Cappella Romana & John Michael Boyer with 45th Parallel Universe
Biography Cappella Romana & John Michael Boyer with 45th Parallel Universe
Cappella Romana
Its performances “like jeweled light flooding the space” (Los Angeles Times), Cappella Romana is a professional vocal ensemble dedicated to combining passion with scholarship in its exploration of the musical traditions of the Christian East and West, with emphasis on early and contemporary music. The ensemble is known especially for its presentations and recordings of medieval Byzantine chant (the Eastern sibling of Gregorian chant), Greek and Russian Orthodox choral works, and other sacred music that expresses the historic traditions of a unified Christian inheritance. Founded in 1991, Cappella Romana has a special commitment to mastering the Slavic and Byzantine musical repertories in their original languages, thereby making accessible to the general public two great musical traditions that are little known in the West. The ensemble presents annual concert series in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco, California, in addition to touring nationally and internationally, most recently to Hungary, Serbia, and the UK. Critics have consistently praised Cappella Romana for their unusual and innovative programming, including numerous world and American premieres. Cappella Romana has released more than twenty recordings.
45th Parallel Universe
is a collective of musicians who come together to celebrate great chamber music with intimate artistic experiences. Passion for great music is what defines us and Portland is our stage.
Since 2009, 45th Parallel has happily demolished distinctions between old and new chamber music, bluegrass and jazz, fiddle and folk. By bringing fragmented audiences together, 45th Parallel reflects Portland’s surging creative communities in fresh and imaginative ways.
45th Parallel executive director and violinist Ron Blessinger is a proud Oregonian, with degrees Oberlin Conservatory and a Masters with distinction in performance from the New England Conservatory of Music. Ron joined the Oregon Symphony in 1990, and has been a frequent soloist and chamber music performer. In 2014, he was elected as a player representative to the Oregon Symphony’s Board of Directors. Ron is a passionate advocate for the music of living composers, producing and performing on fourteen recordings of new music, with a special emphasis on the music of Oregon composers.
Violist Greg Ewer, hailed by The New York Times for his “refinement and spirit,” has been a member of the Oregon Symphony since 2001. Greg is also well known to Portland audiences for his regular appearances with the Portland Baroque Orchestra, and Pink Martini. He is also the founder and previous artistic director of 45th Parallel. Greg has appeared as a guest recitalist at Yale University, and at the National Library in Mexico City. He has performed at numerous summer festivals, including the Tanglewood Music Center, San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, Moab Music Festival, and the Montana Baroque Festival.
Brazilian cellist Marilyn de Oliveira has been the assistant principal in the Oregon Symphony cello section since September 2009. Prior to joining the Oregon Symphony, Marilyn was a member of the San Antonio Symphony for three seasons, during which she was both a member of the section and acting assistant principal.
Marilyn received her Bachelor of Music degree from Indiana University under cellist Emilio Colon and her Master of Music degree at Rice University with Norman Fischer. Some of her live solo performances can be heard regularly on National Public Radio’s Performance Today. Marilyn is married to Oregon Symphony cellist Trevor Fitzpatrick.
John Boyer
has been well known to Cappella Romana audiences since 1999, as a regular member of the ensemble, soloist, and guest director. Boyer makes his Cappella Romana début as the ensemble’s new Associate Music Director with this program, having been appointed to that position on January 1, 2017 by Music Director and Founder Alexander Lingas.
Known for his expertise in Byzantine Chant and Orthodox music and liturgy, he lectures at conferences, workshops, and seminars on Eastern Orthodox liturgical music across the United States and abroad. He has served as specialty coach for both Chanticleer and the Minnesota Symphony for world première performances and recordings of works by John Tavener, including Chanticleer’s Grammy-winning recording Lamentations and Praises.
He has conducted operas, chamber music, and orchestral works as associate director of Bay Area Classical Harmonies (BACH), and was artistic director of the vocal chamber ensembles the Josquin Singers and the Metropolis Ensemble of Liturgical Orthodox Singers (MELOS).
John Michael Boyer is Protopsaltis (First Cantor) of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis (Diocese) of San Francisco, and studied Byzantine Chant with Alexander Lingas, Ioannis Arvanitis, and the late Lycourgos Angelopoulos (+2014). He holds a Master in Divinity from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology and is a graduate in music from University of California, Berkeley, where he studied choral, orchestral, and operatic conducting with Marika Kuzma and David Milnes.
His latest projects include the CD recording All Creation Trembled from Holy Cross School of Theology, in which he is featured both as composer and as soloist. He is one of six composers who collaborated on the forthcoming release by the St. John of Damascus Society, Psalm 103, a setting of the full text of the Psalm as translated by the late Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash) (+2016), featuring multiple Orthodox musical idioms. In the recording, Sun of Justice, John Michael Boyer collaborates with Arab cantor Rassem El Massih, Protopsaltis of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America; the recording features Byzantine chant for Christmastide in English, Greek, and Arabic. Boyer’s book Byzantine Chant: the Received Tradition – A Lesson Book is slated to be published in 2017.
