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RYAN SPEEDO GREEN,
bass-baritone
A native of Virginia, Ryan Speedo Green will
receive the Marian Anderson Vocal Award
this fall. He was a winner of the Metropolitan
Opera National Council Auditions in 2011 and
recently completed training in the company’s
Lindemann Young Artist Development Pro-
gram, also earning a George London Founda-
tion Award, an Annenberg Foundation Grant,
and first prize in the Gerda Lissner Foundation
Competition all in 2014. He has also been a re-
cipient of both Richard and Sara Tucker Grants
from the Richard Tucker Foundation, and he
holds a master’s degree from Florida State Uni-
versity and a bachelor’s degree from the Hartt
School of Music. Green is the subject of the 2016
bestselling biography
Sing for Your Life
, which
chronicles the singer’s journey from juvenile
detention to the Met stage. Over the past year,
Green alighted to the iconic New York stage in
his role debut as Oroe in Rossini’s
Semiramide
and returned to Vienna State Opera for his
fourth season as an ensemble member, appear-
ing in such roles as Fasolt in Wagner’s
Das Rhe-
ingold
and Sparafucile in Verdi’s
Rigoletto
. Last
season he made role and house debuts as Esca-
millo in Bizet’s
Carmen
with Opera San Antonio
and Osmin in Mozart’s
Abduction from the Se-
raglio
with Houston Grand Opera. Green’s Met
credits also include the Puccini roles Colline in
La bohème
, the Mandarin in
Turandot
, and the
Bonze in
Madama Butterfly
, as well as Rambo
in the company premiere of John Adams’s
The
Death of Klinghoffer
. He will return to its stage
next season as the King in Verdi’s
Aida
and to
Vienna as Sarastro in Mozart’s
The Magic Flute
among other roles. On the concert stage, Green
has been a soloist with the Los Angeles Philhar-
monic and Philadelphia Orchestra in Beetho-
ven’s Ninth Symphony, the Boston Symphony
Orchestra in Walton’s
Belshazzar’s Feast
, and the
Cleveland Orchestra in R. Strauss’s
Daphne
, as
well as at the Brevard Music Festival in Verdi’s
Requiem. Ryan Speedo Green made his Ravinia
debut last summer and tonight returns for his
Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut.
CHICAGO SYMPHONY CHORUS
The Chicago Symphony Chorus’s storied history began in September 1957, when the Chicago Sym-
phony Orchestra announced that Margaret Hillis, at music director Fritz Reiner’s invitation, would
organize and train a symphony chorus. In March 1958 the Chicago Symphony Chorus made its sub-
scription concert debut performing Mozart’s Requiem with Bruno Walter conducting. A few weeks
later, Reiner himself led the CSC for the first time in performances of Verdi’s Requiem. Since then
the chorus has performed and recorded virtually all the major works in the choral symphonic rep-
ertoire and given world premieres of works by Ned Rorem, John Harbison, and Bernard Rands, also
appearing with visiting orchestras and being a part of many milestones in the CSO’s history. In June
1994, Duain Wolfe was appointed the second director of the CSC, succeeding Hillis, who was named
director laureate. In 1959, the chorus made its first commercial recording, and since then CSO record-
ings featuring the chorus have won 10 Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance, most recently
for Verdi’s Requiem with Riccardo Muti. These recordings include hallmarks of the choral repertoire,
ranging from Beethoven’s
Missa solemnis
and Bach’s Mass in B Minor to Orff ’s
Carmina Burana
and
two recordings each of Brahms’s
German Requiem
and Verdi’s Requiem. The chorus most recently
recorded Schoenberg’s
Kol Nidre
with the CSO. The CSC made its first appearance at Ravinia in 1960
and has returned for more than 50 seasons since, most recently in 2017 for Haydn’s
The Creation
. The
CSC made its Carnegie Hall debut with the CSO in 1967 under Jean Martinon and returned there for
performances of Verdi’s
Otello
to commemorate Sir Georg Solti’s final concerts as music director in
April 1991, and again in December 2000 for performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Daniel
Barenboim conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin. The chorus most recently returned to Carnegie Hall
to perform Scriabin’s Symphony No. 1 and Prokofiev’s
Alexander Nevsky
under Muti’s baton. The CSC
first toured internationally with the CSO to London and Salzburg in 1989 for performances of Berlioz’s
La damnation de Faust
with Solti conducting. Ten years later, the ensemble won critical acclaim for
its performances of Schoenberg’s
Moses und Aron
and Brahms’s
German Requiem
with the CSO at the
Berlin Festtage. Members of the CSC are frequently featured in education performances with mem-
bers of the CSO, have served as section leaders for the CSO Community Chorale, performed at Day of
Music, and, in collaboration with Chicago Public Schools, have appeared at over 40 CPS high schools,
presenting programs designed to coordinate with the students’ history and literature curricula.
DUAIN WOLFE,
conductor and chorus director
CHERYL FRAZES HILL,
associate director
DON H. HORISBERGER,
associate director
WILLIAM CHIN,
assistant director
The chorus was prepared for this performance by Duain Wolfe and Cheryl Frazes Hill.
Gretchen Adams
Michele Braché Agpalo
Alicia Monastero Akers
Melinda Alberty
Ashley Armstrong
Megan E. Bell
Rebecca Berger
Nicole Besa
Sammi Block
Laura Boguslavsky §
Madison Bolt
Humberto Borboa
Michael Boschert
William Bouvel
Michael Brauer
Evan Bravos
Michael Brown
Terry L. Bucher
Laura Bumgardner
Diane Busko Bryks
Anastasia Cameron
Balmer
Andrea Caruso
Michael Cavalieri
Joan Cinquegrani
Joseph Cloonan
Natalie Conseur
Magaly Cordero
Sandra Cross
Beena David
Angela De Venuto
Claire DiVizio
Hannah Dixon
McConnell
Meredith Taylor Du Bon
Kathryn Duncan
Ashley Eason
Stephen C Edwards
Nora Engonopoulos
Nicholas Falco
Andrew Fisher
Henriët Fourie §
Kirsten Fyr-Searcy
Ace T. Gangoso
Klaus Georg
Jennifer Gingrich
Carl Glick
David Govertsen
Nida Grigalaviciute
Kimberly Gunderson
Kevin Michael Hall
Ashlee Hardgrave
Adam Lance
Hendrickson
Megan Hendrickson
Daniel Julius Henry Jr.
Cameo Humes
Ingrid Israel Mikolajczyk
Carla Janzen
Garrett Johannsen
Kathryn Kamp
Alison Kelly
Robin A. Kessler
Jung Kim
Jess Koehn
Lisa Kotara
Susan Krout
Alexandra Kunath
Mathew Lake
Rosalind Lee
Kristin Lelm
Lee Lichamer *
Sara Litchfield
Amanda Compton
LoPresti *
Suzanne Ma-Ebersole
Megan Magsarili
Bill McMurray
Mark James Meier
Rebecca S. Moan
Stephen Mollica
Keith A. Murphy
Lillian Murphy
Nathan S. Oakes
Máire O’Brien
Sheri Owens
Wha Shin Park
Clarissa Parrish Short
Douglas Peters §
Elvira Ponticelli
Nicholas Pulikowski
Antonio Quaranta
Margaret Quinnette
Julia Rahm
Alyssa Rick
Nicoleta Roman
Brennan Runzo
Kyle Sackett
Sladjana Saric
Cole Seaton *
Joseph Smith
Brandon Sokol
Kevin St. John
Meaghan Stainback
Susan Palmatier Steele
Sean Stanton
Heidi Jo Stirling
Daniel Stromfeld
Andrea Amdahl Taylor
Alan Taylor §
Samantha Thielen
Dane Thomas
Paul W. Thompson
Anna VanDeKerchove
Elizabeth Vaughan
Vince Wallace
Aaron Wardell
Peter Wesoloski
Debra Wilder
Megan Wilhlem
Juan Zapata
*
Section leader
§
Chichester Psalms
soloist
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