ABBA

She is an alto, keyboardist and teacher born in Pennsylvania who won honours as a singer and pianist in high school and took her further studies for a music degree in piano performance at the Peabody Conservatory of Music.

In 1969 she took on the positions of accompanist and repetiteur at Temple University’s Music Festival and continued in that post for 6 years until 1975.

Performing as a keyboardist, she has worked with her husband Ifor Jones, Gian Carlo Menotti and Eugene Ormandy and has played organ continuo with the Ama Deus Ensemble in St. Matthew Passion staged at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center. She also recorded G.F. Handel: Fireworks as a harpsichordist for them. She currently holds the position of Executive Director of Vox Ama Deus, who she joined in 1989, and has appeared on Ama Deus recordings such as Vivaldi’s Magnificat, Verdi’s Requiem and Bach’s Mass in B Minor.

As an alto and mezzo-soprano she has performed with The Philadelphia Singers, appearing on their 1987 album Gloria! Gloria!, the Bach Society of Baltimore, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale and was executive director of the Cantata Singers in Quakertown from 1982 to 1988. She has also appeared in opera productions in the Mid-Atlantic area of the United States and been a member of the Opera Company of Philadelphia. Making concert appearances she has toured with Michael Crawford and Barbra Streisand and her solo performances have been given with the Ama Deus Ensemble and the Vox Renaissance Consort.

Involved in direction she was the director of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University Graduate Opera Program from 1976-1981 and Moravian College Music Department’s Opera Ensemble.

In the field of musical education she has been a piano teacher at Lebanon Valley College, a Guest Artist Voice Teacher at the University ot Pennsylvania and Drexel University, teaches studio voice and diction at the Music Department of Moravian College and is a Voice teacher artist on the faculty at Bryn Mawr Conservatory of Music.

The Philadelphia Singers recordings

Adeste Fidelis (John Francis Wade)

RCA 6559-2-RC (Gloria! Gloria!)

Soprano – Benita Valente

Concerto Soloists Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Singers

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