Directing Fellow Craig Carves Her Career Path

The Music Academy created its first-ever directing fellow position this summer, and chose Canadian Sawyer Ann Craig, who has a degree from McGill and credits as both a singer and director all over Canada. Craig had the chance to work alongside the directors of each of the vocal performance events, including Sara Widzer, Peter Kazaras, and James Darrah, and serve in a variety of roles from observer to traditional assistant director, to hands-on coaching and co-directing. 

It takes a lot of moxie to be the trailblazer – or guinea pig, both terms Craig said were tossed about during the festival – helping to define a new fellowship as she went along. As the festival was windback at the summer – and forward, for the final event, Saturday’s Granada concert with alumna Speranza Scappucci conducting the Academy Festival Orchestra highlighting the vocal fellows in curated selections bookended by the William Tell Overture and The Pines of Rome. 

Q. How was your summer here? What are you taking away?

A. It’s been a delight and an honor to work with everybody here. Watching how the three very different and unique directors work, I gained a lot of perspective. Seeing things that are very irreverent and exciting with opera singers doing things they normally wouldn’t, and pushing the envelope of how we perform, and also having a big production of a traditional opera has been very illuminating. I have ideas about what I might want to affectionately steal from them and how I might want to change how I approach directing. 

Is there a moment or event that stands out the most?

Every time I got to work one-on-one with the fellows, my peers. They’re all so brilliant, and they are changing the way that we think about our art form. Hearing what they’re excited and passionate about and why they sing really reinvigorated me and renewed my sense of gratitude. I also have to say the Cabaret is such a gas, it’s really something else.

You are the stage director for the final symphony concert that features each of the 19 vocalists performing works from the dramatic repertoire. What can we expect? 

It’s a beautiful gala concert that’s about showcasing their voices and the excerpts they’re performing, with everybody in tuxedos and gowns. So there’s not a lot of bells and whistles. I am dramatically coaching all of the material and helping them find and ground clear characters that will elevate and make them as operatic and dramatically integrated as possible. Which is my favorite thing to do. 

When we talked before, you said your position was being created somewhat on the fly. What’s your take on how it worked, whether your input was wanted, and what it might look like going forward?

It was amazing. I am impressed how everyone has been really receptive to my feedback and held space for me to share what I loved and what could be different. I’m sure I asked a lot of annoying questions [of the directors], but nobody seemed annoyed. It’s been a very collaborative process, which is reassuring. I’d absolutely recommend it to my peers who are interested in directing.   

THis Week(end) at MA

Yes, the end is actually here, as there are only three more days in the 2022 Music Academy summer festival. But there are nine events over seven different time slots, so there’s still the opportunity to immerse yourself in almost everything the Academy has to offer, for one last time, or, perhaps the first (and then kick yourself for waiting so long). 

On Thursday, August 4, the 1:30 pm master class slot offers a choice between two superstar instructors in percussionist Michael Werner, who was also on hand for the Sō Percussion residency and performance, and Paul Merkelo, the charismatic virtuoso trumpeter. Bravado bassoonist Benjamin Kamins closes out his course in a 3:30 pm season. 

Friday, it’s a keyboard competition as Conor Hanick, the pianist The New York Times praised for “technical refinement, color, crispness, and wondrous variety of articulation [that] benefit works by any master,” and who the Academy tapped to become the director of the solo piano program back in 2018, closes out that series at 1:30 pm, the same time that vocal piano superstar Martin Katz, a 1964 MAW alumnus who received the Academy’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 1999 and has continued to work with just about every great operatic singer of our times, leads the final vocal master class. (We imagine the latter might focus on the selections the singers are preparing to perform the following night at the Granada.) 

The final master class goes to oboe phenom Eugene Izotov, the principal oboist of the San Francisco Symphony who has also worked with just about every major orchestra around the country if not the world. The four lucky oboe fellows get another chance to shine in the 3:30 pm slot.