Resume

• Faculty Appointments
• Relevant Experience
• Selected Performance Experience

• Operatic, Orchestral and Musical Staff Positions
• Recordings
• Education and Training

• Co-create and administrate artistic vision for growing organization devoted to art song and the song recital. Florestan’s concerts and presentations explore the many ways in which songs can stimulate our imaginations, by experiencing poems and texts that have resounded throughout generations and cultures, and by hearing music that adds specific inflection, pacing, and atmosphere that was not in the text alone. In this way, music becomes a living, expressive map of humanity and cultural traditions, and a vibrant artistic experience shared between musicians and audience.
• Musical Artist-in-Residence, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA, 2007-2010 (current). Dickinson College is a vibrant undergraduate institution committed to a  liberal arts curriculum, with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches. Florestan has joined the faculty in bringing performance and teaching projects to the students and college community across many disciplines.
• Develop short- and long-term artistic residencies for music departments and summer festivals. Since 2003, Florestan has created several new programs that supplement and expand study curricula. Florestan held an artistic residency at Boston Conservatory from 2004-2007, which included 3-4 professional concerts during the academic year, the instigation of new collaborations between composers and singers, and special classes revolving around artists and repertoire. At SUNY Fredonia, a Florestan class was added to the music department curriculum in 2005 that challenges students to research and perform themed song recitals. In the summer of 2006, Florestan shaped a course in American song for the Young Artist program at Songfest (Malibu, CA). Beginning in the summer 2009, Florestan will join the faculty at SoundSCAPE (Pavia, Italy) as mentors and performers in the creation of new works.
• Plan and coordinate commissions, artists, and repertoire for concert season. Florestan currently produces a 4-concert season, and each concert features a different combination of artists based on repertoire and ensemble needs. In addition to the regular concert season, Florestan is planning summer concert festivals that fully present the songs of a specific composer or genre. In 2006, Florestan produced FrancisFest! The Complete Songs of Francis Poulenc. A festival of the complete songs of Samuel Barber is planned for September 2009, and a 2010 festival will explore the landscape of American song with a wide variety of composers as guests, including Libby Larsen and George Crumb, among others.

• Co-create and administrate artistic vision for summer song institute. This involves shaping an 11-day institute for singers, pianists, and teachers of song repertoire that featured an unprecedented combination of classes, workshops, symposia, and performances. In addition to masterclasses and private lessons in performance repertoire, the substantial curriculum included poetry study, musical analysis, acting and improvisation workshops, discussions about business and performance strategies, and explorations of scientific applications of song.
• Coordinator of 10-day performance festival. In 2007, VISI featured a festival of daily noon and evening concerts, featuring internationally renowned guest faculty such as Graham Johnson, Margo Garrett, Tracy Dahl, Benjamin Butterfield, and many others. These concerts were programmed according to specific literary, historical, or musical topics that corresponded with other elements in the VISI curriculum.
• Coordinator of Collaborative Piano Retreat. VISI 2009 includes a special retreat for collaborative pianists. In addition to classes and lessons for student collaborative pianists with renowned mentors in the field, there is a weekend-long conference that brings together internationally-known pianists to present topics for discussion and explore improvements in collaborative piano curricula.

• Planned and produced concerts for a semi-monthly chamber music series, as part of the Cloud Foundation’s mandate to reach out to new audiences and inner-city arts organizations. These concerts featured a variety of vocal and instrumental chamber music connected through themes found in the Foundation’s visual art exhibitions, and exposed students and community audiences to new perspectives on interdisciplinary relationships.

• Guest teacher for masterclasses and individual lessons in a wide variety of vocal and instrumental repertoire.
• Engagements since 2004 include: University of Toronto, Royal Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, SUNY Fredonia, Dickinson College, Boston University, Boston Conservatory.

• Rehearse and perform with several singers in intensive 3-week program.

• Scheduled pianists in weekly lessons for voice department.
• Acted as administrative liaison between voice and collaborative piano departments.
• Arranged meetings and studio classes for collaborative piano department.

• Pianist in several concerts throughout festival, including featured recitals with tenor Paul Sperry, mezzo-soprano Lynne McMurtry, and soprano Martha Guth.

• Pianist and Musical Director for acclaimed production of Poulenc’s Les Dialogues des Carmelites, featuring soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian. Review in the Globe and Mail stated “[The music] had a superb presentation…The strength of Opera in Concert's costumeless, setless, only symbolically staged presentation was the authoritative grasp of the whole work by its music director Alison d'Amato."
• Pianist and Musical Director for production of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux. Review by Paula Citron praised “The impressive music director/pianist was American Alison d’Amato who absolutely understands bel canto tempi and the nuances between the slow cavatina and fast cabaletta.”

• Collaboration with Canadian mezzo-soprano Lynne McMurtry on song recital featuring North American composers’ settings of Walt Whitman, including Canadian composer James Rolfe. The first performance was featured in “Top Recitals of 2006” by Toronto Star reviewer John Terauds, who stated “Art doesn’t get any more moving than this.”

Florestan Recital Project, Evidence of Things Not Seen (ongoing short-term residency project).

• Pianist in several concerts throughout yearly concert series.
• Pianist and director of original presentation of Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch (2006).
• Collaboration with composer Ned Rorem for original, semi-staged performance of Rorem’s evening-length song cycle. Beginning with the Boston premiere in 2003, Florestan has presented the work on tour at Dickinson College, Cincinnati College-Conservatory, and in Providence, R.I.

• Concert tour with soprano Janna Baty, featuring world premieres of commissioned works in live collaboration with poets William Meredith and Richard Harteis. Included new works by Pulitzer Prize-winning composers Paul Moravec and Yehudi Wyner.

• Recital with Concert Artists Guild mezzo-soprano Krista River. Featured the premiere of the Florestan Recital Project song commission Write About the Silence Here, a song cycle by composer Paul Preusser that explored multicultural texts about WWII.

• Centerpiece concert of international symposium given by Florestan Recital Project presenting song cycles by composer Daniel Pinkham. Pinkham was in attendance as a guest of Florestan.

• Performance of Brahms’s Quartet for Piano and Strings in g minor, presented as a “Musically Speaking” pre-concert event to Buffalo Philharmonic’s concert celebrating the composer’s 175th birthday. 
• Performance of Faure’s Quartet for Piano and Strings in g minor.  Earned “special kudos” and praise for her “digital precision” in Buffalo News review.

• Performance of Claude Vivier’s Paramirabo and Beethoven’s Quintet for Piano and Winds. Review of concert in the Boston Globe deemed Paramirabo “a radiant performace of an unusual work.”

• Music Director/pianist for acclaimed production of Poulenc’s Les Dialogues des Carmelites featuring soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian.
• Music Director/pianist for Fall 2008 production of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux featuring tenor Colin Ainsworth.

Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Toronto, ON, January 2009

• Pianist for rehearsals of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, under conductor Bernard Labadie.

• Assess artists’ materials for award-winning company’s seasonal roster
• Assist in coordinating auditions
• Pianist for music/staging rehearsals for seasonal productions
• Lead rehearsals in conductor’s absence

• Pianist for award-winning festival of fully staged/orchestrated contemporary opera, including the North American premiere of Peter Eotvos’s Angels in America as well as operas by Thomas Ades (Powder Her Face) and John Harbison (Full Moon in March).
• Led rehearsals in conductor’s absence.
• Pianist for performances and commercially released recording.

• Pianist for music/staging rehearsals for several productions.
• Led rehearsals in conductor’s absence.

• Pianist for Boston and Tanglewood Festival production of Lukas Foss opera, Griffelkin.
• Led rehearsals in conductor’s absence
• Assisted in preparing chorus for Boston and Tanglewood Festival performances
• Pianist for performances and commercially released recording

• Frequent keyboardist for performances and recordings, 2000-present
• Pianist on commercially released recordings of music by Michael Gandolfi, Arthur Berger and operas by Lukas Foss (Griffelkin) and John Harbison (Full Moon in March)

• Reheasal pianist for Thea Musgrave opera premiere, The Mockingbird
• Pianist for chamber and orchestral performances

Y2K Compliant: works by Michael Gandolfi (compact disc: BMOP Sound, 2008)
        Featured chamber pianist with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor

Griffelkin, by Lukas Foss (compact disc; Chandos 10067, 2003)
        Featured orchestral pianist with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor

Arthur Berger: Complete Orchestral Works (compact disc: New World, 2003)
        Featured orchestral pianist with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor

• Doctoral Thesis, “A Poet’s Content is a Musician’s Form”: Ned Rorem’s use of poetry in the song cycles Ariel and Last Poems of Wallace Stevens. Completed in fulfillment of Doctor of Musical Arts degree. Publication pending.

Fellow, Vocal Piano
        Tanglewood Music Center, Lenox, MA, 2001, 2002

Double Master of Music in Piano Performance and Collaborative Piano, 1998
        Cleveland Institute of Music, Cleveland, OH

Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance with an English minor, Dec. 1995
        Cleveland Institute of Music, Cleveland, OH

Undergraduate Double-degree program in English and Piano Performance, 1989-1992
        Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, OH