductor, pianist and composer living in Grand Rapids. He is the director of the Grand Rapids Symphony Youth Chorus and its select treble ensemble, Mandala. Since 1992, Mr. Ivory has been the vocal music instructor at Forest Hills Central High School. He has held positions at St. Cecilia Music Society, the North American Choral Company, and Calvin College, and was recently appointed director of the Calvin College Oratorio Society. His choirs have performed at both state and regional conventions for the American Choral Directors Association, and have toured Ireland, the Netherlands, Finland, Estonia, Ghana and the Czech Republic. Mr. Ivory also works as a pianist and composer. Several of his works (many of which are collaborations with Chicago composer Paul Caldwell) are published by Earthsongs, Alliance Music, Hal Leonard and GIA Music. In 2014, Paul and Sean conducted a concert of their music at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

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