Sewickley Music Club luncheon set

Sewickley Music Club members will gather at Montour Country Club in Moon for their annual meeting and spring luncheon on May 14 at 11:30 a.m. Katy Williams (soprano) accompanied by Ellen Rissinger (pianist) with perform “From Mozart to Broadway.”

Katy Williams has performed the Fiddlesticks Family Concerts for the past 10 years. She also sings with the Pittsburgh Opera, Civic Light Opera, Quantum Theater, the Mendelssohn Choir, Pittsburgh Opera Theater, Pittsburgh Concert Chorale and River City Brass Band. She has also had the frequent pleasure of singing with Maestro Larry Loh’s Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic and in Syracuse, N.Y., with Symphoria!, in addition to Maestro Lucas Richman’s Knoxville Symphony Orchestra in Tennessee and with Bangor Symphony Orchestr in Maine.

Williams was a featured soloist for the PSO Holiday Pops concert series, singing the Marvin Hamlisch original song “Take Me to Christmas Past.” She made her Pittsburgh Symphony debut in 2005 with Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and has been a frequent guest artist ever since. She was the boy soprano voice in Howard Shore’s Heinz Hall performance of “The Lord of the Rings.”

Currently, Williams is a chorister in Pittsburgh Opera and is adjunct music staff at Point Park University and Washington and Jefferson College. She is the soprano soloist at Rodef Shalom, Oakland, and the vocal artist-in-residence at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Lebanon. She is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a bachelor of fine arts degree in vocal performance. She lives in Mt. Lebanon with her husband, children and two dogs.

Ellen Rissinger is an American vocal coach/collaborative pianist who came to European attention in December of 2008 when she accompanied a performance of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf on one hour’s notice. Much of her career was spent in Germany, including eight seasons on the music staff of the Sächsische Staatsoper (Semperoper) in Dresden, Germany. In July 2019, she returned to the U.S. full-time.

She has since been on the music staff of Wolf Trap Opera and joined the music faculty of Carnegie Mellon University in the fall of 2020.

She has coached and given master classes for several music programs in Europe, including The Centre for Operatic Studies (COSI) in Sulmona, Italy; the Scandinavian Vocal Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden; The International Performing Arts Institute (IPAI) in Kiefersfelden, Germany; The International Music Festival of the Adriatic in Duino, Italy; University of Miami’s summer program in Salzburg, Austria; AIMS in Graz, Austria; as well as at several universities in the US, including University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Eastern Michigan University; Boston Conservatory; Oklahoma City University; Murray State University and the Boston NATS Chapter among others.

As a founder, producer and host of The Diction Police podcast since April 2010, she has led the way for classical singers and coaches from all over the world to hone their foreign language skills.

There are currently 10 openings for membership in The Sewickley Music Club. For an application, contact Donna Pavlis at 412-498-6352. To learn more about SMC, check out our Facebook page.