Carmel Bach Festival Presents the 2025 Virginia Best Adams Masterclass

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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Carmel Bach Festival Presents the 2025
Virginia Best Adams Masterclass

Featuring Emerging Baroque Vocalists in a Special Showcase on July 26, 2025

www.BachFestival.org
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(Carmel, CA) June 25, 2025—The Carmel Bach Festival is excited for the return of its beloved Virginia Best Adams (VBA) Masterclass, which will run July 7-July 26, 2025. This year’s class of emerging vocal artists includes soprano Andréa Walker, alto Veronica Roan, tenor Michaël Hudetz, and bass Grant Jackson. The final VBA showcase will take place on July 26, 2025 at 1PM, at the Carmel Presbyterian Church.

Established in 1984 by the friends and family of Virginia Best Adams in honor of her 80th birthday, the VBA endowment has since supported the training and mentorship of over 100 early-career professional singers from around the world. This season, Carmel Bach Festival’s featured vocalist, tenor Brian Giebler, is an alumni of the masterclass and has since gone on to receive a GRAMMY nomination and become a highly sought-after vocalist for major symphony orchestra’s and opera companies throughout the country. 

Over a four-week residency, the selected vocalists will participate in six public masterclasses, training intensively with the Festival’s Principal musicians. Throughout the masterclasses, the VBA artists will explore ways to communicate Baroque repertoire more vividly. In a light-hearted atmosphere of discovery, the artists will experience a wealth of vocal music and examine all aspects of style, technique, communication, language, performance skills, and artistry.

The VBA Masterclass is led and produced by the Festival’s master teachers: conductor and harpsichordist Michael Beattie is Masterclass Director, Festival Artistic Advisor and Director of Choral Activities Andrew Megill (Director of Choral Organizations at Northwestern University), and by Festival vocal soloists. These training sessions are free and open to the public but do require a ticket. More information can be found at www.BachFestival.org

ABOUT THE VBA ARTISTS

Andréa Walker, soprano
Hailed as “luminous and ethereal” (Washington Classical Review), Mexican-American soprano Andréa Walker can be heard performing across the country with groups like GRAMMY® Award-winning orchestra Apollo’s Fire, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, and The Thirteen. She recently made debuts with Pegasus Early Music, NYS Baroque, Seraphic Fire, Early Music Seattle, and the Boston Early Music Festival. Other solo performance highlights include her Lincoln Center debut in Telemann’s Der Tag des Gerichts with Masaaki Suzuki and Juilliard415, Haydn’s Schöpfungsmesse with Yale Schola Cantorum (German tour), and at the Norfolk Chamber Choir Festival under the direction of Simon Carrington.

Ms. Walker received a Doctorate of Musical Arts in historical performance practice at Case Western Reserve University where she took scholarly interest in keyboard/vocal music of the German salon C. 1800 and the performance of French Baroque gesture in sacred drama. Prior to her time in Cleveland, she graduated with a Master’s in vocal performance from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music where she specialized in early music, oratorio, and art song.

Veronica Roan, alto
Veronica Roan is a mezzo-soprano from Dallas, Texas. She is a 2025 graduate of Yale School of Music. Cultivating a versatility of style, Veronica sings a wide variety of concert and chamber music. Her most recent solo work includes J.S. Bach’s Köthener Trauermusik under the direction of Masaaki Suzuki, songs of Charles Ives in Generations of Music at Yale in Weill Hall, and Haydn’s Stabat Mater under the direction of Stefan Parkman. In the spring of 2024, she toured with Juilliard415 and Yale Schola Cantorum as the alto soloist in Bach’s Mass in B Minor, under the direction of David Hill, after she placed second in the Colorado Bach Ensemble’s national Bach Competition for Young Artists.

Veronica’s career has also encompassed choral ensemble performance and sacred music. She was a member of the 2022-2023 VOCES8 US Scholars program, with whom she recorded works by composers such as Reena Esmail, Shruthi Rajasekar, and Paul Smith with Your Classical at American Public Radio. She also performs regularly with chamber groups in Dallas including Orpheus Chamber Singers, Incarnatus, Dallas Chamber Choir, and others.

Michaël Hudetz, tenor
Michaël Hudetz, a Belgian-American tenor, specializes in early music performance as a soloist and is also active as a choral singer. A recent graduate of the Yale Voxtet (M.M.A. ’24), he performs internationally with renowned ensembles, including the four-time GRAMMY-winning The Crossing and Bach Collegium Japan. He recently gave a solo recital with members of The Crossing and has appeared as a soloist in Handel’s L’Allegro at Lincoln Center and Bach’s Mass in B Minor at Woolsey Hall. This past summer, he toured the U.K. with Yale Schola Cantorum and performed in Spain, Germany, and at the B.B.C. Proms in London with Bach Collegium Japan.

Grant Jackson, bass
Hailed for his “revelatory” singing voice, baritone Grant Jackson is an active and dynamic performer of opera, art song, oratorio, and early music. Mr. Jackson holds a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, and a master’s degree in vocal performance from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.

Highlights from the 2024-25 season include company debuts with Cincinnati Opera and the Sioux City Symphony. Highlights from previous seasons include appearances with Opera Maine, Emmanuel Music, Opera Idaho, the Glimmerglass Festival, the Colorado Bach Ensemble, Harmonia Stellarum Houston, Bach Society Houston, Collegium Cincinnati, and Queen City Opera, among others.

ABOUT THE CARMEL BACH FESTIVAL

The Carmel Bach Festival (CBF) began in 1935 as a four-day series of concerts at the Sunset School Auditorium and the Carmel Mission Basilica. Over the years, it grew to a two-week celebration of concerts, recitals, master classes, lectures, and open rehearsals in July. The Festival’s mission is to celebrate the works, inspiration, and ongoing influence of Johann Sebastian Bach worldwide by immersing audiences in a festival experience integrating music, education and ideas. Under the leadership of Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Grete Pedersen and Executive Director Nathan Lutz, the organization offers innovative artistic programming.

Our Mission is to celebrate the works, inspiration, and ongoing influence of J.S.Bach worldwide by immersing audiences in a festival experience integrating music, education and ideas, and by meaningful community engagement throughout the year. Our Vision is to be a world-class festival of music and ideas transcending the traditional boundaries of performance and presentation, both at the Festival and in communities, and to provide fresh musical contexts that spark the imagination, stimulate the mind, and enrich people's lives in multi-faceted ways.

https://bachfestival.org/about-us/