Open Door Ensembles

Thank you to everyone who made Variaciones: Music from Argentina and Brazil, and our entire 2025-2026 season, such a wonderful success! 🎶

Don't miss the fun tonight at Variaciones: Music from Argentina and Brazil!

Come check us out tomorrow!

Award-winning percussion ensemble Grooversity joins Orchestra Without Borders for Variaciones: Music from Argentina and Brazil on May 20! 🥁🎶

Founded and led by Brazilian percussionist Marcus Santos, Grooversity is an innovative drumming network rooted in Afro-Brazilian music, cultural exchange, education, and community engagement.

Through performances and workshops around the world, Grooversity brings people together through collaborative music-making while promoting diversity awareness and social connection. Marcus has led workshops and performances at institutions including Harvard, MIT, Carnegie Hall, and TEDx, and currently directs Grooversity ensembles across the United States, Canada, Europe, and beyond.

🎟 Tickets: https://opendoorensembles.org/tickets

Hannah Shanefield, Soprano will perform Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 in Variaciones: Music from Argentina and Brazil, presented in its original arrangement for soprano and cello octet! She last performed with Orchestra Without Borders in 2024. 🎶

Hannah's operatic roles include Gilda (Rigoletto, Boston Summer Opera), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni, Boston Summer Opera), Juliette (cover, Roméo et Juliette, New Jersey Lyric Opera), Violetta (cover, La Traviata, New Opera Company of Boston), Giunone (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, Brooklyn Telemann Chamber Society), and Suzel (L’amico Fritz, West End Lyric).

Equally as enthusiastic about concert works, recent solos include Amy Beach’s Jephthah’s Daughter (Horizon Ensemble), Rutter’s Requiem (Kearsarge Chorale), BWV 150 and BWV 196 (Arlington Street Church), and premiering several new works in White Snake Projects’ Sing Out Strong concerts.

On top of her performance career, Hannah is a stage director and arts administrator. She serves as Executive Director of Boston Summer Opera, Artistic Director of NEMPAC's Opera on the Prado concert series, Community & Education Manager with Guerilla Opera, and a teaching artist with Boston Lyric Opera.

Her directorial credits include Alcina (MassOpera), The Pirates of Penzance and Don Giovanni (Boston Summer Opera), Die Fledermaus (The Opera Company), and Il Giuoco del Quadriglio/Coffee Cantata (West End Lyric).

A native of suburban Philadelphia, Hannah holds degrees from the New England Conservatory and the Hartt School.

Come hear her on May 20:
https://opendoorensembles.org/tickets

We are thrilled that countertenor Lucas Ludwig Coura is joining Orchestra Without Borders for Variaciones: Music from Argentina and Brazil! He will sing 𝘓𝘶𝘢 𝘉𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘢 by Chiquinha Gonzaga.

Lucas Ludwig Coura is a Boston-Based countertenor and voice teacher.

Lucas has performed a number of opera roles with companies including WhiteSnake Projects, Boston Opera Collaborative, Cambridge Chamber Ensemble, Promenade Opera Project, and Boston Summer Opera, among others. Recent roles include Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Endimione in La Calisto, and The Pirate King in a reimagined production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance.

Lucas is frequently called upon to perform in immersive and innovative projects—he portrayed Virgil in Boston Opera Collaborative’s Opera Inferno, an immersive operatic experience that used a combination of standard operatic arias and spoken excerpts of literature to drew audiences through the hellish scenes described in Dante’s Inferno. As a choral musician, Lucas frequently sings with Boston’s own Nightingale Vocal Ensemble. Most recently, he was featured in A Cask of Amontillado, where he was praised for his “liquid countertenor” (Boston Musical Intelligencer).

Lucas is deeply passionate about creating new work. In August, Lucas will be traveling to New York City to participate in final workshops for Judith, a new opera by Paul Vasile and Karin Coonrod. In Fall of 2027, he will return to White Snake Projects to create the role of Baby Doll in Spitting Sand. Lucas is most drawn to projects that elevate marginalized voices–especially those that share his immigrant identity.

Coura holds a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from the New England Conservatory and a Bachelor of Music from Stetson University.

Get your tickets here: https://opendoorensembles.org/tickets

Variaciones: Music from Argentina and Brazil spotlights the remarkable legacy of Chiquinha Gonzaga, one of Brazil’s most influential composers.

Born in 1847, Gonzaga broke barriers throughout her life as a composer, pianist, conductor, and activist. At a time when women were rarely welcomed in professional musical spaces, she became the first woman to conduct in Brazil and helped shape the development of Brazilian popular music as we know it today. Her work blended European dance forms with Afro-Brazilian rhythms and street music, creating a vibrant and distinctly Brazilian musical language.

Gonzaga’s influence extended far beyond the concert hall. She championed the music of marginalized communities, composed over 2,000 works across a huge range of genres, and even helped establish the musical traditions that became modern Brazilian Carnival.

Hear her music live on May 20:
https://opendoorensembles.org/tickets

And learn more about Chiquinha Gonzaga here:
https://wophil.org/cotm-chiquinha-gonzaga/

Thank you to all who attended Homecoming: Celebrating the legacy of Duke Ellington! Additional big shout-outs go to our wonderful orchestra, The Ally Project, poet Terry Carter, and the Medford Jazz Festival!

Videos to come soon! 🎶

Conductor Luca Antonucci about this Sunday's concert:

“I've always loved how music and art can bring people together. As a trumpet player I grew up with one foot in jazz and one foot in classical music -- almost like growing up bilingual -- so I am always on the lookout for music that bridges the gap and puts the two styles into conversation.

When I first heard Terry's poetry accompanied by Jonathan's piano in the Ally Project, I loved the way that they brought their two distinct art forms together into a powerful expression of solidarity and community -- 'allyship', if you will. Terry's poetry and Jonathan's music speak eloquently about the importance of empathy, community, connection, and multiculturalism in today's world. Adding strings opens up a wide range of musical possibilities and enfolds the classical world into their vision, which has always struck me as symphonic in scope.

As we put together new arrangements for this concert that bridge the classical and jazz communities, we were inspired by the legacy of Duke Ellington, who moved effortlessly between the worlds of jazz, popular and classical music. Although better known as a jazz composer, the Duke wrote several important works for symphony orchestra, including some that combined the jazz orchestra with the symphony; for his famous 'Nutcracker' suite for jazz orchestra, he even reimagined Tchaikovsky's ballet! Ellington was also just one of many Black composers who straddled the popular and classical worlds in the early 20th-century. Our program also features works by Florence Price and William Grant Still, both of whom brought the influence of popular music (ragtime for Price and jazz for Still) into their classical compositions - paving the way for today's artists like Wynton Marsalis who create music that brings together musicians and audiences from jazz and classical worlds.”

📅 March 22 • 3:30 PM
📍 Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church, Somerville

🎟 Get your tickets here: https://opendoorensembles.org/tickets

Pianist Jonathan Fagan on why the music of Duke Ellington still resonates today:

“Duke Ellington represents one of the great African American composers of jazz during a time when it was America’s popular music. His legacy laid the groundwork for artists generations later, who all celebrated African American history while rallying for continued social change.”

Come hear Jonathan’s Ellington transcriptions for strings and jazz combo in Homecoming: Celebrating the legacy of Duke Ellington! 🎹

📅 March 22 • 3:30 PM
📍 Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church, Somerville

🎟 Tickets: opendoorensembles.org/tickets