Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Athenaeum Concert Series: Control and Composition

Wed, February 19, 2025
Dinner Program
Gina Hyunmin Lee, pianist and Elise Noyes, soprano

This lecture-recital will center around Lili Boulanger’s monumental song cycle, Clairières dans le ciel, featuring a soprano and a pianist. Clairières dans le ciel, is composed by Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), an enigmatic composer whose enormous musical talents and career successes are discussed alongside her struggles with chronic illness, looming mortality, and, very often, her older sister Nadia Boulanger. It a story of doomed love from an individual whose gender identity is seldom revealed nor confirmed throughout the cycle. The ambiguity in the gender of the narrator coupled with questions about the composer’s own sexuality creates a lens through which the cycle can be examined, exploring the topic of gender identity, sexual orientation, and sensuality in French symbolist poetry. The presentation of the selected songs from the cycle illuminate the importance of poetic understanding within the context of these songs and further a conversation about why they might have meant much to the Boulanger sisters. 

Gina Hyunmin Lee is a Korean-Canadian pianist based in Rochester, NY. Gina is completing the DMA degree in Accompanying and Chamber Music at the Eastman School of Music under the guidance of Dr. Andrew Harley, and currently serves as an adjunct faculty member at the Rochester Institute of Technology. As a recitalist and chamber musician, Gina has appeared in festivals and venues across North America and Europe including Banff Centre for Creativity and Arts, Schoenberg Centre, Zodiac Festival, Aspen Music Festival and School, Songfest, Yarn/Wire Institute, Indian River Music Festival, and Toronto Arts and Letters Club. Most recently, Gina was a prize winner at the Jesse Kneisel Lieder Competition (Eastman School of Music) and has received Canada Council for the Arts’ ‘Explore and Creation Grant’ which allows her to embark on a recording and commissioning project alongside Canadian Soprano Elise Noyes.

Elise Noyes, a Canadian-American soprano, is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and is heralded for her versatility in operatic, musical theatre, and choral works alike. In the spring of 2023, she competed as a semi-finalist in the Lotte Lenya Competition, in addition to keeping up an active schedule as a recitalist. She was selected as the first prize winner of the Jessie Kneisel German Lieder Competition in 2022, in addition to being chosen as a finalist for the Friends of Eastman Opera Voice Competition in 2021. Her performances include Eastman Opera Theatre’s Into the Woods as Cinderella, La Calisto as the title role, Michaela in Mercury Opera’s Carmen, and Isabel in Pirates of Penzance with Rochester Summer Opera. She has been featured with SUNY Geneseo Symphony Orchestra as the soprano soloist in Mozart’s Requiem, as well as in Ravel’s Shéhérazade with the Edmonton Youth Orchestra. Ms. Noyes works for Seattle Voice Lab, providing gender affirming voice instruction for students all across the world and has served as a lecturer at Ithaca College.

Curated by Sheena Hui '19, this Athenaeum performance is part of a four-part 2024-25 Athenaeum Concert Series, In Freundschaft — In Friendship.

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Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
385 E. Eighth Street
Claremont, CA 91711

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