Janice Weber & Philip Weber
About the Artists
Janice Weber - Pianist
Janice Weber’s New York recital debut, performed under the pseudonym Lily von Ballmoos, was an early indication of the eclecticism and fluency for which she has become known.
A summa cum laude graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Miss Weber has performed at the White House, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, National Gallery of Art, and Boston’s Symphony Hall. She has appeared with the Boston Pops, Chautauqua Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Hilton Head Orchestra, Sarajevo Philharmonic, and Syracuse Symphony in concertos of Hanson, Sowerby, Stenhammar, Bernstein, and Leroy Anderson as well as the standard repertoire. She has performed at the Bard, Newport, La Gesse, Husum, and Monadnock summer festivals and has returned frequently to China for concerts and master classes under the auspices of the American Liszt Society.
Her interest in the uncommon avenues of the piano literature led to a world premiere recording of Liszt’s 1838 Transcendental Etudes. Time Magazine noted, “Liszt later simplified these pieces into the still ferociously difficult Transcendental Etudes (1852 version) for fear that no one else could play them. There may now be several fire-eating piano virtuosos who can execute the original notes, but few can liberate the prophetic music they contain as masterfully as Janice Weber does here.”
Her recordings include Rachmaninoff’s complete transcriptions; with the Lydian Quartet, Leo Ornstein’s vast Piano Quintet; flute and piano works of Sigfrid Karg-Elert; and waltz transcriptions of Godowsky, Rosenthal, and Friedman. Miss Weber recorded Liszt’s last Hungarian Rhapsody, one of only two living pianists to be included in a compendium of historic performances by nineteen legendary artists. This disc subsequently won the International Liszt Prize. Her Naxos recording of Leo Ornstein’s radical works introduced the charismatic composer to a worldwide audience. She is heard in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time on Ongaku Records. Her Cascade of Roses recording for Sono Luminus, featuring works of twenty-one composers from Adolf Jensen to Billy Mayerl, was followed by Seascapes, a compendium of fourteen diverse works on sea themes.
She was a member of the piano faculty at Boston Conservatory for twenty-seven years and has taught at MIT and New England Conservatory. Miss Weber produced three sets of tones for Ivory, the worldwide bestselling virtual piano software.
A Steinway artist, she is Artistic Director of South Coast Chamber Music, an integral part of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra. Double Digits, her duo-piano collaboration with Alex Poliykov, is a staple of the Boston keyboard scene.
Philip Lima – Baritone
Philip Lima has regularly garnered critical acclaim for his performances on both concert and operatic stages: “His singing was glorious” (The Boston Globe) – “vibrant baritone and a commanding presence” (Cleveland The Plain Dealer) – “keen musicianship along with total dramatic intention.” (Opera News Online).
He has sung leading operatic roles for the international Kurt Weill Festival in Germany, numerous regional American opera companies, and the Handel & Haydn Society in works ranging from Handel’s Semele and Mozart’s Così fan tutte to Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Tosca, to Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Barber’s Vanessa, Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic classics The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance. Of particular note have been his featured roles in the world premieres of operas by jazz greats Leslie Burrs, Nathan Davis, and Mary Watkins, and by award-winning composer Larry Bell.
Mr. Lima has appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops and over seventy orchestras, choral societies, and concert series across the United States and in Korea and Ukraine, singing
major works such as Bach’s St. John Passion and Ich habe genug, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Mass in C, Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles and Mass (major excerpts), the Requiems of both Brahms and Fauré, Dave Brubeck’s The Light in the Wilderness, Copland’s Old American Songs, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, Mendelssohn’s Grosse Festmusik zum Dürerfest (U.S. premiere), Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, and the major choral works of Vaughan Williams. He has been acclaimed for his performances with numerous orchestras—including the Boston Pops—of Lee Hoiby’s setting of the “I Have a Dream” speech of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and is featured on the recording of pioneering African-American composer Florence Price’s Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight that won the 2020 American Prize for the Performance of American Music.
As a solo recitalist, Mr. Lima debuted in Rome with a concert of spirituals in 2000, and has performed frequently at Boston’s historic Jordan Hall. His performance of Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Beverly Orlove was cited by The Boston Phoenix in an annual summary of Boston’s “Unforgettable Classical Events.”
A native of New Bedford, Massachusetts and an alumnus of Yale University, Mr. Lima studied at the Tanglewood Music Center and Boston University, and with Richard Conrad; and is the Assistant Chair of Berklee College of Music’s Voice Department.
