Interviews with Musicians

Christine Seitz, Teaching Professor of Music, joined the faculty at the University of Missouri in the fall of 2008, where she is Director of Show-Me Opera and a member of the Voice Faculty. She was a member of the stage directing staff for the Apprentice Artist Program at Des Moines Metro Opera from 2006 through 2013, and she was the founding Opera Director for the Pine Mountain Music Festival in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, directing and producing operas there from 1992 through 2002. She has been a guest director for the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre, the Florentine Opera of Milwaukee (educational outreach productions), the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Luther College. She has created original translations and supertitles for productions at the Florentine Opera of Milwaukee, the Pine Mountain Music Festival, the University of Wisconsin Madison, the Dubuque Symphony and the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Christine Seitz is an established dramatic soprano, and she recently appeared with the Des Moines Metro Opera, singing the role of Madame Larina in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. She has also sung operatic roles with the Seattle Opera, the Dallas Opera, Madison Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Toledo Opera, Kentucky Opera, the Florentine Opera of Milwaukee, Central City Opera, and in Europe with the Wuppertaler Bühnen and the Stadttheater Bern. She sang the leading role of Anna Clemenc in the world premiere of The Children of the Keweenaw, by composer Paul Seitz and librettist Kathleen Masterson, at the 2001 Pine Mountain Music Festival. She has also sung in concert with the MU Choral Union, the Waukesha Symphony, the Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestra, the Caramoor Festival, the Germanfest Symphony in Milwaukee, the Cincinnati May Festival and the Las Vegas Philharmonic. She has sung in numerous recitals in New York City and throughout the Midwest, collaborating with pianists Steven Blier and Jessica Paul, and she has presented voice workshops and master classes in Houghton, Michigan, and the University of California-Irvine.

Professor Seitz is the past Central Region Governor of the National Opera Association, and a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. She received B.Mus. degrees in both applied voice and music education and an M.Mus. in applied voice from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A native of Madison, Wisconsin, she was a two-time winner of the Eastern Wisconsin Metropolitan Opera District Auditions.

James K. Bass, three-time GRAMMY®-nominated singer and conductor, is Professor and Director of Choral Studies at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA. James is on the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and serves as the associate program director for the Professional Choral Institute. He is the Associate Conductor and Director of Education for the Miami based ensemble Seraphic Fire and is the Artistic Director of the Long Beach Camerata Singers.

Bass is an active soloist and ensemble artist. He has appeared with numerous professional vocal ensembles including Seraphic Fire, Conspirare, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Trinity Wall Street, and more. He was the featured baritone soloist on the GRAMMY nominated recording Pablo Neruda: The Poet Sings with the GRAMMY winning ensemble Conpirare. He is one of 13 singers on the GRAMMY®-nominated disc A Seraphic Fire Christmas and appears on many other CD recordings.

His professional career has coincided with the development of Seraphic Fire as one of the premier vocal ensembles in the United States. He has been actively involved as soloist, ensemble artist, editor, producer and preparer for 14 of the ensembles recordings and routinely conducts the ensemble in Miami and on tour. During the summer of 2011 he co-founded the Professional Choral Institute. In its inaugural year of recording, Seraphic Fire and PCI received the GRAMMY® nomination for Best Choral Performance for their recording of Johannes Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem. In 2017 Seraphic Fire and UCLA launched a new educational initiative entitled the Ensemble Artist Program that aims to identify and train the next generation of high-level ensemble singers.

“An elegant, mellifluous and expressive baritone” (New York Times), Charles Wesley Evans has been applauded by The Miami Herald as “the peak of the night’s solo work” and “a warm, strong baritone” by the Washington Post. This Georgia-born baritone began singing professionally at the age of 11 as a chorister at The American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey where he performed nationally and internationally under the baton of notable conductors, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, James Levine, John Williams and Vladimir Spivakov. With a versatility that ranges from the Baroque to Gospel and African-American Spirituals, he has engaged a myriad of audiences with performances of song that are programmed to intrigue the novice and feed the soul of the avid concert goer.
His solo work has offered opportunities across the US with the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Austin Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Delaware Philharmonic, Berkshire Baroque, the Dryden Ensemble, Princeton Pro Musica, Music in Somerset Hills, and the Masterworks Chorus and orchestra in Carnegie Hall. He is a passionate supporter and performer of professional choral practices and is a proud member of the Carmel Bach Festival Chorale (Carmel, CA), Grammy-nominated Seraphic Fire (Miami, FL), The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and the Grammy-award winning ensemble Conspirare (Austin, TX). His singing has been broadcast on New York Public Radio, South Florida Public Radio, California Public Radio and Classical MPR (Minnesota).
He has served on the voice faculties of the University of South Florida, University of Tampa and is currently artist faculty for the Aspen Music Festival (Professional Choral Institute) and Director of Choral and Vocal Studies at Choate Rosemary Hall. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Brewton-Parker College in Mt. Vernon, GA with further study at the Boston Conservatory of Music and Westminster Choir College of Rider University (Princeton, NJ).

Sara Guttenberg, soprano, is highly sought after as a soloist and chamber artist, charming critics and audiences with her “vocal finesse” (South Florida Sun-Sentinel) and “soaring tones” (Miami Herald). Guttenberg is a member of Seraphic Fire and the Berwick Chorus of the Oregon Bach Festival. Known for her vocal versatility, she has performed and recorded music of multiple vocal genres. She is also a featured soloist on Naxos recordings of William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which earned four GRAMMY® awards. Guttenberg has sung under the batons of Nicholas McGegan, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Nelson, Leonard Slatkin, and Helmuth Rilling. Currently, she is pursuing a doctoral degree in Choral Conducting at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, she spent seven years teaching at Southern Utah University, where she conducted multiple ensembles in addition to teaching choral music education classes and applied voice. Guttenberg holds Master’s degrees in Voice Performance and Choral Conducting from University of Michigan, and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education from University of Wisconsin-Madison.