The Library will be closed on Sunday, March 31, 2024, in observance of Easter

Saturday Serenade

Caroline Zakarian, Librarian, Lifelong Learning Department,

The Los Angeles Public Library has some very gifted musicians.  When I started working in the Art, Music & Recreation Department I found out that some of my colleagues in the department were musical. When I started talking to staff, I found out that there were more musicians at Central Library and the branches. Once I heard this I knew I wanted to do a program to highlight my incredibly talented colleagues. 

Performer Biographies

Tammy JenkinsSoprano Tammy Jenkins made her professional debut with the San Francisco Opera. Having previously participated in San Francisco Opera’s Merola program and the SFO Adler Fellowship Program she continued her affiliation with the San Francisco Opera and made her professional recital debut in the Schwabacher Debut Recital Series. Tammy has performed for the Walnut Creek Festival Opera, Napa Valley Symphony, Other Minds Festival, Midsummer Mozart Festival, Dona Ana Lyric Opera, NMSU Orchestra and Chorus, Atlanta Symphony and the Los Angeles Opera. Her roles have included Musetta in La Boheme, The High Priestess in Aida, Frasquita in Carmen and Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore to name a few. Tammy is a clerk typist at the North Hollywood Regional Branch.

Tammy will be performing “Summertime” from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Jacques Offenbach’s “Belle Nuit, O Nuit d’Amour” (the Barcarolle), Alan Westby’s original composition and the “Three Vocalises for Soprano and Clarinet” by Ralph Vaughan-Williams.


Alan WestbyAlan Westby obtained his Bachelor of Music degree from  the University of the Pacific in his native Stockton before moving to Los Angeles to earn his Masters in Music from UCLA. His major field of study was music theory and composition, and his main instrument is the clarinet. He began working at LAPL as a clerk typist for the Art, Music & Recreation Department in 1997. On one memorable day in 2003 he located the score to Dmitri Shostakovich’s second cello concerto for Mstislav Rostropovich, then visiting from Russia, for whom the concerto was composed. He currently works as a librarian in Central Library’s InfoNow Department. 

Alan will perform the second movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Clarinet Concerto” and with Tammy Jenkins, “Three Vocalises for Soprano and Clarinet” by Ralph Vaughan Williams. He will also accompany Vi Ha in Camille Saint-Saens’ “The Swan” and join Tammy, Vi and Bob Anderson in a piece he wrote for this concert.


Janice BatzdorffJanice Batzdorff is a mezzo-soprano and has performed with opera choruses for Pacific Opera Company, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Opera Company and the Celestial Opera Company. Most recently she sang with the Independent Opera Company’s production of The Tsar’s Bride by Rimsky-Korsakov, a popular opera in Russian and Ukraine, which is rarely performed in the West. Janice is a librarian at the North Hollywood Regional Branch.

Janice and Tammy will sing “Belle Nuit, O Nuit d’Amour” (the Barcarolle), from Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann.


David BrennerDavid Brenner is a Charlotte, NC native who has been in Los Angeles since 2000. Singing was always his first love and he has performed in his junior high school chorus and in high school musicals. Without formal instruction and encouragement, David drifted away from music for almost twenty years. Inspired by watching a performance by Stephen Sondheim’s Company (“Being Alive”) and listening to the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim, he decided that he should pursue his passion and become an amateur crooner. David took classes at LACC with Mel Dangcil, an excellent vocal coach and accompanist, who has worked with many big names in the music world. He is excited to be making his Taper stage debut. David is a librarian at Central Library’s InfoNow Department.

David will be singing “My Time of Day” and “I’ve Never Been In Love Before” from Frank Loesser’s musical Guys and Dolls.


Bob AndersonBob Anderson has played the piano since the age of six, and has played the cello in high school and college orchestras. Bob is a librarian at Central Library’s Literature & Fiction Department. 

Bob will be accompanying Alan in the slow movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Clarinet Concerto” and original composition and accompanying David on two Frank Loesser songs: “My Time of Day” and “I’ve Never Been in Love Before.” He will also be playing accompanying Tammy in Geroge Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Tammy and Janice in Jacques Offenbach’s “Belle Nuit, O Nuit d’Amour” (the Barcarolle).


Vi HaVi Ha started playing the cello at the age of eight and spent her formative years as a student of the Colburn School of Performing Arts. In college, Vi studied musical performance and chamber music. Vi performs on occasion in experimental classical and rock music genres and has recorded one microtonal albm. As a multi-instrumentalist, Vi dabbles on the piano, flute, ukulele and dan bau (a traditional Vietnamese one-stringed instrument). Even though Vi does not clock in the daily hours of practice on the cello any longer, she regularly plays music with others. Vi hosts a regular string quartet sightreading session with friends. At the Central Library, she organizes a public monthly free Music Jam at the Central Library. Vi is a librarian in the Teenscape Department of Central Library.

For this performance, Vi will be performing one of the most performed cello encore pieces: Camile Saint-Saens’ “The Swan.”


 

 

 

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