Soprano Josefien Stoppelenberg and Mezzo-Soprano Kate Tombaugh join the Cincinnati Bach Ensemble to perform J. S. Bach’s little known setting of Psalm 51, Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden at Christ Church Cathedral on Tuesday, April 1 at 12:10pm. The performance is part of the Cathedral’s Music Live at Lunch series.
For this work, Bach arrange Pergolesi’s famous Stabat Mater, adjusting it to fit a German translation of Psalm 51, the Lenten psalm known by it’s Latin title “Miserere Mei.”
Josefien Stoppelenberg graduated from the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music in 2005. She is regularly featured as a soloist for oratorio performances in the Netherlands, Germany and the US. She has been called “an astonishing singer” (Chicago Tribune), praised for her “creamy tone, dead-on accuracy and dramatic interpretation” (Chicago Classical Music).
Ms. Stoppelenburg’s recent solo engagements include Handel oratorios with the Baroque Band, Rockford Symphony Orchestra, Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra and the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, the Fauré Requiem with Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra, and the rôle of Aci in Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo and Tirsi in Clori, Tirsi e Fileno with the Haymarket Opera Company, Chicago’s 17th and 18th century opera troupe, which burst onto the scene in 2011 to great critical acclaim;
This season has seen Kate Tombaugh as “Rosina” in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville with the Santa Fe Concert Association (NM), as “Hansel” in Hansel and Gretel with Opera Omaha (NE), as “Meg Page” with Winter Opera St. Louis in Verdi’s Falstaff (MO), and as featured soloist with the Heartland Philharmonic in the State Farm 30th annual “Sounds of Christmas” concert and with the Lexington Philharmonic in Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She premiered her originally-conceived one-woman show “It Just Takes One” in October with Prairie Fire Theatre in Bloomington, IL.
Kate has been very involved in youth music education through directing youth choirs, teaching voice privately, coordinating and teaching music and drama courses, and performing in a multitude of outreach programs geared toward youth. She is a frequent recitalist and has an expansive interest in the varying styles and eras of composition. Concerts featuring Kate have spanned Bach and early music festivals to the premieres of newly-composed works.
The Bach Ensemble at St. Thomas 