Soprano Jenny Wollerman  and Pianist Emma Sayers in Concert

Greytown Music Group has not presented a concert with a vocalist since a programme of German Romantic Duos in 2009, so it is high time for a change. Soprano Jenny Wollerman will pair up with Pianist Emma Sayers on Sunday 27 June, with a selection of their favourite Spanish/Catalan and Aotearoa NZ works. The concert will include music by Ross Harris, Jenny McLeod, Enrique Granados, Federico Mompou, Mario Castelnouvo-Tedesco, and others – mostly songs but also piano solos. 

Jenny Wollerman has family connections with the Wairarapa. Members of the legal profession will remember Ian Wollerman, and his son Peter, her uncle and cousin, who were in the legal practice of  Wollerman Cooke & McClure (now WCMLegal) for many years in Carterton, and  accountants will recall Jenny’s uncle Laurie Johnston, of Woodhouse & Partners (AMR Group). 

One of New Zealand’s best-known sopranos, Jenny has been a senior lecturer at the NZ School of Music since 2003, and combines teaching with an active performing career. She began her vocal training at Victoria University of Wellington, and also studied in New York and London before returning to NZ. She recently completed her PhD in Musicology.

Emma Sayers last performed in Greytown in 2012 , a piano duo concert with Richard Mapp. She teaches classical piano, accompanying, keyboard musicianship, and chamber music, and as an accompanist she coaches students in the classical performance programme at the NZ School of Music. She studied piano with Judith Clark in NZ, and with Rita Wagner in Budapest.

Jenny and Emma have known each other for many years, meeting first on a production of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. They shared a very small office at the School of Music, and as Jenny says, they “got to know each other very well during that time!” They worked together to record Ross Harris’s song cycle “The Floating Bride, the Crimson Village” for RNZ, and that recording is still available on RNZ podcasts. Jenny says “This will be the first concert Emma and I have done together since that recording, and I’m very much looking forward to working with her again.”

The concert will be at 4pm on Sunday 27 June at 57 Wood St, Greytown. Adults $25, students $10. Contact Ed & Juliet Cooke for bookings on 06 304 9497 or efjacooke@gmail.com.