Guest Artists

Nathalie Colas

Winter Meteors, February 10th, 2027

Hailed for her “floating, silky soprano” and deemed “a standout in acting and voice” as well as “luminous” and “hypnotic”, French American soprano Nathalie Colas has been a featured soloist in recent seasons with Haymarket Opera Company, Music of the Baroque, Operetta Ardez, Chicago Choral Artists, Incantare, Alchymy Viols, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, The Symphony of Oak Park, Fonema Consort, Chamber Music on the Fox, Bella Voce, Newberry Consort and more. Nathalie is an enthusiastic choral musician, participating actively in Chicago’s rich choral culture (Grant Park Music Festival, Chicago Symphony Chorus, Music of the Baroque, New Earth Ensemble, Eco Voice Project). A dedicated educator, Ms.Colas teaches applied Voice and lyric diction at Concordia University Chicago as well as Triton College. She is a regular guest of colleges in the Midwest to work on French Mélodie interpretation with voice students, and maintains an active French lyric diction coaching studio.

This season’s projects include a tour of 18th century French Romances from women composers at the St Petersburg imperial court.

Nathalie was born and raised in Strasbourg, France. She enjoys gardening and hiking with her husband composer David Grant, as well as building Lego sets with her son Leonard.

nathaliecolasmusic.com

Amanda DeBoer Bartlett

To Wake the Dead: Words, Love & Time, April 30th, 2027

Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, DMA is a soprano specializing in contemporary classical chamber music, vocal ensemble music, songwriting, and folk music. She is a founding member of Quince Ensemble, a contemporary and experimental treble voice ensemble, and Hasco Duo, an experimental improvisation and songwriting project. She is also a member of the award-winning and internationally recognized Ensemble Dal Niente. She regularly performs her original songs solo, with her duo partner Jesse Langen, or with full band at clubs and festivals around the country.

As a leading interpreter of new and experimental vocal works, she regularly works with living composers, commissioning, developing, and workshopping new works with extended vocal techniques, new notation, and other experimental practices. Her research centers on the pedagogy of nontraditional and extended vocal techniques in contemporary classical music, including extensive research on ingression phonation.

Born and raised in Omaha, NE, Bartlett received a Bachelor of Music from DePaul University, a Master of Music from the University at Buffalo, and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Contemporary Music from Bowling Green State University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Voice at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts.

Michael Lewanski

To Wake the Dead: Words, Love & Time, April 30th, 2027

Conductor, curator, educator, and writer Michael Lewanski is a champion of new and old musics. He seeks to facilitate engaged connections between audiences, musicians, composers, and the music that is part of their culture, society, and history. His work hopes to be part of collective, systemic change in the classical music industry. Based in Chicago, he is Conductor of Ensemble Dal Niente, Artistic Director of Lakeview Orchestra, and Associate Professor and Chair of the Performance Studies Department at the DePaul University School of Music, where he works to train the next generation of musicians to be thoughtful artistic citizens.

Michael was Curatorial Director of Ear Taxi Festival 2021, a festival of 21st century Chicago music. He was resident conductor of the 2017 and 2019 SoundSCAPE Festivals in Italy. His guest conducting engagements have been wide-ranging and stylistically diverse, including work with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW Series, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, the State Symphony Orchestra of Turkmenistan, Ensamble CEPROMUSIC (Mexico City), the Seattle Modern Orchestra, and many others. He has led hundreds of world premieres.

Michael has an extensive discography as both conductor and producer. A native of Savannah, Georgia, he studied piano and violin in his youth; he made his conducting debut at age 13, leading his own composition. At 16, he was accepted into the conducting class of the legendary Ilya Musin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He attended Yale University; he subsequently studied with Cliff Colnot and Lucas Vis. He is based in Chicago, and respectfully acknowledges the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Odawa, Ho-Chunk, Myaaamia, Menominee, Peoria, and Illinois Confederacy among other tribal nations as custodians of the traditional Native land on which he lives and works.

Photo Credit: Deidre Huckabay