We All Shall Be Changed: Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem

Described as “sunny”, “supple” and “soaring,” soprano Carley DeFranco is known for her committed dramatic portrayals. Highlights of her 2022-23 season include Britten’s Les Illuminations and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (Emmanuel Music), Mozart’s Requiem (Symphony New Hampshire), Debussy Sirénes (Lorelei Ensemble and Boston Ballet) and Christopher Tin’s Lost Birds with VOCES 8.

Carley has sung 80 cantatas with Emmanuel Music in their Bach Cantata Series and has been a featured soloist in Harbison’s Chorale Cantata, St. John Passion, Magnificat, Mass in B Minor and Christmas Oratorio. She was Angelo in Emmanuel’s staged recording of La Resurrezione and Lucy Lockit in Britten's The Beggar’s Opera.  This season, she sings in concert with Handel & Haydn Society,, Boston Baroque, True Concord Voices & Orchestra, Oregon Bach Festival, Monadnock Music Festival, Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus, Con Brio Choral Society, the American Soloists Ensemble and the National Chorus of Korea. 

Carley’s operatic credits include Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro) with Boston Opera Collaborative, The Rose (The Little Prince) with NEMPAC Opera Project, the title role in Alcina with Opera del West and many premieres in Boston Opera Collaborative’s critically-acclaimed festival of ten-minute operas: Opera Bites. Carley is a current soprano scholar with VOCES 8 and a former Lorraine Hunt Lieberman fellow with Emmanuel Music. She is the Director of After School Music at Dexter Southfield and teaches voice and piano out of her home in Somerville, MA.  www.carleydefranco.com

 Richard Giarusso is a teacher, performer, speaker, and writer who seeks to build meaning, relationship, and understanding through the study, contemplation, and performance of music. With practical and scholarly experience in a wide range of repertoire, he seeks to engage audiences of diverse backgrounds and interests in dynamic conversations about music and its relationship to history, culture, and creativity. He has a particular interest in inter-disciplinary dialogues about music and the arts and takes great pleasure in crafting experiences that stimulate creative thinking and critical awareness among participants. An award-winning teacher and visionary academic leader, he is Dean of Academic Affairs at the New England Conservatory and was previously Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Musicology at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Also active as a conductor and singer, he served as music director of the Georgetown Chorale (DC), the Voce Chamber Singers (VA), and the Maryland Choral Society, and he maintains a career as a soloist and ensemble musician throughout the Atlantic corridor. Trained at Williams and Harvard, Richard is a life-long learner shaped by the guidance and inspiration of exceptional mentors who modeled the patterns of inquiry and exploration that he seeks to uphold in his life and work. His non-musical interests include architecture and interior design, traditional French cookery, woodworking, Anglican spirituality, and the beauties of the natural world. He resides in Acton, Massachusetts, with his wife, Allison, three very curious cats, and his seven-year old son, Adrian.