• Friday, April 29 – Dress Rehearsal, 7-10 pm, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland.
• Saturday, April 30 – Bella Musica Spring Concert, 8 pm, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Oakland.

Composer Kirke Mechem ("Professor Nontroppo’s Musical Dictionary") was born and raised in Kansas and educated at Stanford and Harvard universities. He conducted and taught at Stanford and was for several years composer-in-residence at the University of San Francisco. He lived in Vienna for three years where he came to the attention of Josef Krips, who later championed Mechem's music as conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. Mechem is the composer of more than 250 published works in almost every form, including a three-act opera, Tartuffe, which has had some 300 performances in six countries. Vocal music is at the heart of Mechem's work: he has been called the "dean of American choral composers," and seven doctoral dissertations have been written on his choral music. What the Choral Journal called "characteristic Mechem style: singing lines, imaginative and varied use of rhythm and texture for expressive ends" describes his instrumental music as well. His comic opera, The Newport Rivals, an American adaptation of Sheridan's classic play, The Rivals, will be premiered in 2006 by Lyric Opera San Diego, followed by performances by a consortium of other companies. The premiere of John Brown, a large-scale opera about the American abolitionist, is scheduled for the 2007-2008 season at Lyric Opera Kansas City to celebrate the company's 50th anniversary and the opening of its new opera house. Mechem lives in San Francisco, and is currently composing an opera based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. (Notes adapted from biography at http://www.sai-national.org/phil)