Primal Light

Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Christopher Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests.  He is known for a passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti, and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar masterworks. Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Mr. Taylor brings to it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and grace. 

Mr. Taylor has concertized around the globe, with international tours taking him to Russia, Western Europe, East Asia, and the Carribean. At home in the U.S. he has appeared with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic,  Detroit Symphony, and the Milwaukee Symphony.  As a soloist he has performed in New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, in Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen festivals, and dozens of other venues. In chamber settings, he has collaborated with many eminent musicians, including Robert McDuffie and the Borromeo, Shanghai, Pro Arte, and Ying Quartets. His recordings have featured works by Liszt, Messiaen, and present-day Americans William Bolcom and Derek Bermel. Throughout his career Mr. Taylor has become known for undertaking memorable and unusual projects.  Examples include: an upcoming tour in which he will perform, from memory, the complete transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies by Liszt;  performances and lectures on the complete etudes of György Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique double-manual Steinway piano in the collection of the University of Wisconsin.  He has actively promoted the rediscovery and refurbishment of the latter instrument; in recent years he has also been building a reinvented and modernized version of it, a project that relies on his computer and engineering skills and was unveiled in a demonstration recital in 2016. 

Numerous awards have confirmed Mr. Taylor’s high standing in the musical world. He was named an American Pianists’ Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1990 he took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and also became one of the first recipients of the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award. 

Mr. Taylor owes much of his success to several outstanding teachers, including Russell Sherman, Maria Curcio-Diamand, Francisco Aybar, and Julie Bees. In addition to his busy concert schedule, he currently serves as Paul Collins Associate Professor of Piano Performance at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He pursues a variety of other interests, including: mathematics (he received a summa cum laude degree from Harvard University in this field in 1992); philosophy (an article he coauthored with the leading scholar Daniel Dennett appears in the Oxford Free Will Handbook); computing; linguistics; and biking, which is his primary means of commuting. Mr. Taylor lives in Middleton, Wisconsin, with his wife and two daughters. Christopher Taylor is a Steinway artist.

Opera News lauds Jeni Houser’s performances as “commanding and duplicitous, yet also vulnerable. She has a bright future above the staff.” In the 2024-24 season, she returns to the Metropolitan Opera for both Die Zauberflöte and its beloved English-language production of The Magic Flute—into which she last season reprised her sought-after Queen of the Night. Also last season, she sang further performances of Die Zauberflöte with latter performances at the Grand Teton Music Festival with Donald Runnicles conducting. She also returned to Madison Opera as Cunegonde in Candide and joined the Phoenix Symphony for Carmina Burana. 

She recently made debuts with the Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and Dallas Opera as Königin der Nacht in Die Zauberflöte, a role she has also sung to great acclaim with Minnesota Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Cincinnati Opera, Central City Opera, and Kentucky Opera. She recently made her role debut as Lucia di Lammermoor in a return to Madison Opera and repeated the role at the Seoul Arts Center. She returned to the Dallas Opera stage as the title role in The Golden Cockerel. With the Wiener Staatsoper, she made her international debut as Frantzi in the world premiere of Staud’s Die Weiden, after which she joined the company for its productions of Die Zauberflöte and Trojahn’s Orest. 

Ms. Houser has sung Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos with Austin Opera and Minnesota Opera; at the latter, she also sang Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, the Charmeuse in Thais, and Mrs. Grady in the world premiere of Paul Moravec’s The Shining. With Madison Opera, she has previously sung Olympia in Les contes d’Hoffmann, Johanna in Sweeney Todd, Anne Egerman in A Little Night Music, and Amy in Adamo’s Little Women. She has sung further performances of Johanna in Sweeney Todd with Mill City Summer Opera and Baltimore Concert Opera. She joined On Site Opera as Susanna in Marcos Portugal’s Le nozze di Figaro, Odyssey Opera in Boston as Cecily in Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Opera Saratoga as Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore, and Fort Worth Opera as Viv in the premiere of Peters’ Companionship.  

On the concert stage, she has previously sung Orff’s Carmina Burana with Madison Symphony, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Florida Orchestra and Atlanta Ballet and Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, Haydn’s Creation, and Mozart’s Requiem with Abendmusik: Lincoln (Nebraska). 

The soprano is an alumnus of the young artist programs of the Glimmerglass Festival, Virginia Opera, and Opera Saratoga.She won second place at the Nicholas Loren Vocal Competition in 2014. She was a district winner and regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 2013 and 2011 after earning an encouragement award in 2010, and was a national semifinalist in the NATS Artist Award Competition in 2010. She holds degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Lawrence University.