Directors
Janis Hardy, a native Minnesotan, has performed leading roles for many of our country’s major opera companies including the Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, Boston Opera, Wolftrap Center for the Performing Arts and Kansas City Lyric. As a member of Minnesota Opera’s Resident Ensemble for more than ten years, she sang roles created for her in many world premieres including Argento’s Postcard from Morocco and Susa’s Transformations as well as many traditional roles, including Cherubino, Dorabella, Mrs. Peachum and Widow Begbick.
Soloing with orchestras, she has been conducted by, among others, Neville Marriner, Klaus Tennstedt, Dennis Russell Davies, Hugh Wolff and Aaron Copland, and by Philip Brunelle in VocalEssence since its inception. As a guest soloist she has appreared with many organizations including Minnesota Orchestra, The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Sioux Falls, Duluth and Kansas City symphonies. As a festival soloist, she has appeared with the Aldeburgh Festival in England, The Oregon Bach Festival, The Cabrillo Music Festival in Aptos, California, The New Texas Festival and Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest. Among her discography, are a solo album of Copland’s Old American Folk Songs and Grieg’s Haugtusa as well singing the role of “Ma” in Copland’s Tender Land for Virgin records and “Sister” in Larsen’s In A Winter Garden.
Ms Hardy’s concert repertoire reflect her eclectic interests, ranging from all of Bach’s passions, most of Handel’s oratorios to premieres of works by Randall Davidson and Libby Larsen.
Ms Hardy has been a frequent guest on Minnesota Public Radio’s, A Prairie Home Companion as well as collaborating with Garrison Keillor in concerts and recordings. She has also collaborated with Bobby McFerrin on an opera project, libretto by Tony Kushner.
Her acting credits include Theatre de la Jeune Leune, The Children’s Theater, Frank Theater and Theater Latte Da. Ms Hardy can be heard each August, along with her good friends Maria Jette, Molly Sue McDonald and Dan Chouinad in the popular Sopranorama performances at The Southern Theater in Minneapolis. She is also the founder and artistic director of The Theater Playshop, a lyric theater camp for children that performs musicals written by Ms Hardy at the Howard Conn Theater, Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis.
James McKeel, baritone, has sung over 70 roles with opera companies and festivals throughout the United States as well as England's Aldeburgh Festival, Minnesota Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Baltimore Opera, Muny Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Guthrie Theatre, Plymouth Music Series, Dale Warland Singers, Kennedy Center, New Works Ensemble, Midwest Opera Theatre, Dale Warland Singers, and the Minnesota & St. Paul Chamber Orchestras. Performances range from The Magic Flute & The Marriage of Figaro to La Boheme & Carmen to premieres of Casanova’s Homecoming, The Juniper Tree, and the award-winning A Death in the Family. Other performances include Lady in the Dark, Sweeney Todd, and TheThreepenny Opera, the critically-acclaimed world-premiere of The Three Hermits, the award-winning Paul Bunyan with England’s Aldeburgh Festival, and As You Like It at the Guthrie Theatre with Val Kilmer and Patti Lapone. His recordings include The Mother of Us All, Voices from Lost Realms, PaulBunyan, The Three Hermits, Visions, and The Hero of Hamblett. Mr. McKeel's artistic collaborators have included Philip Glass, David Hockney, Dominick Argento, Raymond Leppard, Wesley Balk, Philip Brunelle, Joan La Barbara, Morton Sobotnick, Stephen Paulus, William Mayer, and Salvatore Murdocca.
An avid composer, Mr. McKeel has written over 60 operas, operettas, musicals, choral works, arts songs, and song cycles which have received commissions, grants, and premieres from the Kennedy Center, Minnesota Opera, Minnesota Composers Forum, Jerome & Blandin Foundations, Midwest Opera Theatre, Southern Theatre, Twin Cities Opera Guild, and Bel Canto Voices, among others. His premiered works include the Minnesota Opera children's opera, Jargonauts Ahoy, which toured for two years, played to over 20,000 students, and was featured in a PBS special on reading, In Reference to a Child, a choral song cycle commissioned by the Bel Canto Voices, featured in the Kennedy Center's "Year of the Child" concert, and toured throughout the South Pacific, and Reveille to Requiem, a Civil War opera funded by the Blandin Foundation , SEMAC, and St. Olaf College. His published works include the choral work ChristmasDawning (Shawnee Press) and Sherlock Holmes: Solitary Insect (Blackbird Books, Australia).
Recent activities include A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein with Henry Charles Smith, the composition of two independent New York film scores Dan Ruff and Plague,
stage direction of Christopher Columbus, La Finta Giardiniera, L'enfant et les Sortileges, and a grant from the Twin Cities Opera Guild to produce a touring version of his children's opera The Hero of Hamblett written with critically-acclaimed New York author/illustrator Salvatore Murdocca. In 2007 he reprised his role as the Bishop in The Three Hermits with St. John's University and premiered his jazz-age opera Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum with St. Olaf College. In 2008-09 he will play the role of Galileo directed by Gary Gisselman and will oversee the second production of Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum with St. John's University.
