Cast and Crew

CHLOE THOMPSON (Amahl). Chloe is a senior at Lunenburg High School, looking forward to majoring in journalism and taking a minor in musical theater/voice. Her musical background includes a year in Treble singers when she was twelve and eight years of chorus through school. Chloe has studied with Mary Crowe for four years and has performed in many recitals, fundraisers, and musical theater scenes at Indian Hill. The role of Amahl is Chloe’s opera debut and the conclusion of her time at IHMC. She hopes to keep voice as an active part of her daily life after she leaves for college.

NANCY LAWS (Mother). Singing first ensnared me when I saw Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall. She had a way of making each song a small scene, a complete story. What impassioned magic she fashioned! According to my wonderfully supportive husband, for me there is singing, and everything else is just waiting. I have to confess that I feel most alive while I’m singing. If that’s true, then I must be only twenty-one. Ah, youth!

Among my favorite community theater experiences were playing Agnes Gooch in Mame, Sister Robert Anne in Nunsense, and Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Last year I was lucky enough to be in The Old Maid and the Thief. While I was neither the Old Maid, nor the Thief, I did manage to be both. Best of all, I got the guy.

As a chorus member and understudy to a boy whose voice started changing midway through rehearsals, I was first introduce to Menotti and Amahl. The following year I was the Mother. The director’s voice still echoes in my brain, “Stop using your hands like a teenager!” As a student of Charlotte Russell’s over the years, I’ve worked on that and other things, as well. Hopefully, I’ve got it right this time.

MARCO BONITO (Melchior). In an elementary school Christmas musical, Marco made his stage debut singing the frankincense verse of We Three Kings of Orient Are. “It’s nice to be a king again,” Marco muses, “I’ve played all sorts of peasants, heralds, prophets, and evangelists over the intervening years and was even a prince in the opera Turandot, but I haven’t been a king since elementary school.” As youths empowered by a reel-to-reel tape recorder, Marco and his neighborhood pals would voice-over Beatles tunes and set down their own tracks onto ¼ inch magnetic tape. As a young teen, Marco remembers singing a three way Passion in church with the Narrator being done by the cantor, Jesus being done by the Priest, and Marco being everybody else. As a young man, Marco later played the Christ in the pop musical We Are Called. He has voiced all sorts of characters in more than 30 opera productions, a Grammy winning CD, and the soundtrack of The Godfather, Part III. Marco became attracted to IHMC due to its vanguard Estill Voice Training System workshops and is happy to be part of an IHMC production of Amahl and the Night Visitors.

DAVE GRUBBS (Balthazar). Dave is a software engineer and toolsmith, currently working for the on-screen division of TVGuide. A few years ago, after 20 years of 100-hour weeks programming computers, Dave decided to change gears and spend half that time becoming a musician. He picked up a trumpet again, after 25 idle years, took lessons for a while and now performs with the Indian Hill Big Band and several local concert bands. He studies the Estill Voice Training System at Indian Hill with Charlotte Russell and performs with the Nashoba Valley Chorale. He has taken lessons in electric bass, piano, yidaki and studio recording to add to the musical mix. Recent work in music theory and composition have produced arrangements for big band, brass quintet and vocal groups, with more to come. Though he has performed publicly in bands, chorales and solo recitals, Balthazar is Dave’s first role on stage.

JESSE HEINES (Kaspar). Jesse is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His musical background includes playing the trumpet in high school and spending a large part of his youth sitting on piano benches turning pages for his brother. His theatrical experience consists solely of a part in the chorus of his high school’s 1962 production of Bye Bye Birdie, where he got to squeak the immortal line, “Hello, Mrs. Garfein, is Charity home from school yet?” Jesse only started singing seriously two years ago when he came to IHMC to study with Mary Crowe. His performance is dedicated to his late mother, with whom he warmly remembers watching the original and many subsequent productions of Amahl on black-and-white television.

RUDY BORKOWSKI (Page). Rudy is an embedded systems Software Engineer for Sonus Networks, Inc. in Chelmsford, MA. His weekly music activities include playing piano, bass guitar, and/or singing in choirs or cantoring at St. Patrick Church in Milford, NH. He is an active member of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians and has been regularly involved in liturgical music since 1981. He also writes liturgical music and his work will be published for the first time in 2005. His previous theater experience consists of being cast as a “Son” in his high school’s production of Fiddler on the Roof, but otherwise working in the orchestra playing piano or bass guitar for various high school and college musical productions (Hello Dolly, Guys and Dolls, Damn Yankees, Merrily We Roll Along, Godspell, and Camelot). He has been studying voice with Charlotte Russell at IHMC since summer 2002. Rudy wishes to thank his wife Lynn for her continuous encouragement and support in his desire to make up for the music studies and experiences he really wanted to do in college 25 years ago.

EBEN BEIN, ALEXA OFORI, and SERENA SO (Dancers). Eben, Alexa, and Serena are apprentices in the Commonwealth Ballet Company (www.commonwealthballet.org), which was formed by Kathryn Anderson and Chip Morris in October 1992. The Acton-based Company has produced over 27 dance programs since its inception and has grown over the years to produce critically acclaimed performances throughout Boston and Middlesex West.

THE INTERGENERATIONAL CHOIR (Shepherds). Bernard Farrell, Jacqueline Farrell, Nina Farrell, Joanna Farrell, Joseph Garadimitropoulo, Magdaline Garadimitropoulo, Kera Grellman, Peter Grellman, Natalia Grellman, Eliana Ishii, Sheryl Ishii, Chris Jensen, Lisa Jensen, Kerry Kirkland, Brandon Leahy, Mary Ann Leahy, Samantha Leahy, Daryl Strouble, Ilse Strouble, Greta Strouble, and Ray Strouble.

MARY CROWE (Director, Music Director). Mary is Chair of the Voice Department at Indian Hill Music School and founder of the Acting for Singers Program at Indian Hill. She has directed chamber opera and scene study productions at Indian Hill (including last fall’s The Old Maid and the Thief), Powers Music School, and Concord Youth Theater. In addition, she has appeared as a soloist in recital, oratorio, music theater and opera, including the role of Amahl’s mother in several Boston area productions. She is a founding member of WordsMove Theater Company, and a member of the Opera Lab Studio. She holds an M.A. in Voice Performance and Education and has studied with Phyllis Curtin, Joan Heller and Craig Wich.

DEBRA LeBRUN (Piano). Debra is a regular accompanist here at Indian Hill and she played piano for last year’s opera performance, The Old Maid and the Thief. She is also the accompanist for the Nashoba Valley Chorale and regularly accompanies many musicians in the area. She first accompanied a full musical show when she was in high school at the local community theater in Reading, MA. In college she took advantage of many opportunities to accompany both classical music students and music theater students and she soon discovered that she really loved the art of accompanying. Debra LeBrun received her B.Mus. from Syracuse University and her M.M. in Organ Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. Since 1986, Debra has been the Minister of Music for the Congregational Church of Littleton where she directs an active music program of five handbell choirs and three singing choirs. She is also an adjunct Professor of Organ at UMass Lowell. In addition to her professional musical activities, Debra is the Chair for Area I of the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers, Inc. and a member of the New England Ringers, a community handbell choir. She lives in Westford, MA with her husband, Steven, and daughter, Sarah, who both share her love for many styles of music.

SUSAN BONITO (Choir Director). Susan is the founder and director of Indian Hill Music Center’s Intergenerational Choir and the Children’s Musical Theater program. She also teaches voice and Kindermusik at Indian Hill and maintains a private voice studio in Mendon, MA. She recently joined the voice faculty at St. Mark’s High School in Southborough and is in her fourth year as Music Director at the United Parish of Upton. Her professional credits include numerous solo performances with the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, the Newport Music Festival, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, California Repertory Opera, Music from Bear Valley Pocket Opera, Kensington Symphony, the McGilvray Chorale, San Francisco Chamber Singers, Assabet Valley Mastersingers, and the Nashoba Valley Chorale. She has performed with such distinguished conductors as Robert Shaw, Edo De Waart, Herbert Blomstedt, Neemi Järvi, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Nelson, Charles Mackerras, Kurt Masur and Christopher Hogwood. Recording and film score collaborations include two Grammy-winning recordings with the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, and the film soundtrack for Godfather, Part III with Carmine Copola conducting. Concert tours have taken her to Europe, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Alaska, and throughout the United States. Susan received her B.A. in Vocal Performance from California State University, Fresno and is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) and the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA).

SUSAN JULIAN GATES (Costumer, Prop Mistress). Susan is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley’s Dramatic Art Department. She has stage managed opera productions with the Inverness Music Festival, New York Lyric Opera, and the Washington Opera. Susan studies voice with Monique Phinney and has sung the roles of Miss Todd in Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief at Indian Hill and Cherubino in a Forty Minute Marriage of Figaro with the Westford Chorus. On the music theatre side, she and Dan Swanson have been seen around town in their revue Boy Meets Girl Meets Gershwin.

JOHN SWALLOW (Scenery design, construction and lighting). John is grateful for the opportunity to combine his love of the visual with an evolving appreciation of the voice and to collaborate on a production once again. He is president and cofounder of Pine & Swallow Associates, a Groton-based environmental consulting firm. Much of his “day job” is working to make the unseen visible and the unknown understood. Some of this prospective rubs off on his work in the theater, watercolor painting and sculpture. Sometimes it’s all just a smudge.

Special Thanks

The cast and directors wish to extend special thanks to the following people for going “above and beyond” to help make this production possible.

Susan Julian Gates for spending endless hours and energy on finding and adapting costumes and props.
John Swallow for designing and building sets and helping with lighting.
Andy Scheff for consulting on the lighting.
Dave Grubbs for providing support for costumes and practice CDs.
Jesse Heines for designing and producing the program, maintaining the production’s Web site, and supplying the cast with CDs and videos.
Bonnie Heines for helping with the program.
The Administrative and Maintenance Staff of Indian Hill Music for managing ticket sales and all the other little things that go into putting on a production like Amahl.