Infinite Joy

Marc Fink was Principal Oboist for the Madison Symphony Orchestra for 33 years and a professor at UW-Madison for 40 years. Fink’s career has taken him around the world, including tours of the North Slope of Alaska with the Arctic Chamber Orchestra; the South Bohemian Music Festival in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic; the Colon Theatre in Buenos Aires; and the Kremlin Kazan International Festival in Kazan, Russia. He has recorded with the Pro Arte Quartet, the University of Wisconsin Russian Folk Orchestra, and the Wingra Quartet. His former students are active in the professional world, in both orchestral and teaching positions, and he served as former president of the International Double Reed Society, an organization of more than 4,000 double reed enthusiasts all over the world. Mr. Fink’s principal teachers have been Jerry Sirucek, Ray Still, Robert Mayer, and Marcel Moyse.

Soprano Laquita Mitchell consistently earns acclaim on eminent international opera and concert stages worldwide. In her compelling début as Bess in Porgy and Bess with the San Francisco Opera, Opera News said “Laquita Mitchell, in her first outing as Bess, dazzled the SFO [San Francisco Opera] audience with her purity of tone and vivid theatrical presence.” Ms. Mitchell performed as the soprano soloist in the world première of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road at Carnegie Hall with Oratorio Society of New York which was nominated for a 2021 Grammy for Best Choral Performance. Additional recent performances include the title role in Tom Cipullo’s Josephine with Opera Colorado, as well as The Promise of Living, a concert program conceived by Ms. Mitchell, Bess in Porgy and Bess with Grange Park Opera in the UK, Lithuanian State Symphony, Detroit Symphony, and Baltimore Symphony, a reprisal of Sanctuary Road with the Columbus Symphony, a Gala Concert for Colorado Symphony, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Barber’s Knoxville: Summer 1915 with the Augusta Symphony.

Kirsten Larson is a lyric mezzo-soprano based in Madison, WI. She frequently performs operatic, musical theatre, and concert stages, both in choral groups and as a soloist. During the 2019-20 season, Ms. Larson was the Studio Artist with the Madison Opera. With a wide range and vocal flexibility, she has performed a variety of operatic and musical theatre roles such as Alisa, Lucia di Lammermoor; Third Wood Sprite, Rusalka; ​Fox, The Cunning Little Vixen; Lola, Cavalleria Rusticana; Third Spirit, The Magic Flute; and Flora, La Traviata; among others.

Hailed by The New York Times as “a bass with an attitude and the goods to back it up,” Matt Boehler is a singer equally at home on the international opera stage as well as the concert platform. He has appeared as a principal artist with The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Dallas Opera, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Theater St. Gallen, and Canadian Opera Company, as well as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and the New York Festival of Song, among many others. Frequently in demand as a collaborator and interpreter of new music, Matt’s discography features many world premieres. A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, he trained as an actor at Viterbo College, an opera singer at Juilliard, and as a composer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Filipino-American tenor, Jared Esguerra, is a dedicated performer of vocal works ranging from opera to concert repertoire and musical theater. The Chicago native has been praised for his “pleasing tenor” voice and continues to be in high demand. In addition to his role debut as Fenton in Verdi’s Falstaff at the Crested Butte Music Festival in 2018, he has portrayed Miles in The Turn of the Screw with Chicago Fringe Opera and Ferrando in Cosi fan tutte with the Floating Opera Company. He has also sung Pirelli in Sweeney Todd with the Janiec Opera Company at Brevard Music Center, the Messenger in Il Trovatore at Sarasota Opera, and the Englishman in Angélique, Luiz in The Gondoliers, and Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus all at DePaul University, of which he’s an alumnus. On the concert stage, Jared recently appeared as the tenor soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Now Let’s Sing and with Chicago Sinfonietta in its MLK Tribute concert series. After a sold-out run of West Side Story as A-Rab at the Edinburgh International Festival, Jared returned to appear with Chicago Opera Theater (COT) in the critically acclaimed world premiere of Freedom Ride in 2020. He also covered the role of Giovanni in COT’s live-streamed production of La hija de Rappaccini in April 2021.