THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA | 2018-2019 43
ANNE-MARIE McDERMOTT
Piano
For over 25 years
Anne-Marie McDermott
has played
concertos, recitals
and chamber music
in hundreds of
cities throughout
the United States,
Europe and Asia. In
addition to performing,
she also serves
as artistic director of
the Bravo! Vail Music
and Ocean Reef
Music festivals, as well as curator for chamber
music for the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego.
The breadth of McDermott’s repertoire reaches
from Bach, Haydn and Beethoven to Rachmaninoff,
Prokofiev and Scriabin, to works by today’s most
influential composers. She has performed with
many leading orchestras including the New York
Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Philadelphia
Orchestra and Dallas Symphony, among others.
She has toured with the Australian Chamber Orchestra
and the Moscow Virtuosi, participated in
the New Century Chamber Orchestra’s Silver Jubilee
All Gershwin Program and embarked on a cycle
of Beethoven concertos at Santa Fe Pro Musica.
She also premiered and recorded a new concerto
by Poul Ruders with the Vancouver Symphony,
alongside Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations.
She is a longtime member of the Chamber Music
Society of Lincoln Center and enjoys touring as a
member of OPUS ONE, a chamber group with Ida
Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom, and Peter Wiley. She
also tours annually with violinist Nadja Salerno-
Sonnenberg and performs as part of a trio with sisters,
Kerry and Maureen McDermott. She studied at
the Manhattan School of Music and was winner of
the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for
Women, the Young Concert Artists auditions, and an
Avery Fisher Career Grant. McDermott lives in New
York City with her husband, Michael, and her Maltese,
Sammy.
American stage
and opera director
Cynthia Stokes has
devoted her professional
career to creating
provocative
and thrilling productions
across America.
Her staging has been
described as “a joy to
behold” by The Winston
Salem Chronicle
and having “existential
depths and evoking
mythical resonance” by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Stokes is the artistic director of San Diego CITY
Opera, San Diego’s newest opera company. CITY
Opera’s first production, Queen of Carthage, was
part of the 2015 La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls
Festival. This summer she premiered her new libretto
and staging for Thamos, King of Egypt for
San Diego’s Mainly Mozart Festival, which Maestro
Michael Francis conducted. “Audience reaction
to the playful Thamos, King of Egypt was
overwhelmingly positive. A delighted standing
ovation lasted for four curtain calls,” wrote Ron
Bierman of Broadway World. Other opera directing
highlights include Piedmont Opera, Opera San
Jose, Glimmerglass Opera, LA Opera, San Antonio
Opera, San Diego Opera and Opera Philadelphia.
Stokes has collaborated with some of America’s
most exciting composers and librettists including
Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison on Margaret
Garner for Cincinnati Opera and Opera Carolina. She
co-wrote and directed Murder at the Opera with composer
Edward Barnes for Los Angeles Opera. An accomplished
theatre director, her work has been seen
at the American Conservatory Theatre, Old Globe,
Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s
Theatre, Diversionary Theatre and North Coast Rep.
Her grants include a Qualcomm Ideas Grant, the
Arizona Commission for the Arts, Opera America,
New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Lotta
Crabtree Foundation. She holds a master’s of fine
arts in directing from the University of California at
San Diego.
CYNTHIA STOKES
Actor