Sigma Alpha Iota

HEARD AROUND THE WORLD Henry Grossman At left, SAI Honorary Member Leontyne Price (seen here with then-National Endowment of the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia) was recognized at the 2008 NEA Opera Honors inaugural awards concert in Washington, DC. At right, newly initiated Honorary Member Grace Bumbry with the Alpha Omicron president Victoria Mann 1965. The following is reprinted from the January 1959 PAN PIPES article of Leontyne Price's initiation into SAI. T he brilliant young soprano Leontyne Price, who has an enviable record in opera, concert and recital, in radio and TV, and on Broadway, was initiated as an Honorary Member of Sigma Alpha Iota August 27, 1958. The service was conducted by Miss Ann Austin, president of Alpha Omicron Chapter on the campus of Occidental College, Los Angeles, California. Following the service, Miss Price was greeted by many music faculty members, patronesses, and other distinguished music people. As Bess in the internationally acclaimed production of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, she was a sensation in New York, Vienna, Berlin, London and Paris and on tour throughout North America. She was selected by Composer Virgil Thomson to play in the Thomson-Stein Four Saints in Three Acts on Broadway and in Paris; by Samuel Barber to premiere his Hermit Songs in a recital at the Library of Congress and to introduce them at the Twentieth Century Music Conference in Rome; and she premiered the song cycle, Songs of the Rose of Sharon by John La Montaine in 1956 in Constitution Hail, accompanied by Howard Mitchell and the National Symphony Orchestra. Later she introduced a set of songs by Wilhehn Killmayer at concerts sponsored by the Fromm Foundation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Chicago. Miss Price has starred in the NBC-TV Opera Theatre productions in the title role of Tosca and as Pamina in The Magic Flute. She made her debut with the San Francisco Opera in a chief role (Madame Lidoine) in the American premiere of Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites in the fall of 1957 and appeared with the famed Vienna State Opera as Aida in May 1958. The first American artist selected by our State Department to tour India (March 25-April 13, 1956), Miss Price also made an extensive tour of Australia in 1957. Among leading orchestras she has appeared with are the New York Philharmonic-Symphony, the Boston Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra. A graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, in private life Miss Price is the wife of the great baritone, William Warfield, her leading man in Porgy and Bess. — Jan 1959 PAN PIPES 14 PAN PIPESSUMMER 2012 sai-national.org The following is reprinted from the May 1965 PAN PIPES article of Grace Bumbry's initiation into SAI. A lpha Omicron Chapter at Occidental College in Los Angeles proudly announces the initiation of mezzosoprano Grace Bumbry as an Honorary Member of Sigma Alpha Iota. Miss Bumbry, born in Saint Louis, has emerged as one of today's leading sopranos. She has studied with soprano Lotte Lehmann,* and went to Paris to study in 1959. She made her debut at the Paris Opera as Amneris in Aida, and starred in Carmen when the Paris company toured Japan the following year. Since this impressive beginning, Miss Bumbry has been widely sought both in Europe and the United States. She received widespread acclaim for her performance of Venus in Tannhäuser at the 1961 and 1962 Bayreuth Festivals. She has since performed with the Chicago Lyric Opera and London's Royal Opera, and recorded with Deutsche Grammophon Company while in Germany. In 1962 she performed for President Kennedy at a state dinner at the White House, where she received a standing ovation. A recipient of the Marion Anderson* Scholarship and a John Hay Whitney Award, she is under the management of S. Hurok, who has followed her career since she was sixteen. She makes her home in Switzerland with her husband, tenor Andreas Jaeckel. Miss Bumbry gave a number of concerts on the West Coast this past season, among them a February 12 concert at the Music Academy of the West, her alma mater, where she studied with Lotte Lehmann. Her concert at the Lobero Theatre was given to provide scholarships for the Academy. Alpha Omicron was especially pleased to honor Miss Bumbry with an Honorary Membership after the privilege of hearing her perform at the Occidental College Artist Series the preceding week. The initiation, presided over by president Victoria Mann, took place Saturday, February 13, 1965, and was followed by a lovely reception. * Sigma Alpha Iota Honorary Member.

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