This year, the 7th Annual Festival of the Voice in Phoenicia, NY, celebrates Shakespeare and the culture and traditions of the British Isles. All main stage performances are at Phoenicia Park where the audience is encouraged to bring lawn chairs and picnics as they enjoy some of the most impressive display of musical talent in the world.
The festival opens on Thursday evening, August 4th with the finest young musicians in the Hudson Valley taking on some of the most vocally challenging selections of The Beatles. Under the direction of Paul Green, founder of School of Rock, performers from his Rock Academy kick off the festival with “Rock the Beatles”.
On Friday, August 5th, Miss America 1981 Susan Powell, a highly acclaimed opera singer who made her Carnegie Hall debut earlier this year, along with her husband, Richard White, an accomplished Broadway performer who is also known as the voice of the villain, Gaston, in the Disney film Beauty and the Beast, will take the stage together for “Kiss Me Kate”. One of the great classics of American musical stage offers a play-within-a-play about a group of actors staging Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”.
Verdi’s penultimate opera and one of the greatest ever composed, “Otello” soars with passion and drama on Saturday, August 6th — from one of opera’s most sensuous love duets to Iago’s credo of hatred, from its portrayal of jealousy, Shakespeare’s “green-eyed monster,” to the final self-revelation of the man who “loved not wisely but too well.” This divine music captures the most earthly of human emotions, and the lead role will be performed by the critically acclaimed tenor Limmie Pulliam.
Enjoy breathtaking traditional music direct from the Emerald Isle and Scotland with four very special performances on Sunday, August 7th. Soloists Noeleen Ni Cholla, Doimnic Mac Giolla Bhride and Joy Dunlop, dancer Shioban Butler, and the young musicians of An Crann Og will bring the festival to a rousing, foot-stomping conclusion with “Grand Finale: Festive Celtic Celebration”.
Workshops, lectures and a variety of events throughout the festival will continue to bring the British Isle and Shakespeare to our audience. Visit phoeniciavoicefest.org for the full schedule of events taking place all over the beautiful Catskill Mountain town of Phoenicia Thursday, August 4th through Sunday, August 7th.
