American lyric tenor Eric Fennell is a six season veteran of New York City Opera where he compiled thirteen different rôles, and has performed with other prestigious American companies, including San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Arizona Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, and the Spoleto Festival, as well as singing Rodolfo in Baz Luhrman’s La Bohème on Broadway. Internationally, he has appeared with the Tokyo City Orchestra, Cairo Symphony, Macau International Opera Festival, Latvian National Symphony, and Deutsche Oper am Rhein.

Mezzo-soprano Patricia Risley’s operatic performances encompass leading rôles in works of Mozart, Rossini, Handel, Gounod, Monteverdi, Strauss, Haydn, and Purcell with companies worldwide including those in New York City, Chicago, Madrid, Berlin, Houston, Santa Fe, Innsbruck, Salt Lake City, Palm Beach, and Denver as well as performances in contemporary repertoire including world premières and recent works of Bolcom, Pasatieri, Adès, Machover, Harbison, and Dove. Additionally, she has joined the New York Philharmonic, Boston Baroque, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Grant Park Music Festival, and Oregon Symphony as a concert soloist.

Mezzo-soprano Alison Tupay’s operatic credits include Der Trommler (Der Kaiser von Atlantis), Sesto (La clemenza di Tito), Jocasta (Oedipus Rex), Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia), and Pitti-Sing (The Mikado). Her orchestral credits include Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3, Verdi’s Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. She is a graduate of Boston University and The Juilliard School.

The Monocacy Chamber Orchestra was founded in 2007 by Paul Salerni. The orchestra combines emerging and experienced musicians from the Lehigh Valley in order to give lively concerts that include accepted and new masterpieces for chamber orchestra. Soloists for the concerts are chosen from members of the orchestra. In its three seasons, the Monocacy has given seven concerts under the baton of Artistic Director Paul Salerni, Principal Guest Conductor Donald Spieth, and Guest Conductor Eugene Albulescu. With Donald Spieth and Guest Conductor Jung-Ho Pak at the helm, it also served as the orchestra for Operas on Operas, a presentation of two-one act operas that featured Salerni’s Tony Caruso’s Final Broadcast. Under Donald Spieth’s direction, it was the featured orchestra on a CD of Salerni’s compositions and arrangements entitled Dances and Fables.

Jung-Ho Pak is currently Artistic Director and Conductor of Orchestra Nova San Diego, and the Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra, as well as Director of Orchestras and Music Director of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He is also Music Director Emeritus of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and former Music Director of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra.

Composer Paul Salerni’s music pulses “with life, witty musical ideas and instrumental color (Philadelphia Inquirer)” and has been described by The New York Times as “impressive” and “playful.” Salerni’s song cycles and chamber music have been widely performed in Europe, China, the United States, and Canada, and he has had orchestral commissions from the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony, the Cape Cod Symphony, and the Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra, among others. Salerni is the NEH Distinguished Chair in the Humanities at Lehigh, a winner of Lehigh’s highest acknowledgment of teaching excellence (the Stabler Prize), and the past Chair of the Suzuki Association of the Americas Board of Directors. An expert in the music of his teacher Earl Kim, he has presented Kim’s music as a lecturer, conductor, and pianist at the Kennedy Center, the Aspen Festival, the Dall’Abaco Conservatory in Verona, Italy, the Great Mountains Music Festival, and in radio and television broadcasts in Korea. He is currently writing a second one-act opera on a libretto by Kate Light. That new opera is an adaptation of a Dick Van Dyke TV Show episode written and produced by Carl Reiner.