“She has a phenomenal voice, was a pleasure to work with and sang with power and expressiveness.” Composer Rick Yramategui

 

Leberta Lorál possesses a clarion voice that has been described as both Mezzo and Soprano (Zwishenfach), as well as artistry that are both technically impressive and emotionally intense. Exciting highlights for the 2023-2024 season include appearences with Festival Opera (Tales From The Briar Patch as Madame Partridge), Santa Cruz Opera Project (La Boheme as Colline), Fillmore Jazz Festival (with Tammy L. Hall), National Women's Music Festival (with Tammy L. Hall), the 66th Monterey Jazz Festival ("We've Come This Far By Faith") and "Soulful Joy" at Grace Cathdral with Destiny Muhammad. The year of 2024 sees her reuniting with Maestro Mabalot in concert at the Sandbox Sand City as well as other dates that are in the works! The 2022-2023 season she was asked to return to the Exploratorium once again for the opening night of their exhibit, "Glow", debuting at the 65th Annual Monterey Jazz Festival, being presented in concert with Ms. Tammy L. Hall for two performances of their show, "Classical Broadway", featured in appearances at the Cinnabar Theater, San Ramon Public Library's Jazz Series, and SandBoxSandCity, being interview with Ms. Hall for John Michael's Rock Box, happily appearing again at Monterey County Composers' Forum at Hidden Valley Music, being invited to sing during the 25th African-American Art Song Alliance (she will sing a song that is based upon a poem she wrote in 2020 - she commissioned the wonderful Maria Thompson Corley!), and excitedly being a part of the Christmas celebration at Grace Cathedral with Destiny Mohammed!

 

The 2020-2021 season included a lot of therapeutic Covid-coping activities like baking, enjoyed by many friends and neighbors. In November 2021, she will sing Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Longmont Symphony in Colorado. In early 2021, Leberta was honored to sing with others on Zoom in the Presidential Inauguration post-celebration with pop great Demi Lovato. She also traveled to Los Angeles where she performed compositions by Duke Ellington in a celebration of Black History Month at Forest Lawn. The offering of songs composed by Florence Price, HT Burleigh, Jeremiah Evans and Antonin Dvorak in Musical Soulmates, produced by pianist Kate Alm, closed the first quarter of 2021. Spring of 2021 to the present blossoms with new collaborations with 2022 Grammy winner, pianist/accompanist/composer, Tammy Lynne Hall, including performances for the Ross McKee Foundation, Hall’s production, A Time for Love at the Cinnabar Theater in Petaluma, To Nina Simone, With Love in the Flower Piano series at the Botanical Gardens San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in September and at the Exploratorium in San Francisco for the opening of Museum of the Moon exhibit and the Christmas Tree Lighting concert at the beautiful Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

 

In 2019, Leberta won KDFC’s Star Spangled Sing-Off, where she lit up San Francisco’s Oracle Arena, singing the National Anthem live from the pitcher’s mound for Opera at the Ballpark - San Francisco’s free simulcast of Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. Further highlights included collaborations with Douglas Ovens, performing his composition Three Love Songs, for soprano and vibraphone, based on the poems of Alice Fulton. She also collaborated with pianist/accompanist Pauline Troia in her first independent project: Sustenance Through Song, based upon the ancient Greek concept of eight (8) types of love. Performances with the Camerata Singers of Monterey County, featuring Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem and teaching Vocal Master Classes at California State University-Monterey Bay, also made for a great year of forward motion and musical discovery.

 

2018 had its stellar moments too! In March of that year, Leberta was the featured soloist in Henry Mollicone’s Beatitude Mass: for the Homeless, with the Camerata Singers and she again performed with them May in a benefit for two local homeless shelters. This collaboration led to an introduction to the composer Rick Yramategui. She sang his Look at the Birds of the Air, during the Monterey County Composers Forum in Carmel Valley in August of that year.

 

The recording of Richard Thompson’s original opera, Mask in the Mirror, based upon the life of American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, is beautiful evidence of a wonderful collaboration between Ms. Lorál and Mr. Thompson. They met in 2017 at the 20th Annual Conference of the African American Art Song Alliance, where Leberta performed the works of composers Mr. Thompson and Undine Smith Moore. During that conference, Mr. Thompson asked Ms. Lorál to record the roles of Victoria and The Woman in the Bar for the Parma Records/Naxos label, which released the recording of Mask in the Mirror February 8, 2019.

 

"The Mask in the Mirror, a chamber opera by Richard Thompson, chronicles Dunbar's (Paul Laurence Dunbar) rocky relationship with writer Alice Ruth Moore. Occasionally, we get a dose of something jazzier...in which the charming Joplinesque rag turns into a very catchy trio number for Humes, Leberta Lorál and Roland Mills, who sound terrific together”. Joshua Rosenblaum, Opera News, Critics Choice, July 2019

 

An invitation from Mr. George Shirley brought Ms. Lorál to Michigan twice - once in December 2014 and again in December 2016, to sing in his annual Heritage Holiday Concert in Ann Arbor. In August of 2012, Leberta sang in concert with Maestro Mabalot at the Herbert Zipper Concert Hall in Los Angeles, CA. She was the soloist in Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder with the Symphonisches Orchester Münchens Andechs (SOMA), conducted by Maestro Andreas Pascal Heinzmann, in February 2011 in Munich, Germany. Additional engagements include performing the works of Maestro Mabalot at the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in August 2011, and in sold out concerts with Metropolitan Opera Mezzo, Susanne Mentzer at the Monterey Museum of Art and the Santa Lucia Preserve in Carmel, CA.

 

A regional winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, while living in Los Angeles, Leberta’s made numerous appearances as the featured soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in their series at the Hollywood Bowl, the Southeast Symphony and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. She has performed a broad spectrum of concert works ranging from Baroque to Contemporary, garnering critical acclaim. Her core repertoire: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Magnificat and Mass in B Minor, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Saint-Saëns’ Christmas Oratorio and Faure’s Requiem, 20^th century compositions such as Vaughan Williams’ The First Novel, Mabalot’s Songs of Rumi and Thompson’s Songs of Passion. Her operatic repertoire includes the roles of Serena in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, the Mother in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel with Venus (Tannhauser) in preparation. Additional repertoire in preparation is Strauss’ Vier Letzte Lieder and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.