Hill Auditorium
Mozart’s Requiem
Individual event tickets available 7/28
While Mozart is not primarily known for sacred music, his final composition — the Requiem Mass — stands among his most sublime achievements.
Left unfinished at his death at age 35 and immortalized in the film Amadeus, the work was commissioned anonymously by a mysterious benefactor and was ultimately completed by Mozart’s student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, from his sketches. As Mozart’s health declined, he is said to have believed he was composing the Requiem not for another, but for himself, a notion that deepens the work’s haunting resonance. Blending fear and hope with extraordinary emotional depth, the Requiem has captivated listeners for centuries.
This performance marks the UMS Choral Union’s first return to the piece in 80 years, in collaboration with the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Earl Lee. The program opens with Johannes Brahms’s rarely-performed Alto Rhapsody, a striking work for alto, male chorus, and orchestra.
PROGRAM (Fri 11/13/2026: Hill Auditorium)
Johannes Brahms Alto Rhapsody, Op. 53
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Requiem in d minor, K. 626
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Mozart’s Requiem
Hill Auditorium
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Individual event tickets available 7/28
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* Student, Senior and Group Discounts may be available
Winner of the 2022 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, Korean-Canadian conductor Earl Lee has emerged as one of the most compelling and versatile artists of his generation. He has led many of the world’s foremost orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. In August 2025, Lee stepped in on short notice to replace Zubin Mehta in the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at Tanglewood, where The Boston Globe praised his interpretation as “an unhurried, momentous ritual … the finale nothing short of spectacular.”
Contact Info
scottph@umich.edu
About Scott
Scott Hanoian is the Music Director and Conductor of the University Musical Society Choral Union where he conducts and prepares the Grammy Award-winning chorus in performances with the world’s finest orchestras and conductors. Choruses prepared by Mr. Hanoian have sung under the batons of Yannick Nézet-Seguin, Leonard Slatkin, Ivan Fischer, Dennis Russell Davies, and Osmo Vänskä.
Mr. Hanoian is active as a conductor, organist, lecturer, continuo artist, accompanist, choral adjudicator, and guest clinician. He is the Director of Music and Organist at Christ Church Grosse Pointe, where he directs the church’s four choirs and oversees the yearly concert series. Mr. Hanoian has served on the faculty of Wayne State University and Oakland University and was the artistic director and conductor of the Oakland Choral Society from 2013–2015.
As an organist and conductor, Mr. Hanoian has performed concerts throughout the US and has led choirs on trips to Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, France, and Spain. Most recently, Mr. Hanoian led the Christ Church Choirs during weeklong residencies at York Minster, Durham Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Wells Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey.
Before moving to Grosse Pointe, Mr. Hanoian was the Assistant Organist and Assistant Director of Music at Washington National Cathedral where he played the organ for many services including the funerals for Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.
Mr. Hanoian has recorded the complete organ works of Johannes Brahms for the JAV label.
Praised for her “radiant, seemingly effortless singing” (The Times) with “a sense of pure joy and excitement” (OperaWire), soprano Hera Hyesang Park is celebrated not only for her exquisite voice and stagecraft, but for the profound ideas embodied in her work. Hailing from South Korea and trained at The Juilliard School, she infuses her music with a cosmopolitan perspective that blends her Korean heritage and Western life experiences in a style she describes as “traditional but uncommon”: open to learn from both classical and modern attitudes to life and art. Her lyric coloratura voice carries both immaculate technique and a seemingly infinite variety of tonal colors, combining in a fearless and captivating stage presence. Central to her music is a powerful drive for empathy and understanding, challenging discrimination and stereotypes of all kinds. Live performance and recordings represent, for Park, an act of self-discovery and a means of heartfelt, emotionally honest connection with others.
Since making her professional debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 2016 as the Madrigal Singer in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Avery Amereau has rapidly drawn international attention for her remarkably rich mezzo and commanding stage presence, appearing with the top houses and orchestras across the US and Europe.
In the 2025/26 season, Amereau made two major role debuts: as Irene in Handel’s Theodora in her first collaboration with Jupiter Ensemble, and as Didon in performances of Berlioz’s Les Troyens with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. Amereau also returns to the Bayerische Staatsoper as Bradamante in a new production of Handel’s Alcina, and reprises the role of Cherubino in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal under Rafael Payare.
Nicholas Phan is a Grammy Award-winning lyric tenor, curator, and educator, celebrated for his expressive artistry and versatility across a wide-ranging repertoire spanning nearly 500 years. Described by the Boston Globe as “one of the world’s most remarkable singers,” he has earned international recognition for his captivating stage presence, keen intelligence, and natural musicianship. In 2010 he co-founded Art Song Chicago to promote art song and vocal chamber music, where he serves as artistic director.
A celebrated recording artist, Phan won the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for his recording of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. A five-time Grammy nominee, Phan’s most recent album, A Change Is Gonna Come, was nominated for the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. His previous albums, Stranger: Works for Tenor by Nico Muhly, Clairières, and Gods and Monsters, were nominated for the same award in 2023, 2020, and 2017. He is the first singer of Asian descent to be nominated in the history of the category, which has been awarded by the Recording Academy since 1959. His other solo albums Illuminations, A Painted Tale, Still Fall the Rain, and Winter Words, made many “best of” lists, including those of The New York Times, New Yorker, Chicago Tribune, WQXR, and the Boston Globe. Phan’s continually growing discography also includes Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony, as well as recordings of the complete songs of Rebecca Clarke, Berlioz’ Roméo et Juliette and Stravinsky’s Canticum Sacrum with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, Joel Puckett’s There Was A Child Went Forth with the London Symphony Orchestra and Joseph Young, Scarlatti’s La gloria di primavera and Handel’s Joseph and his Brethren with Philharmonia Baroque and Nicholas McGegan, an album of Bach’s secular cantatas with Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan, Bach’s St. John Passion (in which he sings both the Evangelist and the tenor arias) with Apollo’s Fire, and the world premiere recordings of two orchestral song cycles: The Old Burying Ground by Evan Chambers and Elliott Carter’s A Sunbeam’s Architecture.
South Korean bass Stephano Park was named the winner of Operalia 2023 in Cape Town, South Africa.
Operatic highlights of the 2025/26 season included his American debut as Sparafucile in Verdi’s Rigoletto at Sante Fe Opera under the baton of Carlo Montanaro, and house debuts with Royal Danish Opera as Il Conte di Monterone Rigoletto, and with Calgary Opera as Uncle Bonze in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. On the concert platform, Park makes his US concert debut in performances of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 with Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (Ken-David Masur), as well as debuts with Chicago Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony in Mozart’s Requiem (Manfred Honeck).
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