3467 Sonoma Boulevard
Suite 10
Vallejo, CA 94590

P. O. Box 568
Vallejo, CA 94590

707-643-4441
Fax: 707-643-5746

Info@VallejoSymphony.org
 

Keep informed about the activities of your Vallejo Symphony. In a once-a-month email, you'll receive concert and event reminders, as well as tidbits about guest artists, links to reviews, pictures, and more!

Please let us know how you like our concerts.  Write your own concert review here.
 

Symphony brings in stellar vocalists for season-ending concert
By Rich Freedman/Times-Herald staff writer

Aimee Puentes is a featured performer Saturday at the Vallejo Symphony's last concert of the season. (Courtesy) Singing to Aimee Puentes is as natural as talking. Actually, as the soprano tells it, perhaps even more natural.

"My mom claims that I was matching pitches before I spoke," Puetes said. "I would have to say that I liked to sing at a very young age."

Puentes joins tenor Brian Staufenbiel and baritone Austin Kress on Saturday in the last Vallejo Symphony Orchestra concert of the season at Hogan High School Auditorium.

Puentes, proud of earning the coveted Travel Grant from The Metropolitan Opera National Council Competition and working with the San Francisco Opera, said she is "always learning something that is new and helpful to be a better performer."

Staufenbiel recalled joining choirs in seventh grade.

"I was lucky," he said. "My parents always supported my singing."

Staufenbiel's first "serious solo" was his freshman year in college "when I sang my first roasted Swan from Carmina Burana, and it is the solo I have performed the most in my career."

Staufenbiel's performances include leading roles in Rossini's "L'Italiana in Algeri," Britten's "The Rape of Lucretia," Poulenc's "Les Mamelles de Tir\ésias," Ravel's "L'enfant et Les Sortil\éges," and Mechem's "Tartuffe."

Puentes has sung leading opera roles that include Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Micaela in Carmen, Pamina in The Magic Flute, Musetta in La Boheme, and Valencienne in The Merry Widow.

Even in repeating a role, Puentes eagerly accepts the challenge.

"This always has to do much with who I am working with," she said. "If it is someone new, the experience is always new with that person. I try to bring new characteristics that are new with that person. During the staging process or rehearsals, I find out what our chemistry is like and then move forward."

Staufenbiel said he loves to recreate a role, "primarily to give it new life and freshness, as well there is a kind of deeper relationship you build with something that you have done several times."

All three special guests have stellar credentials and have excelled in competition, for better or worse.

"I think the competitions are either for you or not," Puentes said. "Some excel at them and others do not. I have had some success with them in my career. So, I do appreciate the fact that there are competitions out there. There is definitely 'competition' anywhere you go, whether it be in an audition for a role or strictly a competition."

"I feel competitions are necessary to expose people to help make a career, but some of the best and most loved singers have never won competitions," Staufenbiel said.

Hearing one's voice on a recording isn't always the best, the two artists agreed.

"Like most people, I hear things I would change," Staufenbiel said. "But I am always grateful to have had the opportunity to have recorded music."

"Sometimes I really enjoy it, sometimes I don't," Puentes said. "I am always trying to figure out a way that I can improve, whether it be diction, phrasing, interpretation of the piece or character."

Puentes said she has a new teacher "and am improving tremendously" after her teacher of 12 years, Kathryn Harvey, died last year.

"It has been difficult to find a teacher and trust that they would not lead me astray," Puentes said. "I have found that person."

Preparing to step on stage, Puentes relaxes in silence after vocal warm-ups.

"If it is a character, I like to focus on the text and how I want to portray myself as the character," she said. "If it is a concert version, I think about the same things but perhaps a bit more subdued."

"I don't try to distract myself," said Staufenbiel. "I focus on the event or moment about to happen and how I want it to go."

Puentes didn't have to have her vocal chords twisted to agree to perform with symphony conductor David Ramadanoff.

"It did not take any convincing," she said. "He is a master and is wonderful to work with."

The appreciation, apparently, is mutual.

"I am very excited about the three soloists we have performing Carmina Burana," Ramadanoff said. "All of them are strong singers and I think the audience will be especially pleased to hear baritone Austin Kness, who will be performing as a principal with the San Francisco Opera next season.

"It will be nice for our audience to get to hear him in Vallejo first."

Conductor David Ramadanoff
Interviewed by Ozcatradio.com on Oct 5, 2008