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Vocal Arts Academy > About the Artists

Soprano Kathleen and bass-baritone Peter Van De Graaff have performed together and/or separately throughout the country and the world including concerts with the Israeli Chamber Orchestra in Tel Aviv, the Budapest Concert Orchestra, the Czech National Symphony and the Czech State Philharmonic in Prague, Brno and Krakow, Poland.

In the Midwest, they have been seen with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Opera Theater, Florentine Opera, Lincoln Opera, Chicago Chamber Opera, Music of the Baroque, Milwaukee Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago String Ensemble and many, many other groups.

Elsewhere in the country, their engagements include the Houston Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Utah Symphony, Rochester Opera, Washington/Idaho Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic and the Jackson, Michigan Symphony. They have sung under the batons of Pierre Boulez, Robert Page, Kenneth Slowik, Bernard Labadie, Nicholas Kraemer, Joseph Silverstein, Paul Freeman, Thomas Wikman, Jane Glover, Christopher Wilkins and Alan Heatherington, among others.

They were featured as part of a concert series in Japan, and gave the Asian premiere of Hasse's intermezzo "Miride e Damari".  Other festivals and engagements include: The International Music Festival of Costa Rica, The Grand Teton Music Festival, Bloomington Early Music Festival, San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, Manitou Music Festival, and the St. Louis Baroque Festival.  This past summer, the Mozart year, they were invited to participate at the International Vocal Symposium in Salzburg, Austria where they lectured about the genre and gave examples from intermezzi.

Kathleen and Peter have traveled throughout Europe obtaining scores of early 18th century comic chamber operas called "intermezzi". They have subsequently gained notoriety as specialists in this area, performing them throughout the United States, as well as on live broadcasts over WFMT, Chicago, including three North American premieres, and the Asian premiere already mentioned. Their recording of two chamber operas with their ensemble "The Comic Intermezzo" was released in January, 2007 on the Naxos International Record Label.