Singing Down the Barriers

Louise Toppin has received critical acclaim for her operatic, orchestral, and oratorio performances in the United States, Europe, Czech Republic, Sweden, Uruguay, Scotland, China, England, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Bermuda, Japan, and Spain.

Toppin has appeared in recital on many concert series including Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Kennedy Center, and Lincoln Center. Orchestral appearances include: the Norrköping Symphony (Sweden), the Czech National Symphony, Mälmo Symphony Orchestra, (Sweden), Tokyo City Orchestra (Japan), The Montevideo Philharmonic (Uruguay), the Scotland Festival Orchestra (Aberdeen, Scotland), the Honolulu, Toledo, Canton, North Carolina, Charlotte, Lafayette, Erie Chamber and Raleigh Chamber Symphony Orchestras, The Bach Aria Group, Phoenix Bach Consort, and the Washington D.C. Bach Consort with conductors such as: Murry Sidlin, Paul Freeman, Richard Aulden Clark, Justin Brown, James Meena, Vladmir Ashkenazy, and Gearhart Zimmerman.

Toppin’s opera roles include: the title role in the world premiere of the opera Luyala by William Banfield, Treemonisha in Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, Mary in William Grant Still’s Highway One, Maria in the world premiere of Joel Feigin’s opera Twelfth Night, the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Magic Flute, Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Clara in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. She most recently was contracted to sing Clara in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for Baltimore Opera, Opera Carolina, and Piedmont Opera companies.

Toppin joined the voice faculty of SMTD in the fall of 2017 and holds a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professorship.

Christie Finn is actively involved in the world of contemporary vocal performance as both a performer and scholar. For two decades, Finn has maintained a career as a singer and vocalist in her native United States as well as throughout Europe, performing with important new music ensembles like Asko | Schönberg (NL), ekmeles (USA), ensemble TaG (CH), ensemble variances (FR), Hezarfen Ensemble (TR), ictus (BE) and many others. Her performance career is enhanced by her work as a scholar, having presented research papers relating to contemporary vocal music and gender and race studies at international conferences such as that of the American Musicological Society and the Theatre and Performance Research Association (UK). With her experience and research, she is currently working on her dissertation in Historical Musicology (Dr. phil) at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (DE) while maintaining her performing career.

Additionally, for over a decade, Finn has served as the Managing Director of baritone Thomas Hampson’s Hampsong Foundation, a non-profit organization promoting intercultural understanding and dialogue through the art of song. As a scholar and administrator, Finn has worked with Hampson since 2009 on projects like the Song of America database and radio series (SongofAmerica.net), the Song of America radio series and Curriculum Initiative, and special projects like the 2021 music festival Song of America: A Celebration of Black Music in Hamburg, Germany.

Caroline Helton is a pedagogue, performer and researcher who teaches Voice in the Department of Musical Theatre at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Over the past decade, she has performed and recorded classic song repertoire by composers whose art was suppressed, and through her teaching, recordings, and publications, she is a tireless advocate for integrating the canon of American vocal music to reflect and respect its true diversity.

As a concert and recording artist, Dr. Helton’s area of interest is bringing to light newly rediscovered repertoire by Jewish composers whose lives were affected by World War II. Along with pianist Dr. Kathryn Goodson, the duo has recorded three compact discs of rare song repertoire by Italian Jewish composers from the first half of the twentieth century, in collaboration with Aloma Bardi, musicologist and President of the International Center for American Music. Their series of recordings is entitled Songs from a Lost World of Italian Jewish Composers, and features first recordings of art songs by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Vittorio Rieti, Leone Sinigaglia, Renzo Massarani and Guido Alberto Fano, among others.

Emery Stephens, baritone, joined the music faculty at St. Olaf College in 2019, where he teaches voice students and music-related courses. Praised by the Boston Phoenix for his singing “with ringing suavity and articulate intelligence,” he performs a diverse vocal repertoire, from traditional to contemporary. A versatile and charismatic singer, Dr. Stephens has performed with the Boston Art Song Society, Bridge Chamber Music Festival, Abridged Opera of Ontario, Wilmington Symphony, Carolina Ballet with members of the North Carolina Symphony, Arbor Opera Theater, Michigan Philharmonic, Ann Arbor Symphony, Boston Lyric Opera/Opera New England, Michigan Philharmonic, Michigan Opera Theatre’s Community Education Programs, and the Detroit Jazz Festival in a revival of Dave Brubeck’s The Gates of Justice with renowned jazz pianist Jason Moran and his trio, The Bandwagon. He has performed works by American composers, such as True Witness: A Civil Rights Cantata by Jodi Goble and the role of Brother Dosher in a blues opera De Organizer by James P. Johnson with lyricist Langston Hughes, recorded by Naxos Music. As a narrator, he has collaborated with Michigan Philharmonic on the Passion of John Brown by Jesse Ayers and Paddle to the Sea by Andre Meyers, and the jazz-inspired Sweet Music in Harlem premiere by Andy Kirschner with the Ann Arbor Symphony.

Robert Sims, Gold Medal winner of the American Traditions Competition, has been hailed by critics for his rich tone, energetic performances, and convincing stage presence. Robert made his debut with Chicago Opera Theater in the world premiere of Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride and produced Masters of the Spiritual at New York’s Lincoln Center. He has appeared as the leading baritone in The James Baldwin Chronicles with Renee Baker and the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project, and as Pangloss in Bernstein’s Candide with the Oakland Symphony. Robert has toured Germany, Austria and Switzerland as the featured soloist with Roland Carter and the inSpirit Male Chorus performing spirituals of Noah Ryder, Roland Carter and Roland Hayes. Since his solo debut at Carnegie Hall in 2005 (featuring a special appearance by the late Odetta), Sims has made several appearances at that venue performing the spirituals of Jacqueline B. Hairston, and most notably as a featured soloist in the 2009 series, Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy (at the invitation of Jessye Norman). His most recent Carnegie performance was a recital honoring the late Sylvia Olden Lee. Sims has been presented in the Bay Area numerous times by Four Seasons Concerts founded by the late Dr. W. Hazaiah Williams. He sang the world premiere of Alice Walker’s Peace is Always a Good Idea for the Afro Solo Music Festival in San Francisco and Noah Gasser’s Black Suite Blues with the Oakland Symphony Orchestra.

He has been presented in concert by Friends of Negro Spirituals and has premiered Lena McLin’s I’m a Soldier with the Chicago Sinfonietta among other orchestras throughout the U.S. Sims founded and toured nationally with the ensemble, Three Generations. This trio which specializes in American spirituals and folk songs has included the renowned George Shirley, Kenneth Overton, the late William Warfield and Benjamin Matthews. He has also performed with the trio Simon, Sykes & Sims (with Simon Estes and Jubilant Sykes) singing spirituals and American songs. Sims has appeared on numerous radio and television programs including Bill McLaughlin’s Exploring Music, NPR’s Performance Today, The Leonard Lopate Show, Conversations with Ed Tracy, The Gospel Experience with Emmit Powell, The Studs Terkel Program, and two PBS specials, In the Spirit, and the just released Voices for Freedom: the Hyers Sisters’ Dream, Change, and Legacy. Sims has performed as a soloist with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the televised Songs from the Soul with Robert Sims: A Heritage Special. He had several engagements on Hour of Power from the Crystal Cathedral. He has sung at New York’s Lincoln Center with the Ritz Chamber Players and a solo recital, “The Spirituals of Roland Hayes” narrated by George Shirley. Sims has worked with several composers and arrangers including Lena McLin, David Baker, Moses Hogan, Roland Carter, Undine Smith Moore, Jacqueline Hairston, Wendell Logan, William Dawson, and Brazeal Dennard.

He recently released a CD of spirituals arranged by Roland Hayes which accompanied the prize-winning biography of the celebrated tenor, Roland Hayes: The Legacy of an American Tenor (in collaboration with Christopher A. Brooks, Indiana University Press 2015). Other recordings include Songs From Spoon River by Lita Grier, Soul of a Singer, In the Spirit, and Three Generations. He has three recordings produced by the late Moses Hogan including Home in a-Dat Rock, Deep River, and La Magie des plus beaux Negro spirituals. After winning the Friedrich Schorr Competition, Mr. Sims appeared in Massenet’s Cendrillon, which won the National Opera America Award. He made his Goodman Theater debut in Kurt Weil’s Lost In the Stars under the direction of Frank Galati, and sang the role of Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale with Opera Carolina. His other operatic credits include roles in Romeo et Juliette, Die Zauberflöte, Porgy and Bess, La Traviata, I Pagliacci, Cosi Fan Tutte and Le Nozze di Figaro. He is the recipient of the Living Heritage Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and the Friends of Negro Spirituals Heritage Keeper’s Award. Mr. Sims is the donor of the Robert Sims Spiritual Prize for the George Shirley Vocal Competition. He is an alumnus of Oberlin Conservatory, SUNY Binghamton, Northwestern University, and Music Academy of the West. For more information visit RobertSims.com.

Soprano Leah Hawkins is the recipient of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2024 Beverly Sills Artist Award and a graduate of their Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. Additional honors include the Marian Anderson Award, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Women in Classical Music Career Advancement Award, and a Richard Tucker Foundation Career Grant.

Highlights of the 24/25 season include her San Francisco Symphony debut in Verdi’s Messa da Requiem conducted by Esa Pekka-Salonen, and a return to Arizona Opera for her highly anticipated titular role debut in Aida. On the concert stage she returns to the Philadelphia Orchestra for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, joins the Apollo Orchestra as a guest soloist in a concert of Verdi Arias, and returns to the Park Avenue Armory for a self-curated recital entitled C’est ainsi que tu es or That is how you are, which is “a glimpse into my ongoing journey of finding, accepting, and living as my truest self.” Future engagements include debuts with La Monnaie / De Munt and the Dallas Opera, along with returns to the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Last season, Hawkins returned to the Metropolitan Opera as the Soprano Soloist in Verdi’s Requiem, and performed Musetta in La bohème with the Philadelphia Orchestra, both conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Other season engagements included a role debut in Anthony Davis’ X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (Louise/Betty) with the Metropolitan Opera and Seattle Opera. In the spring, she made her role and house debut at Dutch National Opera in a new production of Il tabarro (Giorgetta) directed by Barrie Kosky. On the concert stage she performed the Dvořák Requiem with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.