This Weekend, Sag Harbor Song Festival Makes Its Debut at The Church

Lena Kaplan is an opera lover and she has long harbored a dream — to create a musical event on the East End built around the vocal talents of rising stars in the field.

This weekend, that dream becomes a reality with the inaugural Sag Harbor Song Festival, which will be offered September 29 through October 2 at The Church in Sag Harbor and consists of four different concerts highlighting various aspects of vocal performance.

“My life for the last 50 years has been very much about music,” Kaplan, a part time East Hampton resident, said in a recent interview. She explains that classical music was a great passion for both her and her late husband, Gilbert Kaplan, a financial publisher who died in 2016 and found an accidental second career (and a bit of acclaim) as a conductor with a single piece in his repertoire — Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony.

“My husband was on the board of Carnegie Hall. It was like our second home. We were always there, and also at the Met Opera,” said Kaplan. “We both loved opera. We used to go all the time.”

In fact, it was a Metropolitan Opera competition featuring young singers that first inspired Kaplan to pursue the idea of a song festival on the East End.

“I always loved hearing these incredible talents. For a year or more, I thought it would be fun to create a platform for young opera talent, and I was thinking, though my house is in East Hampton, I love Sag Harbor and it’s the one place that really functions all year round and has such a vibrant community,” she said. “I felt it would fit there.”

Initially, Kaplan considered the First Presbyterian (Old Whalers’) Church in Sag Harbor as a potential site for her new festival, but she soon realized the venue was much larger than she could probably manage, particularly in the first year.

Then she mentioned her song festival idea to April Gornik, co-founder of The Church, who said it sounded like a great project for the space.

“At that point, The Church was so new and barely up and running, but it has become a most important artistic center out here,” said Kaplan. “It’s so interesting. It draws different audiences and it’s a beautiful space. It’s not a large space — the capacity would be 125 — but for us, it’s perfect.”

While Kaplan is the visionary behind the Sag Harbor Song Festival, Brad Woolbright serves as the new festival’s artistic director. He comes to the Sag Harbor Song Festival having only recently retired from the Santa Fe Opera as director of artistic administration.

“When [Lena] got in touch with me, she said ‘It’s long been my dream to do this festival, and people said, Here’s who you need to talk to,’” said Woolbright. “She’s like a dog with a bone. We met over lunch, she’s one of the most charming people I’ve ever met. She said, ‘Can we shake on it?’

“The original idea was hers, but she was so gracious and sympathetic to put my input into it,” he added. “It’s her idea. I’m executing the idea.”

Woolbright explains that Kaplan’s concept for the festival was to offer a true potpourri of vocal offerings — from opera and operetta to musical theater and lieder (which is a song written by a composer that is not part of an opera).

“When she mentioned the word ‘festival’ to me that, really clicked — like a festival of music, of dance, of art,” Woolbright noted. “But I think a festival should include all kinds of offerings. She didn’t want all opera, all musicals, all lieder, so we dissected it. Given my operatic experience, a lot on the program is of an operatic nature.”

There are also a lot of pieces on the program that will please musical theater fans, with Sunday’s concert offering numbers from shows like “Wicked,” “Into the Woods,” “West Side Story,” “Sound of Music” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” among others.

Woolbright, who grew up in Centralia, Illinois, and studied dance in college, spent his entire musical career at Santa Fe Opera, beginning in the company’s box office at the tender age of 20. His job required him to spend spring and summer in New Mexico and the rest of the year in New York City, where Santa Fe Opera has an off-season presence.

“I can’t say I was an opera aficionado at the age of 20, but you learn as you go along. I wouldn’t have believed I’d be at the same company 43 years,” said Woolbright who retired from Santa Fe Opera a bit earlier than expected at the end of 2020 due to the arrival of COVID-19.

“I was facing my first summer in New York tearing apart the season in Santa Fe because of COVID. I thought, ‘This is strange,’” he said. “I couldn’t imagine what a 2021 Santa Fe season would look like, and I didn’t want to go out with that being my last season.”

But now, with his retirement officially here and the Sag Harbor Song Festival gearing up, Woolbright is getting to know a new home for music — the East End and The Church.

“It’s really new for me. I had several friends with places out there, but I never went in summer because I was always in Santa Fe,” he explained. “I’d go occasionally to see friends in fall and winter. I’ve spent a little more time there since Lena put together this wild and crazy idea, and I’m looking forward to being out there. It bodes well.”

One of the key components that was important to Woolbright in creating this festival was to bring in Robert Tweten as the musical director. Tweten is head of music staff for the Santa Fe Opera, where he and Woolbright worked together, as well as music director of opera studies for New England Conservatory.

“When we started conceiving Lena’s idea, what we did was involve singers in the repertoire,” explained Woolbright. “We chose our singers and went to them and said send me all your ‘party pieces.’ The singers we engage are busy people, so I didn’t want them learning new stuff.”

The process of pairing musical pieces with singers for the festival began this past spring with Woolbright, who was in Santa Fe for a final opera season, working closely with Tweten to flesh out the program.

“I spent a lot of time with Bob looking at musical choices,” said Woolbright. “Of all the repertoire we came up with, maybe four things we asked singers to learn, but I think you get strength when you get the singers who say this is what I sing best.”

The Sag Harbor Song Festival will consist of four different concerts, one each day, highlighting various aspects of vocal performance, including operatic repertory, musical theater and lieder by six rising stars in the field — soprano Anna Christy, soprano Leah Hawkins, mezzo-soprano Sarah Coit, tenor Jonathan Johnson, baritone Jarrett Ott and bass David Leigh. From Thursday through Saturday, the concerts will be evening performances, while Sunday’s concert will be a matinee geared more toward families.

“Sunday is more family fare and some musical theater. It’s lighter fare,” said Woolbright, who nonetheless, encourages all audience members, even those not familiar with operatic music, to attend as many of the concerts as they can. “The one thing I’ve stressed is, if you come to all four nights, whether you’re a neophyte or aficionado, you will probably recognize a lot of tunes. We wanted to do a mixture of the whole bag. Some might say, ‘I don’t want to come because I’ve never heard of that.’ But it will open eyes.

“I encourage you to come to as much as you can — and you can pick and choose,” he added. “The first night, we’re opening with two arias by Handel, who happens to be one of my favorite baroque composers. We decided to pair the Handel pieces to give the audience members a chance to hear a soprano sing from two different operas by the same composer.

“One thing thrown in, which I love, Anna Christy, our soprano, is fluent in Japanese. She said, ‘I have these three wonderful Japanese songs arranged for me by the Met,’” he added. “The audience will get to hear three songs from a bilingual singer.”

With rehearsals slated to begin at The Church just a few days prior to the first concert, Woolbright is excited by the opportunity to hear the professional singers in the space.

“I can’t wait to hear a voice in there,” he said. “All the wood and that ceiling. I thought, this is going to be great. It’s an inaugural season, we’re all finding our way. I think it’s perfect, knock on wood.”

“There’s nothing more pleasing than standing in the back of the theater and listening to something you were part of producing. I hope, along with the audience members, I’ll stand in back and listen and be proud,” he said. “Doing a second festival is likely. Coming from the classical world, this festival comes at the end of summer but before the fall season gets underway. This is really a prime time for that transition and a festival in a unique setting.”

For Kaplan, what began is an idea and a dream will finally come to fruition this weekend in the form of the Sag Harbor Song Festival.

“It’s our inaugural season. We’ve created this little festival and I think these six singers are of unbelievably high quality … these are really glorious voices,” said Kaplan. “This is something we want to offer the community and it feels really good. My heart is warm from the nice and generous support of people who have given money but also offered help in other ways. We are blessed with an incredible community out here.”

Among those offering support is The American Hotel in Sag Harbor, which will host a welcome dinner for the festival.

“We hope it is a wonderful success, and then we’ll start planning next year and the Sag Harbor Song Festival will just keep going,” she said. “We’ve created something really special here.”

The Sag Harbor Song Festival runs Thursday, September 29, through Sunday, October 2. Concerts are nightly at 6:30 p.m., from Thursday through Saturday, and at noon on Sunday. Individual tickets are $75 and a ticket package for all four concerts is $250. Visit thechurchsagharbor.org for full repertoire and more information.

Thursday, September 29 – 6:30 p.m. Works by Handel, Gounod Mahler, Bizet, Rossini, Koshitani, Narita, Yamada, Samuel Barber and Verdi.

Friday, September 30 – 6:30 p.m. Works by Wagner, Handel, Verdi, Francesco Cilea, Franz Lehar, Debussy and Puccini.

Saturday, October 1 – 6:30 p.m. Works by Rossini, William Grant Still, Richard Strauss, Poulenc, Ravel, Shostakovich, William Bolcom, Lehar and Puccini,

Sunday, October 2 – noon. Henri Duparc, Edith Piaf, Mitch Leigh, Richard Strauss, Sondheim, Bernstein, Maury Yeston, Mary Rodgers, Lucy Simon, Marsha Norman, Stephen Schwartz, Lerner and Loewe, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Bock and Harnick.