Saturday, January 7, 2023, 5PM

Amelia Plantation Chapel

36 Bowman Road, Fernandina Beach

No tickets required - Donation-based concert

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Join Amelia Island Opera at the Amelia Plantation Chapel on January 7, 2023, at 5 PM for an intimate solo recital featuring baritone John Tibbets and Philadelphia-based pianist Jessica Arnold. This donation-based concert will feature songs by Gerald Finzi, Ivor Novello, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and more. Tickets are not required, and all donations received will help Amelia Island Opera fund its 2022 - 23 Season. 

Baritone John Tibbetts, cited for his “unexpectedly rich voice” and “reverberating tones” by the Palm Beach Post, is a dedicated recitalist, in addition to his work on the operatic and concert stage. Tibbetts premiered Martin Hennessy’s song cycle Feeling the world as it passes through you as a Stern Fellow with Songfest in Los Angeles. He has performed the songs of Aaron Copland with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, premiered the role of Old Man/Young Man in Andy Tierstein and Julian Crouch’s The Tree of Eternal Youth with American Lyric Theater at Merkin Concert Hall, and sang Libby Larsen’s The Curious Case of H.H. Holmes in Cincinnati. Tibbetts was a finalist in the 2018 Lotte Lenya Competition and in the Carolyn Bailey & Dominick Argento Competition, and was a recipient of an Encouragement Award in the Georgia District of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. In addition to Palm Beach Opera, he has performed as a young artist with Opera Saratoga, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Sarasota Opera, and Central City Opera.

Jessica Arnold is a collaborative pianist and vocalist currently living and teaching in New Jersey. Some of Jessica’s musical accomplishments include being selected as a Piano Young Artist at Songfest in 2019 where she played in Masterclasses for Collaborative Pianists, Graham Johnson, Margo Garrett, Alan Smith and composers Jake Heggie and Libby Larsen. She was also selected to be a Piano Young Artist in 2017 at the CoOperative Program at Westminster Choir College where she had lessons with Eric Weimar of Chicago Lyric Opera and Thomas Bagwell, formerly Assistant Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, now Conductor of Royal Danish Opera. She also participated in a Piano Masterclass with Collaborative Pianist, Craig Reutenberg. She then was hired as a Staff Pianist in the summers of 2018-2019 for the CoOPERAtive program at Westminster Choir College. In 2017, she was personally invited to study with famed coach and collaborator, Dalton Baldwin, at his summer programs in Nice, France and Salzburg, Austria. Jessica obtained her Voice Performance BA from Seton Hall University and was subsequently asked to remain as accompanist for the Seton Hall University Choir from 2010- 2013, as well as the accompanist for the Seton Hall Music Department. In 2017, she got her MM degree in Piano Coaching and Accompanying from Westminster Choir College where she studied with JJ Penna and famed opera coach Rachelle Jonck.