Past Artists

Carley DeFranco

Soprano

Carley DeFranco is a Boston-based soprano whose voice and spirit defy genre. The 2021-22 season brings her débuts with Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Art Song Society and Grammy-nominated True Concord.

Carley is proud to have sung more than 60 cantatas with Emmanuel Music in their weekly Bach Cantata Series as well as the Mass in B Minor, St. Matthew Passion, St. Mark Passion, Easter Oratorio, John Harbison’s Supper at Emmaus, Abraham, Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day and Angelo in the staged recording of La Resurrezione. Her solo cantata highlights from Emmanuel Music include Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen! BWV 51, Selig ist der Mann BWV 57, and Ach Gott wie manches Herzeleid, BWV 58. 

An avid performer of oratorio, Carley has appeared as soprano soloist with the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra (Mozart’s Requiem), North Carolina Master Chorale (Handel’s Alexander’s Feast), American Bach Soloists Academy (Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl, BWV 198), and Arlington Philharmonic Orchestra (Gounod’s Messe Solenelle, Saint Saëns’ Oratorio de Noël, Schubert’s Mass in Eb Major).

Carley’s operatic credits include Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro) with Boston Opera Collaborative and Greater Worcester Opera, Lucy Lockit (The Beggar’s Opera) with Emmanuel Music, The Rose (The Little Prince) with NEMPAC Opera Project, the title role in Alcina with Opera del West, Yvette (La Rondine) with Boston Opera Collaborative, Nannetta (Falstaff) with Emerald City Opera and many world premieres in Boston Opera Collaborative’s critically-acclaimed annual festival of ten-minute operas: Opera Bites. She is known for her committed dramatic portrayals; Boston Musical Intelligencer called her performance as Lucy Lockit “a joy to watch and hear” and her performance in Boston Opera Collaborative’s staged Frauenliebe und Leben “almost filmic in its realism”.

In demand for her performances of new music by American composers, Carley has given premieres at the Kennedy Center, Fog X FLO on the Emerald Necklace, New England Conservatory, Middlesex Community College, Mount Holyoke College, Longy School of Music, and American University.

While all performing is founded in community, Carley finds special joy in singing at gatherings and community events. She has performed pop-up opera at the Roslindale Holiday Wander, sung from the back of a pick-up truck with Mass Opera, curated and performed concerts with Boston Opera Collaborative on the Emerald Necklace Series and throughout Boston, hosted private Zoom concerts with Emmanuel Music’s Musical Conversations initiative and given many tailored programs at birthday parties, wedding celebrations and holiday affairs.

Carley was the 2018-19 Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Fellow with Emmanuel Music, a 2019 Fellow with American Bach Soloists, and a finalist for the American Prize (Professional Division) in Oratorio/Art song. She received her Master’s in Music (Vocal Performance) from The Longy School of Music at Bard College. 

Junhan Choi

Baritone

Praised for his “splendid baritone voice, rich and rounded”, baritone Junhan Choi, a native of South Korea, is an active opera and concert singer. In the 2021-2022 season, engagements included his role Barone Douphol in La Traviata with Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, as The Professor in The Bedbug with Promenade Opera Project as an Artist of Artist-in-Residence, and Death in Savitri, Friedrich in Das Liebesverbot with Cambridge Chamber Ensemble. He is also performing with Boston Opera Collaborative for Aria, a film project, ‘Love in the time of…’ a commissioned song project and for the ‘Opera in the Gardens’ concerts at Elm Bank in Wellesley.

Past operatic credits include title role as Don Giovanni, the Count (Le nozze di Figaro), Dandini (La Cenerentola), Marcello (La Boheme), Escamillo (Carmen), Germont (La traviata), Belcore (L’elisir d’amore), Tideo (Medea in Corinto), Roggiero (Tancredi), Melisso (Alcina), Baron de Pictordu (Cendrillon), Eisenstein (Die Fledermaus), Geôlier (Dialogues des Carmélites), and Valdeburgo (La Straniera).

He was awarded the Gold Medal at the Berliner International Music Competition in 2018 and at the 54th Viñas International Voice Competition 2017 in Barcelona, he was the recipient of the Extraordinary Prize. During that competition, Mr. Choi was also awarded three special prizes for Best Performer of Oratorio-Lied. As a first prize recipient of 2017 Talents of the World International Voice Competition, he made his Carnegie Hall debut for ‘Tribute to Dmitri Hvorostovsky’ concert as a baritone soloist. He also won first place in 2017 MassOpera’s Vocal Competition, was awarded 4th place and audience favorite prize in the 2017 Rochester’s Classical Idol Vocal Competition, and the 2016 St. Botolph Emerging Artist Grant for excellence in music.

Mr. Choi hold a Master’s degree and a Graduate Diploma with a Presidential Scholarship from New England Conservatory of Music. His opera roles at NEC include Papageno (Die Zauberflöte), Guglielmo (Cosi fan tutte), Oreste (Iphigénie en Tauride), Gianni Schicchi (Gianni Schicchi), Revírník (Příhody lišky Bystroušky), Claudio (Agrippina), Monsu Traversen (La Gazzetta), Der Tod (Der Kaiser von Atlantis), Liberto/Littore/Soldato (L'incoronazione di Poppea), Eisenstein (Die Fledermaus), Policeman (The Consul), and Thierry/Javelinot/Officer (Dialogues of the Carmelites).

Concert credits include Handel’s Messiah, Israel in Egypt, Bach’s St. John Passion, Magnificat, BWV 7, 56, 74, 75, 80, Verdi’s Requiem, Brahms’s Requiem, Faure’s Requiem, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Duruflé’s Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Stainer’s The Crucifixion, Wood’s St. Mark Passion and Ramirez’s Navidad Nuestra.

Lisa Williamson

Soprano

Described by the Washington Post as “silvery of voice” and “a showstopper” for her recent performances with Washington National Opera as The Rose in The Little Prince and The Flamingo in the world premiere of Jeanine Tesori’s The Lion, the Unicorn and Me, soprano Lisa Williamson is a versatile singer who has forged a diverse career that has taken her around the world from Muscat, Oman to the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall to the Indianapolis Brickyard.

In a dynamic 2018-19 season she created the role of Bessie Coleman, the first Black American female pilot, in the world-premiere production of Douglas Buchanan and Caitlin Vincent's Sackler Prize-Winning opera Bessie and Ma, returned to the New Haven Symphony for the stratospheric soprano solos in Carmina Burana, and showed off her comedic timing as Amalia in She Loves Me at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts with UConn Opera. In the 2017-18 season she joined the Hartford Symphony Orchestra for Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Carmina Burana, returned to The Glimmerglass Festival to sing The Rose in The Little Prince and sang title roles in Cendrillon and Suor Angelica at UConn Opera. Other recent highlights include her debut with Portland Opera in a double bill of David Lang's the difficulty of crossing a field and the little match girl passion, singing Virginia Creeper and the soprano soloist, Laurie in The Tender Land with Hartford Opera Theater in partnership with the American School for the Deaf in a production in she also communicated using American Sign Language, Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra Pops, Die Fledermaus and La Bohème (Opera Theater of Connecticut), the little match girl passion (The Glimmerglass Festival), The Music Man (Royal Opera House, Muscat in Oman), and Wonderful Town (Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, Italy).

Ms. Williamson is a dedicated recitalist with a passion for American repertoire, from Songbook to art song, with a special emphasis on works by women and African-American composers. She was a Marc and Eva Stern Fellow at the United States’ premiere art song festival, Songfest, where she worked with composers Jake Heggie, Libby Larsen, and John Musto, and presented the world premiere of James Primosh’s song “Shadow Memory.” In 2013 she performed in The Song Continues with Marilyn Horne, the Weill Music Institute’s Professional Training Program at Carnegie Hall and in 2017 she curated and presented a solo recital of art song with text by Harlem Renaissance writers at The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale in collaboration with the exhibit, "Gather Out of Star-Dust." Williamson is a founding member of the Bassless Trio, a first-of-its-kind chamber ensemble made up of soprano voice, cello, and saxophone. The group made its debut in 2018, premiering six new works written for them and has performed throughout Connecticut and New York.

From 2005-2010, Ms. Williamson was the vocal soloist with The United States Coast Guard Band. In her more than two hundred performances with the Coast Guard Band she performed in thirty-four states in the U.S. and throughout Japan singing a variety of repertoire from opera arias to the American Songbook, and twice performing the National Anthem at the Indianapolis 500 for live audiences of over 400,000 and millions on television worldwide.

Ms. Williamson is a candidate for a Doctor of Musical Arts at UConn, and also holds a Master of Music in voice from the Yale School of Music, a Performer’s Certificate from UConn, and a Bachelor of Music in voice performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University. The daughter of premiere military band musicians, Lisa is a native of Alexandria, Virginia. She now makes her home in Connecticut with her husband, Commander Adam Williamson, the director of the United States Coast Guard Band, and their son.

Brett Hodgdon

Pianist

Brett Hodgdon is the chorus master and principal coach at Boston Lyric Opera, where he has served on the company’s music staff for over two dozen productions since 2011. In addition to his work at Boston Lyric Opera, Hodgdon has been a rehearsal pianist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2008, having rehearsed and coached vocal programs for music director Andris Nelsons and many guest conductors, most recently preparing the children’s chorus for the BSO’s March 2022 concerts of Wozzeck at Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall. He has maintained frequent collaborations with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Symphony Children’s Chorus, both as pianist and rehearsal conductor. A frequent performer with the Emmanuel Music Chamber Series in Boston, he has also been rehearsal pianist and coach for their weekly Bach Cantata Series since 2006.

Hodgdon serves on the opera coaching and song repertoire faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music. In November 2021, he conducted the NEC Graduate Opera in the Boston premiere of Ana Sokolović’s a cappella opera Svadba. Additionally, Hodgdon teaches courses including graduate diction at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Previously he served as music director of the University of Connecticut Opera Theater for eight seasons, conducting over a dozen operas during his time there.

Since 2014, he has spent his summers on the coaching faculty of Si Parla, Si Canta! in Arona, Italy, where he made his international conducting debut with the Orchestra Sinfonica Carlo Coccia di Novara in 2019. He is delighted to be joining the guest faculty of Canto-Louisville in the summer of 2022.

He received the D.M.A. in Collaborative Piano from the New England Conservatory (2014), where he studied piano with Irma Vallecillo and Cameron Stowe, and opera and vocal repertoire with John Greer and John Moriarty. He holds the M.M. in Accompanying and Chamber Music and the B.M. in Piano Performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Mason Bynes

2021-2022 Composer in Residence

Mason Bynes is a composer, vocalist and multimedia artist from Sugar Land, TX. In a post-modern tradition, she pulls from various stylistic sources, blurring the line between traditionalism and modernism. Her goal in creating music and art is to bridge the gap between genre and performance setting and venue, synthesizing genre, sound aesthetics and visual curations to bring listeners, and ultimately people, together. She received her Master of Music in Composition from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and she also holds a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the University of North Texas.

​During her undergraduate studies, Mason collaborated in projects for commercial music, concert music and media. As a film composer, her success includes being selected for the 2020 Fort Worth Indie Film Showcase for Priyanka Shah’s film, “Cross Roads.” Mason has also written for a cappella pop vocal group the UNT Green Tones, who performed her music in competition for the International Championship of Collegiate A Capella.

Mason’s curiosity fuels her pursuit of collaboration in a myriad of artistic mediums, including film, spoken word, music for acoustic performance, and even the culinary arts. Her passion for bringing listeners together has sparked a variety of commissions with various ensembles and composer led initiatives, including: The Westerlies & Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT), The National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), Ex-Aequo, Bass Players for Black Composers, and Lumedia Musicworks. Recently, Mason’s music has been featured with the North End Music and Performing Arts Center (NEMPAC), the International Society of Bassists, Dallas Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, BBC Radio 3, IDAGIO Live, and Green Leaf Music Podcast. She has also appeared in interviews with CBS, NBC -DFW and Fox 4News. Additionally, Mason was honored to have been the University of North Texas College of Music's 2021 Commencement Speaker.

In addition to serving on the film/tv composition team at Raging Cloud Studios, Mason also works as a Career Services Advisor at the Berklee Career Center. In this role, she enjoys serving her musical community by educating Berklee's undergraduate, graduate and online students from Berklee and Boston Conservatory at Berklee on trends and issues in their chosen fields of study, providing knowledge that can help them achieve a competitive edge and connect them to alumni and employers for information, mentorship, jobs and internships.

Hayes Cummings

Electric guitarist

Originally from the piedmont of North Carolina, Hayes Cummings is a Boston based guitarist, improviser, composer, and educator. He is interested in and inspired by the American styles of jazz, bluegrass, rock and folk music.

Hayes is a composer and arranger for his group, The Still Point, playing jazz and rock-n-roll influenced original compositions. As a sideman, he can be regularly heard performing with The Old North, a New England folk trio, as well as with the band Cordis, of which Billboard Magazine said, “Cordis sets itself apart through sparkling moments that defy classification.”

Hayes is a committed educator who maintains a private studio and is on faculty at Brookline Music School and Dexter Southfield School. He brings unique offerings to his students as he is also a certified Alexander Technique teacher and a student of mind body studies. Hayes holds a bachelors degree in classical guitar performance from Appalachian State University and a masters degree in Jazz and Contemporary studies at Longy School of Music. He trained in the Alexander Technique under Tommy Thompson at the Cambridge Center for Alexander Technique.

Elizabeth England

Oboist

Elizabeth England joined the Boston Ballet Orchestra in 2016 where she plays second oboe and English horn. In addition to her work with the Ballet, Ms. England maintains a busy freelance schedule with many of New England’s finest ensembles. Ms. England is a member of Vento Chiaro, one of the nation’s leading woodwind quintets, holding residencies at the Virginia Arts Festival and serving as the ensemble in residence at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.

Always keen to empower the next generation of oboists, Ms. England has served on the faculty at New England Conservatory Preparatory School since 2015. She also teaches at Brandeis University, Wellesley Public Schools, and has given masterclasses at University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A dedicated advocate of new music, Ms. England has performed with Sound Icon, Harvard’s Fromm Players, East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, Equilibrium Ensemble, Ludovico Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, East Coast Scoring, and the Boston Microtonal Society. In February 2019, she appeared as soloist with Sound Icon in Klaus Lang’s oboe concerto, Der Dünne Wal, as part of the composer’s residency with the Boston University Center for New Music. Ms. England can be heard on recordings for Navona, Tzadik, Why Twist The Hair, and Ludovico Ensemble records.

Originally from Edina, Minnesota, Ms. England holds a Bachelor of Music degree from New England Conservatory where she studied with Mark McEwen. In 2013, she was a recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation’s Emerging Artist in Music Award.