Will Liverman Featured in Recital at Park Avenue Armory, October 10 & 11

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Contact:
Katlyn Morahan
Morahan Arts and Media
katlyn@morahanartsandmedia.com
(646) 378-9386

Baritone Will Liverman Featured in 
Park Avenue Armory’s Recital Series on October 10 & 11

“A voice for this historic moment”
—The Washington Post

www.willliverman.com

New York, NY (September 14, 2021) — Acclaimed baritone Will Liverman gives a solo recital together with pianist Myra Huang, presented by Park Avenue Armory on Sunday, October 10, 2021 at 3:00pm and Monday, October 11, 2021 at 7:30pm in the Armory’s Board of Officers Room (643 Park Avenue).

The recital spotlights the works of Black composers and writers, in addition to works from the traditional classical music canon including three Strauss pieces, Wie sollten wir geheim sie halten, Traum durch die Dämmerung, and Zueignung; the song cycle Don Quichotte à Dulcinée by Ravel; plus songs by Brian McKnight arranged by Liverman. Additional works to be announced.

Liverman is starring in the lead role of the Metropolitan Opera’s re-opening production of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones this fall and appears again as Papageno in the holiday production of The Magic Flute, in which he made history as the Met’s first Black Papageno in January 2020. Liverman’s most recent album, Dreams of a New Day: Songs by Black Composers with pianist Paul Sanchez, was released on Cedille Records in February 2021 and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart. The Guardian called the album “obligatory listening” and NPR claimed that "velvet-voiced baritone Will Liverman is out to make the classical music canon more inclusive." His new opera, The Factotum, written together with DJ/recording artist K. Rico and inspired by Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, was workshopped by the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Ryan Opera Center in 2020 and will be presented by the company in a future season.

Event Information
Recital Series: Will Liverman and Myra Huang
Sunday, October 10, 2021 at 3:00pm
Monday, October 11, 2021 at 7:30pm
Board of Officers Room, Thompson Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065
Tickets: $75
Link: https://www.armoryonpark.org/programs_events/detail/recital_series_will_liverman

Will Liverman, baritone
Myra Huang, piano

STRAUSS:
     Wie sollten wir geheim sie halten
     Traum durch die Dämmerung
     Zueignung
RAVEL: Don Quichotte à Dulcinée
Songs by BRIAN MCKNIGHT (arr. WILL LIVERMAN)

Additional works to be announced

All ticket-holders must be fully vaccinated. This means ticket-holders must have received their final dose at least 14 days before the performance date. At check-in, ticket-holders will be required to show proof of full vaccination. Masks are required in the building at all times.

The Recital Series is supported in part by The Reed Foundation and the Howard & Sarah D. Solomon Foundation.

About Will Liverman
Called “a voice for this historic moment” (The Washington Post), baritone Will Liverman continues to bring his compelling performances to audiences nationwide. He will star in the Metropolitan Opera’s reopening production of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones in fall 2021, in addition to reprising his roles in Akhnaten (Horemhab) and The Magic Flute (Papageno) during the Met’s 2021-2022 season.

Following a summer at Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Aspen Music Festival, additional highlights of Will’s 2021-2022 season include the reprise of Fire Shut Up in My Bones with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Spanish Inspirations with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Florence Price's Song to the Dark Virgin with Chicago Sinfonietta, and Jonathan Dove’s Flight with Dallas Opera.

In February 2021, Cedille Records released Will’s Dreams of a New Day: Songs by Black Composers with pianist Paul Sanchez – a collection of works by Damien Sneed, Henry Burleigh, H. Leslie Adams, Robert Owens, Margaret Bonds, and Thomas Kerr, plus a world premiere recording by Shawn E. Okpebholo and Will’s own arrangement of Richard Fariña’s Birmingham Sunday. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart and The New Yorker praised its “clarity, sensitivity, and barely contained heartbreak” while NPR claimed “velvet-voiced baritone Will Liverman is out to make the classical music canon more inclusive”. His album Whither Must I Wander with pianist Jonathan King, out January 2020 on Odradek Records, was named one of the Chicago Tribune’s “best classical recordings of 2020” and BBC Music Magazine praised Will’s “firm, oaky baritone with a sharp interpretive attitude… admirable poise and clarity of intention.”

Will’s recent engagements include performing as the first ever Black Papageno in The Metropolitan Opera’s holiday production of The Magic Flute, in addition to its premiere of Philip Glass’ Akhnaten (Horemhab) and Nico Muhly’s Marnie (Malcolm Fleet). He also recently appeared as Pantalone in The Love of Three Oranges at Opera Philadelphia, as Silvio in Pagliacci at Opera Colorado, as Schaunard in La bohème with Santa Fe Opera, Dallas Opera and Opera Philadelphia; and as The Pilot in The Little Prince with Tulsa Opera. His new opera The Factotum, written together with DJ/recording artist K. Rico, was workshopped by the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Ryan Opera Center in winter 2020. The Factotum, inspired by Rossini's The Barber of Seville, takes place in a present-day Black barbershop in Chicago and combines operatic singing with hip-hop, barbershop, gospel, funk, neo soul, and R&B music.

Will Liverman has performed the leading role of Figaro in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia with Seattle Opera, Virginia Opera, Kentucky Opera, Madison Opera and Utah Opera. He originated the role of Dizzy Gillespie in Charlie Parker’s Yardbird with Opera Philadelphia, in addition to performing the role with English National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Madison Opera, and at the Apollo Theater. Other highlights include the role of Tommy McIntyre in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of Fellow Travelers for its Lyric Unlimited initiative; Papageno in The Magic Flute with Florentine Opera and Central City Opera; his role debut as Marcello in La bohème with Portland Opera; his debut with Seattle Opera as Raimbaud in Le Comte Ory; Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucretia and Beaumarchais in The Ghosts of Versailles with Wolf Trap Opera; Andrew Hanley in the world premiere of Kevin Puts’ The Manchurian Candidate with Minnesota Opera; Sam in The Pirates of Penzance with Atlanta Opera; the Foreman at the Mill in Jenufa and the Protestant Minister in Menotti’s The Last Savage with Santa Fe Opera.

Expanding into the concert repertoire, Will performed the title role in a concert version of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and was a featured soloist in Brahms’ Requiem with the Las Vegas Philharmonic, in Handel’s Messiah with the Seattle Symphony, in Carmina Burana with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. He was also recently featured in the Sphinx Virtuosi concert at Carnegie Hall, in addition to appearing in Schubert’s Die Winterreise at The Barns at Wolf Trap Opera.

Will is the recipient of the 2020 Marian Anderson Vocal Award, as well as a recipient of a 2019 Richard Tucker Career Grant and Sphinx Medal of Excellence. Will Liverman has received a 2017 3Arts Award, a George London Award, and was recognized as a classical division Luminarts Fellow by the Luminarts Cultural Foundation. In 2015, he won the Stella Maris International Vocal Competition, received the Gerda Lissner Charitable Fund Award, and received a top prize from Opera Index.

Will Liverman concluded his tenure at the prestigious Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2015. He previously was a Young Artist at the Glimmerglass Festival. He holds his Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Wheaton College in Illinois.

About Park Avenue Armory
Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory fills a critical void in the cultural ecology of New York, supporting unconventional works in the performing and visual arts that cannot be fully realized in a traditional proscenium theater, concert hall, or white wall gallery. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall and an array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory enables a diverse range of artists to create, students to explore, and audiences to experience epic, adventurous, relevant work that cannot be done elsewhere in New York.

When the pandemic set in, the Armory dedicated itself to continue to provide support to the artistic community. By taking advantage of vast expanse of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, the Armory created a very safe Social Distance Hall, for which it commissioned four new works by Bill T. Jones and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company; David Byrne, Christine Jones, and Stephen Hoggett; Jason Moran and Laurie Anderson; and Rob Icke. The works were presented between March and July 2021 and provided thousands of hours of creativity and employment to a devastated cultural sector, which had lost 70% of its job base.

Programmatic highlights from the Wade Thompson Drill Hall include Ernesto Neto’s anthropodino, a magical labyrinth extended across the Drill Hall; Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s harrowing Die Soldaten, in which the audience moved “through the music”; the event of a thread, a site-specific installation by Ann Hamilton; the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company on three separate stages; an immersive Macbeth set in a Scottish heath with Kenneth Branagh; WS by Paul McCarthy, a monumental installation of fantasy, excess, and dystopia; a radically inclusive staging of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion staged by Peter Sellars and performed by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker; eight-time Drama Desk-nominated play The Hairy Ape, directed by Richard Jones and starring Bobby Cannavale; Hansel & Gretel, a new commission by Ai Weiwei, Jacques Herzog, and Pierre de Meuron that explored publicly shared space in the era of surveillance; FLEXN and FLEXN Evolution, two Armory-commissioned presentations of the Brooklyn-born dance activists group the D.R.E.A.M. Ring, created by Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray and Director Peter Sellars; Simon Stone’s heralded production of Yerma starring Billie Piper in her North American debut; The Let Go, a site-specific immersive dance celebration by Nick Cave; Satoshi Miyagi’s stunning production of Antigone set in a lake; Sam Mendes’ critically acclaimed production of The Lehman Trilogy; and the Black Artists Retreat hosted by Theaster Gates, which included public talks and performances, private sessions for the 300 attending artists, and a roller skating rink.

In its historic period rooms, the Armory presents more intimate performances and programs, including its acclaimed Recital Series, which showcases musical talent from across the globe within the intimate salon setting of the Board of Officers Room; the Artists Studio series curated by MacArthur “Genius” and jazz phenom Jason Moran in the newly restored Veterans Room, which features a diverse array of innovative artists and artistic pairings that reflect the imaginative improvisation of the young designers and artists who originally conceived the space; and Interrogations of Form, a public talks program that brings diverse artists and thought-leaders together for discussion and performance around the important issues of our time.

Among the performers who have appeared in the Recitals Series and the Artists Studio in the Armory’s restored Veterans Room or the Board of Officers Rooms are: Christian Gerhaher; Ian Bostridge; Jason Moran; Lawrence Brownlee; Barbara Hannigan; Lisette Oropesa; Roscoe Mitchell; Conrad Tao and Tyshawn Sorey; Rashaad Newsome; and Krency Garcia (“El Prodigio”).

Highlights from the public programs include: symposiums such as Carrie Mae Weems’ day-long event called The Shape of Things, whose participants included Elizabeth Alexander, Theaster Gates, Elizabeth Diller, and Nona Hendryx; a day-long Lenape Pow Wow and Standing Ground Symposium held in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, the first congregation of Lenape Leaders on Manhattan Island since the 1700s; salons such as the Literature Salon hosted by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, whose participants included Lynn Nottage, Suzan Lori-Parks, and Jeremy O. Harris, and a Spoken Word Salon co-hosted with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; and most recently, 100 Years | 100 Women, a multi-organization commissioning project that invited 100 women artists and cultural creators to respond to women’s suffrage.

Current Artists-in-Residence at the Armory include two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage; Obie winner and Pulitzer short-listed playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Carmelita Tropicana; Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray and the D.R.E.A.M. Ring; singer and composer Sara Serpa; Tony Award-winning set designer and director Christine Jones and choreographer Steven Hoggett; and Mimi Lien, the first set designer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. The Armory also supports artists through an active commissioning program including such artists as Bill T. Jones, Lynn Nottage, Carrie Mae Weems, Michael van der Aa, Tyshawn Sorey, Raashad Newsome, Julian Rosefeldt, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and others.

The Armory also offers creativity-based arts education programs at no cost to thousands of underserved New York City public school students, engaging them with the institution’s artistic programming and outside-the-box creative processes.

The Armory has undertaken an ongoing $215-million renovation and restoration of its historic building designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron, with Platt Byard Dovell White as Executive Architects. www.armoryonpark.org

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