Meet the Performers
L'dor v'dor: A Celebration of Jewish Heritage takes place Wednesday, May 6, 2026 at Chicago's Guarneri Hall. Soprano Michelle Areyzaga, mezzo-soprano Heather Johnson, and pianist Jason Wirth perform a program centered on the world premiere of Ki ger Anokhi Imakh by composer David Hanlon, a Nova Linea Musica commission.
Publish Date:
April 29, 2026
L'dor v'dor: A Celebration of Jewish Heritage takes place Wednesday, May 6, 2026 at Chicago's Guarneri Hall. Soprano Michelle Areyzaga, mezzo-soprano Heather Johnson, and pianist Jason Wirth perform a program centered on the world premiere of Ki ger Anokhi Imakh by composer David Hanlon, a Nova Linea Musica commission.
The program centers on the world premiere of Ki ger Anokhi Imakh, a Nova Linea Musica commission that takes its title from Psalm 39: "For I am a stranger with you, a temporary dweller, like all my ancestors."
For Hanlon, the piece is deeply personal. His grandparents fled Austria in 1939, surviving because a legal route to the United States existed for them. "I cannot help but see my grandparents in all the asylum seekers today," Hanlon writes in his program note. "If I am ger, I am ger as my grandparents were ger, and their ancestors. I am connected to them in that, and connected to the rest of the world, as we are all ger."
The work draws on one of Judaism's most enduring ethical traditions: the obligation to see oneself in another's circumstance. As Leviticus 19:33 instructs, "The stranger who resides among you shall be to you as one of your citizens for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Hanlon's setting brings that ancient teaching into urgent contemporary focus.
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Praised by the Chicago Tribune for her "radiant and all-encompassing soprano," Michelle Areyzaga brings a distinguished career spanning the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Ravinia Festival, and stages across Europe and Latin America. A passionate champion of new music, Areyzaga has premiered works by Stacy Garrop, Gwyneth Walker, Lita Grier, Fabio Luisi, and Gustavo Leone. Her most recent album, Were I With Thee, was hailed by Artsong Update as "one of the finest art song CDs ever, a ground-breaking art song CD of twenty-first century sensibility." A lifelong interpreter of Leonard Bernstein, she toured Bernstein on Broadway with Jamie Bernstein and was named Musical Ambassador of the Ravinia Festival's Bernstein at 100 Centennial Celebration.
Hailed by Opera News as "a dramatic singer in the truest sense," Heather Johnson has built an acclaimed career on the opera and concert stage. She has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in productions of Parsifal, Luisa Miller, Adriana Lecouvreur, Hänsel und Gretel, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and was honored with New York City Opera's Stanley Tausend Award. Johnson has been a devoted interpreter of new works, performing in the world premieres of Jeremy Howard Beck's The Long Walk, Mark Adamo's Becoming Santa Claus, and Fierce Grace: Jeannette Rankin at the Library of Congress. Her concert appearances include Berlioz's Les nuits d'été with the Minnesota Orchestra and Mozart's Requiem with the National Arts Centre Orchestra under Pinchas Zukerman.
Jason Wirth is a versatile and intrepid pianist whose work the New York Times has described as spinning "a gossamer web of unusual sounds on the piano." A graduate of the Mannes School of Music and Yale School of Music, Wirth performed as a soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra from a young age. He has built an exceptional career as a collaborative pianist, with deep affinity for art song, opera, and contemporary repertoire. His recording Plundered Hearts, featuring songs by composer Jorge Martín with Heather Johnson and Andrew Garland, brings a longstanding artistic partnership to the May 6 program. A founder of Modern Opera Company and a sought-after répétiteur for twentieth and twenty-first century opera, Wirth performs regularly at venues including Carnegie's Zankel Hall.
The evening begins with a pre-concert conversation at 5:45 pm, followed by the concert at 6:30 pm and a catered reception. Tickets are $40 and include the concert, pre-concert discussion, and reception.
L'dor v'dor: A Celebration of Jewish Heritage takes place Wednesday, May 6, 2026 at Guarneri Hall (11 E Adams St). Tickets and full program information at tickets.novalineamusica.org.
