Music
Musical Performance Update
2023 begins a new chapter in my life. After spending eight years providing comfort and support through singing with Journey Songs in nursing homes and hospice facilities, I find myself opening to new areas of interest outside of music. I will always treasure the experience of singing with a small group of women and the service we brought to others. It offered new opportunities for creativity and served as a meaningful transition from my life as a professional soloist to that of an ensemble singer. My future in music will be as an enthusiastic listener and advocate for the power of the voice to move, to heal and to create community.
Concert History
For 40 years I performed duet concerts with my sister, Diana Cole, Mezzo-Soprano. In addition to appearing on many concert series in the New England area, we performed at the National Gallery of Art, Isabella Stewart Garner Museum. In opera we sang the sister roles in Cinderella with the Associate Artists Company, and in Cosi FanTutte as part of the Follen Church Concert series. More recent concerts included arrangements of American Classics as well as duets from our classical repertoire. These shorter concerts were performed in retirement communities and on library concert series. Click on tracks below:
You Spotted Snakes Frederick Keel
Velvet Shoes Randell Thompson
Cosi Fan Tutte W.A. Mozart
Bullfrog Patrol Jerome Kern
Cat Duet Gioachino Rossini
Nacht Und Träume - Franz Schubert
Skylark - Hoagy Carmichael
Thomas Stumpf, Carolyn Kingston, Diana Cole
DUET PERFORMANCES
In 1999 we performed a retrospective concert “Deja Two: Voices in Duet” including our favorites from the classical repertoire with Margaret Ulmer, pianist.
Since then we have performed at Follen Community Church and annually on the Summer Concert Series at the First Parish Church in Lexington featuring classical, folk, and American popular classics with Thomas Stumpf, pianist.
About the Artists
Sisters Carolyn Kingston, Soprano, and Diana Cole, Mezzo-Soprano, are two solo performers who join their talents in an exceptional blend of voices and musicianship. With a repertoire of more than one hundred and fifty duets in eight languages, ranging from the renaissance to contemporary literature, they offer unusually varied programs which draw from both classical duets, opera, operetta, and folk music, as well as American popular music from Stephen Foster through the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. Their appearances include the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Gardner Museum, the Longfellow Historical Site, and Harvard University in Boston, MA
Thomas Stumpf, piano, was born in Shanghai in 1950, received his degrees in piano performance from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. His performing career has taken him across four continents and he has appeared with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Boston Pops Orchestra (under Arthur Fiedler) and numerous other ensembles. He is also co-founder of Prism Opera, a music theater ensemble which under his direction has performed Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” (in Stumpf’s own translation), “Amahl and the Night Visitors,“ Barber’s “Vanessa,” Britten’s “The Rape of Lucretia,” and “The Turn of the Screw.” For 21 years Stumpf was Director of Music at Follen Community Church in East Lexington. He is currently on the Music Faculty of Tufts University in Medford, MA.