Pamela Dellal and Vivian Montgomery | Games and Jokes to Counter Existential Angst

Pamela Dellal is collaborative, analytical, articulate, empathetic, systematic, and integrative. Her primary objective is to ensure that singers own their technique – that they can recognize, reproduce, and develop the tone and production, and creatively explore new ways of producing viable sound. She endeavors to respect each singer’s personal experience; in this way she hopes to earn the student’s trust. She breaks down the study of singing into several physical acts: the breath production, the resonance, and placement. As a highly verbal person, she does not feel that a skill is mastered until it can be fully articulated. She offers the student a detailed description of what they are producing and what they should be seeking, and encourage them to find their own words to describe what they perceive in the physical act of singing. The most important tool she possess is her ability to intuit how something feels to the student by imagining how it might feel in her own body. Her concept of singing technique is an integrated system, considering all the physical mechanisms that contribute to making sound. The final piece of a systematic technique is the ability to apply it to repertoire.

Vivian Montgomery, DMA, is an award-winning harpsichordist and fortepianist who has just completed residence as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the University of Southampton in England. Recipient of Solo Recitalist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she has been praised for her “…exquisite music-making…exceptional for its precision, blend and stylistic unity…sprightly and charming” (Music in Cincinnati) whose “…gestures flowed like harmonious rivulets, building into swift cascades, and even torrents…grabbing the listeners with its ebb and flow” (Boston Musical Intelligencer).

As a faculty member at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Vivian taught early keyboards and historical performance from 2003 through 2013. Having earned her Masters in Early Keyboards from the University of Michigan and the DMA in Early Music from Case Western Reserve University, she has served as Director of the Jurow International Harpsichord Competition since 2009.

Recipient of First Distinction in the Warsaw International Harpsichord Competition, among other competition prizes, Vivian’s performing life encompasses concerto solos, solo recitals, chamber music performances, and vocal accompanying work throughout the United States. She has been heard widely in recent performances of 19th-century American and women’s music, well represented on her new CD release Reviving Song: Spirited Works by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Hélene Montgeroult, and Louis Spohr(Women and Music Project, Brandeis University WSRC), recorded with singer Pamela Dellal and period clarinetist Diane Heffner. Vivian’s work on little-known piano music for domestic use, especially in Antebellum America, is exemplified by the upcoming Centaur Records release entitled Brilliant Variations on Sentimental Songs. While building on collaborations as half of the period instruments duo Adastra (adastraduo.org) and the dynamic Galhano/Montgomery Duo, Vivian has ardently explored the musical lives of women from 1500 to 1900, especially through two decades of cross-disciplinary work with her ensemble, Cecilia’s Circle (ccircle.org). Recordings of music by Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (2005) and Barbara Strozzi (upcoming) by the group are on the Centaur label, and other recordings by Vivian can be found on 10,000 Lakes (Schubert Club) and Innova labels.

Vivian’s work as a conductor has led to engagements directing baroque opera, orchestras, and choirs in Minneapolis (Ex Machina Antique Music Theatre Company and the University of Minnesota), Cleveland (CWRU/CIM Baroque Orchestra and Early Music Singers), Pennsylvania (Dickinson College Collegium), and in her current residence, Boston. Vivian holds a post as a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center (brandeis.edu/wsrc/), where she is founder and co-chair of the Women and Music Mix, an important vehicle for advocacy, concert presentation, and funding of female composers.

As an avid writer of both scholarly articles and personal essay, Vivian is currently bridging the two realms with a collection of pieces on harpsichord playing, teaching, and repertoire, drawing upon a wide array of life experiences, physical/spiritual practices, and vocabulary surrounding expression, movement, and deep listening, honed through years of communicating her ideas to students, colleagues, and audience. Vivian is also an accordion player, and can be heard with her clarinetist son Ezra Morrison as leaders of the Shabbat band Shir Chutzpa at Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland. They live in Medford with Vivian’s husband (Ezra’s father) John Howell Morrison, composer and Longy faculty member.