The Department of Music and Alumni Relations presents its annual alumni concert and reception on Friday, Sept. 25 as part of the UNCW Family and Alumni Weekend. The recital features Mary Claire Curran, lyric soprano (Bachelor of Music in Performance Voice, '11), with Domonique Launey, piano, performing selections from musicals and operas The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Music Man, Into the Woods, The Enchantress, La Bohème, and selections by Francis Poulenc, Alexander Gretchaninoff, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Giacomo Puccini. All proceeds from the concert benefit UNCW scholarships in music for current and future students.
Lyric soprano Mary Claire Curran has performed as a solo artist at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Broadway’s Symphony Space and L.A.’s Marina Stage at the California Plaza. Her degrees include a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from UNC Wilmington and a Master of Music from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. She has performed around the world in Graz, Austria at the American Institute of Musical Studies, Italy with Operafestival di Roma, Salzburg at the University of Miami’s voice program, and Los Angeles as a Young Artist at SongFest.
As a UNCW student, Curran won the Richard R. Deas Student Concerto Competition, performing “Donde lieta” from Puccini’s La Bohème with the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra. She appeared as Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, performed “With One Look” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard with the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra, and was a mezzo-soprano soloist for numerous oratorio concerts and opera productions.
Curran was a 2015 semi-finalist in the Marcello Giordani International Voice Competition, a finalist for the New York Lyric Opera’s National Voice Competition at Weill Recital Hall and a recipient of the Metropolitan Opera National Councils' Encouragement Award. Her operatic roles include Tamara in Rubenstein’s The Demon, Erste Dame in Die Zauberflöte, and Janice in the world premiere of Entanglements.
Accompanying Curran is Domonique Launey, piano, who has performed throughout the world as soloist, chamber musician and accompanist. She has appeared with orchestras including the Wilmington, San Antonio, Oklahoma, Shreveport, Tulare County (California), L’Orchestre de Chapelle Minimes (Belgium), Tallis Chamber and Houston Chamber orchestras, where she performed concerti of Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven and Mozart. In 2010, she performed Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor with the Tulare County Symphony in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth. In October 2011, Launey performed Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-Flat Major with the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra in honor of the composer’s 200th birthday. In the fall of 2014, she collaborated again with the orchestra in a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor. Awards include first place in the Wideman International Piano Concerto Competition and winner of the University of Texas Concerto Competition; she has also performed in Fort Worth, Tex., in the Van Cliburn Competition, and was presented with the Gold Medallion for her solo performance at L’Academie de Musique in Brussels.