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ANSON KA LIK SIN, Pianist

Anson Ka Lik Sin

Anson Ka Lik Sin is nineteen years old. A native of Hong Kong, he began studying piano at age six and violin at age twelve. At the Royal School of Music in England he passed the grade eight piano with distinction and the grade eight violin with merit. When he returned to Hong Kong, Anson was a piano accompanist and academic advisor. In 2011, he was taught in the piano master class by the great pianist Alexander Tutunov, who is widely recognized as one of the most outstanding virtuosos of the former Soviet Union. Last year he won third place in piano in the Young Artist Competition at the 61st Hong Kong Schools Music Festival.

While attending Peninsula College in Port Angeles, 2011 to 2013, he studied with Professor Kristin Quigley Brye, music director and conductor of Port Angeles Light Opera Company, and Heather Marie Ray, concertmaster in the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra. During the 2012-2013 concert season, he played in the first violin section of the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra and the Port Townsend Community Orchestra.

Currently, he is studying in the honors program at Hong Kong Baptist University for a Bachelor of Arts in music. He is also studying the piano with Mr. Cui Shi-Guang, among the greatest composers and teachers in China. (October 2013)

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NANCY BEIER, Vocalist

Ms. Beier had a thirty-year opera career, largely in Europe, specializing in Verdi, Wagner, R. Strauss and Puccini. She sang in Germany, Holland, Italy, Denmark and England, making her European debut as Tosca. 

Since moving to the peninsula in 2001, she has performed in and directed for both the Port Angeles Light Opera Association and the Port Angeles Community Players. In 2012, she was inducted into Oklahoma’s Will Rogers Foundation Hall of Fame.

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SHARON ANNETTE LANDCASTER, Mezzo-soprano

Seattle resident and Canadian mezzo-soprano Sharon Annette Lancaster is a gifted singer and musician actively performing in the Pacific Northwest.

Solo engagements have included performances with the Bellevue Philharmonic and Bellevue Chamber Chorus, the Philharmonia Northwest, Seattle Bach Choir, Seattle Symphony, Seattle Choral Company, Kirkland Choral Society and the Music Center of the Northwest.

She holds a Masters degree in organ and voice performance and teaches privately.

(April 2013)

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MILES VOKURKA, Clarinetist

Miles Vokurka (photo from Peninsula Daily News)

Miles Vokurka was born in Kladno, Czechoslovakia. His mother was an American citizen living abroad and his father was a musician and music store owner. To escape the communist take-over of his country, he and his family emigrated to Chicago in 1948 just in time for him to enroll in an American kindergarten.

He started piano lessons at an early age and then began playing the clarinet in 4th grade in his grade-school band. As a teenager he studied clarinet with Jerome Stowell of the Chicago Symphony and was a member of the Youth Orchestra of Greater Chicago.

He was accepted into Northwestern University as an engineering student, but quickly transferred into the School of Music (where he seemed to be spending most of his time anyway). He was an active member of the NU Student Band Staff working with directors John Paynter and Cecil B. Wilson, and played B-flat soprano and E-flat sopranino clarinet in the NU Symphonic Wind Ensemble.

Miles received a Bachelor of Music Education degree as well as a Masters in Clarinet Performance from Northwestern, and spent over 20 years teaching and directing high school instrumental music in the Chicagoland area.

Miles and his wife, Susan, live a pastoral life in rural Port Townsend with their menagerie of assorted critters: their dog Samantha, 4 cats, 5 chickens, 2 guinea pigs, a parakeet, and pygmy goats Thelma & Louise.

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SUSAN ROE, Soprano

Susan Roe’s radiant soprano voice has been heard throughout California, the Northwest and the East Coast with chamber music ensembles, in oratorio and opera festivals. She has soloed with the Inland Empire Symphony and Master Chorale, the Pasadena Chorale and Orchestra, the Redlands Symphony, the Riverside Master Chorale, the Monterey Bay Chamber Orchestra, the Cabrillo Opera Festival and the Bach Aria Festival in New York.

In 2007, Ms. Roe had the pleasure of performing with Dewey Ehling and the Peninsula Singers. She is delighted to have the opportunity once again to work with Maestro Ehling in his role as conductor of the Port Townsend Orchestra.

Ms. Roe made her international operatic debut in the role of Musetta at the Cairo Opera House in 1996 in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s LaBohème.

Reviewers of Ms. Roe’s operatic performances praise her “impressive vocal gift, which she uses with beauty and subtlety” and attest that she is “as effective an actress as she is a singer.” Other credits include performance fellowships awarded by the Gluck Foundation (2002-2005), a recital funded by the Riverside Arts Foundation and several performances of Carlisle Floyd’s opera Susannah, funded by a California State University grant-award, in which she was recognized for “Excellence in Theatre.”

In 2004, Ms. Roe earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in Vocal Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to performing, she has taught at the University of California, Riverside, UCLA and California Baptist University, Riverside.

(April 2012)