A massive work in its scale, “The Resurrection” will unite more than 100 students in the UNCSA orchestra and approximately 125 chorus members. The chorus will be composed of the UNCSA Cantata Singers and the Parkland Magnet High School Choir, as well as student vocalists from across the University of North Carolina system, including Winston-Salem State University, N.C. Central University, N.C. State University, and Fayetteville State University.

A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute Fellow and UNCSA Master of Music candidate Jodi Burns will be the soprano soloist.*

Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, written between 1888 and 1894, dramatizes in music the struggle of man toward eternal salvation and immortality.

Mahler composed the first movement as a stand-alone symphonic poem, called “Todtenfeier,” or “Funeral Rites.” According to Mahler’s own notes, the movement aims to convey a search for the meaning of life. The second movement is a remembrance of happy times and pleasures. The third is an anguished view of life as meaningless, while the fourth is a naïve, child-like wish for release from a meaningless life. 

The fifth movement is a vast finale that depicts the terror and glory of last judgment and resurrection, ending with hope for everlasting life and transcendent renewal. The work culminates in a triumphant chorale – what has been described as one of the most powerful climaxes in all of music.

The concert will be repeated in Raleigh on Sunday, April 25, at the Grand Opening Festival of the N.C. Museum of Art, “A Celebration of North Carolina Arts.” For that concert, which will be presented at 3 p.m. April 25 in the Museum Park Theater, the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra will be joined by the Choral Society of Durham and the Duke University Chapel Choir. Chancellor Mauceri will conduct. For more information about the Raleigh concert, see: http://ncartmuseum.org/interim/grand-opening.php. 

JOHN MAUCERI
John Mauceri is the Chancellor of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), the Founding Director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and musical advisor to Walt Disney’s Educational Productions. His distinguished and extraordinary career has taken him not only to the world’s greatest opera companies and symphony orchestras, but also the musical stages of Broadway and Hollywood, as well as the most prestigious halls of academia.

Maestro Mauceri has served as music director of four opera companies: Washington (National), Scottish (Glasgow), the Teatro Regio (Turin, Italy), and Pittsburgh. He is the first American to have held the post of music director of an opera house in either Great Britain or Italy. He was the first music director of the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall after its founding director, Leopold Stokowski, with whom he studied. He was Consultant for Music Theater at Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for more than a decade, and, for 15 years, he served on the faculty of Yale University. For 18 years, Mauceri worked closely with Leonard Bernstein and conducted many of the composer’s premieres at Bernstein’s request.

On Broadway, he was co-producer of On Your Toes, and served as musical supervisor for Hal Prince’s production of Candide as well as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance. He also conducted the orchestra for the film version of Evita. Among his many awards and honors are a Tony, Grammy, Billboard, Olivier, and two Emmys.

Chancellor Mauceri holds the lifetime title of Founding Director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, which was created for him in 1991 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and with whom he led over 300 concerts to a total audience of over 4 million people. He has written for and appeared on radio and television and has delivered keynote speeches and papers for major artistic and educational institutions, such as Harvard University, the American Academy in Berlin, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the American Musicological Society, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Mauceri has taken the lead in the preservation and performance of many genres of music and has supervised/conducted important premieres by composers as diverse as Debussy, Stockhausen, Korngold, Hindemith, Bernstein, Ives, Elfman, and Shore. He is a leading performer of music banned by the Third Reich and especially music of Hollywood’s émigré composers, and can be seen and heard on many recent DVD releases of classic films.

JODI BURNS
Jodi Burns began study in the fall of 2007 as a fellow at the UNCSA A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute. She is a student of Marilyn Taylor. Since coming to the Fletcher Institute, she has appeared as the Chambermaid in Dvorak’s The Devil and Kate, Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Flamminia in Haydn’s Il mondo della luna, and Rose in Weill’s Street Scene. She also sang the role of Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro for Piedmont Opera. Her professional debut with Piedmont Opera was the role of Ida in Die Fledermaus; she also sang the role of The Dew Fairy in the production of Hansel and Gretel. Recently, she competed in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She was a winner of the North Carolina District Auditions in Charlotte, and she also claimed first place in the Southeast Regional Finals in Atlanta.

Burns graduated with honors in 2007 from the Ohio State University. Her roles include Poppea in Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea and Diana/Giove in Cavalli's La Calisto. As Poppea, “Jodi Burns astonishes with her ability to insinuate sensuality into every note,” according to The Columbus Dispatch. In the summer of 2006, Ms. Burns participated in the American Institute of Musical Studies (AIMS) program in Graz, Austria, where she studied with Marjorie Bennet Stephens. While in Graz, she had the privilege of working in master class with the acclaimed baritone Bo Skovhus, and was a frequent soloist on AIMS Artists in Recital Concerts. Throughout her tenure at Ohio State, Ms. Burns performed various solos with the OSU Symphonic Choir and Women's Glee Club. Other solo work includes 2007 performances of the soprano solos Buxtehude's Cantata, Jesu Meine Freude, and a featured spot in the Mark Moffett Memorial Scholarship Concert in 2006.

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of the Arts and Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from middle school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. Internationally renowned conductor John Mauceri has been chancellor of UNCSA since 2006. UNCSA is located at 1533 S. Main St., Winston-Salem. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu.

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*UNCSA alumna Tichina Vaughn was scheduled to be the mezzo-soprano soloist; however, she has withdrawn due to illness. A replacement is to be announced.