Arts Council hosts two musical progams

Sep. 21—Muskogee Area Council will present two free musical programs Saturday and Sunday.

Noted music director Timothy Long will give a master class for six Cherokee singers 3 p.m. Saturday at St. Paul United Methodist Church. The singers are Garrett Abel, Payden Kilgore, Annie Miller, Easton Wicks, Addison Rouse and Avery MacDaniel.

Opera singer Barbara McAlister said Long will teach and critique each performer as they sing.

"He'll go back and go through it again, and stop and start as if it's a professional rehearsal," she said.

Long is artistic and music director at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.

Four members of the Tulsa Opera Filstrup Artists will perform at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame.

Tulsa Opera marketing coordinator Alex Johnson said Filstrup Artists is an educational program at Tulsa Opera.

"We have a core group of singers, and they go to a lot of our community outreach events, and they perform on the main stage," Johnson said. "It's kind of a twofold program. It's an education program where we employ, what we call in the opera industry, emerging artists. They are all local to the Tulsa area. They are used in our outreach programming."

Tulsa Opera will send four singers — Sam Briggs, Christian Bester, Lydia Gray and Paige Dickey — and pianist Kisun Drosdoff.

"Each one has a background in professional singing," Johnson said. "It will range from operatic classics to musical theater numbers. There will be a couple of duets. It should be a really fun afternoon of music."

The free performances are funded through the First People's Fund, which recognizes and supports talent in Native communities.