El Paso Opera in conjunction with the El Paso Museum of Art present:
The event will star tenor Jeffrey Lentz and directed by David Grabarkewitz with video by Coco Bernal and accompanied by pianist Dr. Benjamin Loeb. Â The event will include a reception with wine and hors d’oeuvres and free admission tickets to the Art as Life-Rembrandt, Rubens and Golden Age Painting in Europe 1600-1900 from the Speed Art Museum.
There will be an encore presentation on Sunday, December 2, 2012 at 2 p.m. Â Concert Only. Tickets are $25.00 per person.
Call the El Paso Opera offices for more information or to purchase your ticket 915-581-5534.
Jeffrey Lentz, tenor
According to music critic, David Patrick Stearns, “Jeffrey Lentz is carving out one of the mostsingular careers in opera.†He has graced the stages of many of the worldʼs finest opera andconcert houses, including Londonʼs Barbican Hall, Carnegie Hall, Theatre de La Monnaie, TheGlyndebourne Festival, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, OperaZuid, and the Garsington Festival. Specializing in new works, Jeffrey first garnered internationalattention during his European debut in 1996 at the Opera de Monte Carlo performing the title rolein the world premiere of Lowell Liebermannʼs opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 2002, hemade his West End Theatre debut at Londonʼs Almeida Theatre in the world premiere of JohnCaskenʼs opera, Godʼs Liar. His performances on PBS include the world premieres of both AndrePrevinʼs A Streetcar Named Desire, and the Dratell/Torke/Beaser triptych Central Park forGREAT PERFORMANCES, and a LIVE FROM LINCOLN CENTER broadcast of New York CityOperaʼs production of Brittenʼs Paul Bunyan. In 2004, Jeffrey received a Grammy Awardnomination for his work in Ed Thomasʼ, Desire Under the Elms. In 2006, under the baton ofMaestro Lorin Maazel, Jeffrey debuted at the Kennedy Center in his signature role, Peter Quint, inBenjamin Brittenʼs The Turn of the Screw — a role he has also played at NYCOpera and at theTeatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile. In 2007, Jeffrey returned to the Kennedy Center, this time atthe directorial helm of an award winning production of Samuel Beckettʼs WAITING FOR GODOTat the American College Theatre Festival. Later that summer, he returned to GlimmerglassOpera to play the role of Heurtebise in Philip Glassʼ opera ORPHÉE. In May 2009, he returnedto South America to debut at the Teatro Avenida with the Buenos Aires Lirica as Tom Rakewell inThe Rakeʼs Progress. Recently, he returned to the role of Heurtebise in Glassʼ ORPHÉE atVirginia Opera. Jeffrey makes his home in Reading, PA where he serves as the ongoing Artist inResidence for the Departments of Theatre and Music at Albright College.
Cocol Bernal, Visual Artist
Cocol Bernal, Mexican Visual Artist, began her artistic career at the tender age of 7 in the Philippines where, during a vacation with friends, her drawings of naked women in the shower were burned by her host family for indecency. Bernal herself was condemned to a week without dessert. From this painful beginning came a career involving surrealism, antique anatomical drawings, animal bones, Google Earth, human teeth and road kill – manifested in oil paintings, photography, mixed media, videos and action figures, which can be found in private collections all over the world. In 2002 Bernal teamed up with stage director, Jeffrey Lentz, at Albright College where she continues to make art involving unusual material and video projections – only this time on stage. To date, Jeff and Cocol have worked on 20 award winning projects, most prominent among which are – Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot which was presented at the Kennedy Center as part of the American College Theatre Festival, Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, an original movement piece based on the characters from Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi entitled The UBU Project; and, most recently, a critically hailed production of Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Bernal has also opened two original plays on the subject of art, memory and travel with Lentz: You Are Here and Fish Out of Water, both of which premiered at Albright College’s Wachovia Theatre. Tangential to these theater projects, Bernal and Lentz have also collaborated on several staged concert evenings under the title, The Nexus Project. Highlights from these interdisciplinary performance events include: Utopia Parkway — an exploration of the artist Joseph Cornell’s work with manipulated imagery set to Faure’s La bonne chanson; and Wonderlust – an interactive digital video project animating images collected from Google Earth against Schubert’s haunting song cycle, Die Schöne Müllerin. Cocol Bernal, a Mexican citizen, lives and works in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Benjamin Loeb
Benjamin Loeb, a native Texan, is an accomplished conductor, accompanist, soloist, arranger, educator, and administrator.  The El Paso Inc. hailed him as “a walking genius of unique ideas for making concerts fun to perform and hear.”  His widely varied projects range from concerts of Beethoven and Bruckner Symphonies to recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of Italian 16th century madrigalists to tours with popular rock musicians to world premieres of the most cutting-edge avant-garde contemporary music.  As the Associate Conductor of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra, Loeb founded and served as both Executive and Music Director of the El Paso Symphony Youth Orchestras.  He is also the Founder and Artistic Director of the International Conducting Workshop and Festival, now in its eleventh year, hosted by orchestras around the world. He holds a Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Conservatory in Conducting, as a student of Gustav Meier, a Master in Music from the Curtis Institute and a Doctor in Musical arts from the Juilliard School in Accompanying and a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University.
