She’s been hailed as an artist possessed of “a lovely voice, full of color and body in every register, and the poise to perform unselfconsciously in an intimate space” — a setting of which the reviewer observed, “can be more of a challenge than a large hall with 3,000 people.”
When soprano Alexis Rodda performs a Thursday evening concert at St. Anthony of Padua, she’ll be working on a scale that’s cozier than Carnegie — but she’ll also be feeling very much at home, as the Red Bank resident is a regular choir member at the Bridge Avenue house of worship. And, together with pianist Manon Hutton-DeWys, she’ll help to inaugurate a new series of public-welcome music presentations at St. Anthony’s.
Voice students around the Greater Red Bank Green may know Rodda as a highly regarded instructor at Monmouth Vocal Studio, the borough-based business that she founded last year. Music educators and professionals around the tri-state region know her as the winner of several prestigious awards and competitions, most recently the Violetta DuPont Competition for 2016. The acclaimed young singer is also a recipient of a five-year fellowship at New York’s CUNY Graduate Center, where she is currently going for her doctorate in music performance.
For their program scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m., Rodda and Hutton-DeWys will perform a pair of selections which, while written more than a century apart from each other, are characterized as “two massively important works of the Romantic era of classical music.” The 1841 “Les nuits d’Ă©tĂ© (Summer Nights)” by Hector Berlioz is followed by the “Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs)” of Richard Strauss, completed in 1948 but not premiered until nearly a year after the composer’s 1949 death.
Tickets are priced at $10 and amy be purchased at the door or reserved in advance by calling (732)747-0813. All proceeds will benefit the music ministry at St. Anthony. Additional information on this and other events in the series can be obtained by emailing [email protected].