Influenced by western and eastern music. Influenced by poets and writers. Everything adds to my experience and is translated into sound or stored for the future. Composers of influence: Tom Cipullo, Benjamin Britten, Lou Harrison, Robert Moran, Lee Hoiby, the list goes on... Poets of note: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Keneth Rexroth, and recently Jeffery Beam.
Countertenor, Steven Serpa is a recent graduate of Longy School of Music, receiving his Masters Degree in Historically Informed Performance. He also holds Bachelors Degrees in Vocal Performance and Musicology. Steven has been heard as alto soloist in Bach’s St. John Passion with The Vox Consort, il Pastore in Boston Academy of Music’s Tosca, countertenor soloist in Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and The Lark under Lorna Cooke de Varon at Longy, and a featured soloist in the Ordo Virtutum of Hildegard von Bingen with Longy and Monteverdi’s Orfeo with Harvard University. In the Boston and Charleston, South Carolina, areas he has been featured as a recitalist and participant in productions of Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas, Handel’s Messiah and a number of Bach’s cantatas. Steven is also a huge supporter of new music for voice and has premiered or resurrected numerous works written specifically for countertenor, including artsongs by Lee Hoiby and Daron Hagen. In addition, he has brought about local premieres of works by Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and others. Future premieres include the presentation of Donna McKevitt's amazing song cycle Translucence on text by seminal film artists and poet Derek Jarman.
As a composer, Steven Serpa has focused on vocal and chamber music. His songs have been performed in the New England and Mid-Atlantic areas. His choral works have been taken up by churches and ensembles in the Boston and Providence areas. His music drama, Le Laüstic, based on Medieval French poetry, has been performed twice in Boston. His sonata for solo flute, Pan Episodes, has been performed by flutists in Boston, Tennessee and recently in Alabama as part of the Mid-south Flute Association’s annual conference. Other recent works include a one-act opera based on a fable by Jean de la Fontaine, Thyrsis & Amaranth, and a work commissioned for performance at Boston University for viola and piano, Alto-fantasie … il n'y avait rien d'aussi rouge … He has recently completed a commission for a chamber quartet from the Boston based early-music ensemble Seven Times Salt. Steven’s song cycle A Lunar Cycle for soprano and piano won first place in the first annual Composition Competition when he was an undergraduate. He has worked under Geoffrey Gibbs and Eliane Aberdam at the University of Rhode Island, Paul Brust at Longy School of Music and is currently studying under Tom Cipullo in New York City.
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