|
Sharon Abreu & Michael Hurwicz Sharon Abreu was singing harmony by the age of three. When she got a little older, she was a soloist for the Puccini Heroines lecture series at Marymount Manhattan College and sang in master classes with Metropolitan Opera soprano Licia Albanese. Sharon sang in the improv comedy vocal quintet Whatever4, the jazz-pop trio InAccord, and the Opera Enterprise children’s opera company. She has performed lead roles in musicals and in operas including Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Despina in Cosi fan tutte, and Gretel in Hansel & Gretel.Sharon has sung at the United Nations and together with her partner Michael Hurwicz at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa. Michael Hurwicz always sang. He played bass and sang with The Orotund Singers and The Blue Kazoo folk groups. In Minneapolis, where he grew up, Michael started a wildly successful singing telegram company, Quackygrams. For the first time in his life, he was supporting himself with his music, although dressed as a duck. Sharon and Michael met at a music coffeehouse in New York’s Greenwich Village. Sharon started backing Michael up on vocals, fiddle, guitar and making funny faces, and Michael started backing Sharon up on vocals, guitar, harmonica and carrying her stuff around. Later on he added bass fiddle so that she would have to carry her own stuff. The duo’s energetic acoustic music includes traditional, contemporary and original tunes. Greenwich Village musical legend Jake Jacobs (Jake and the Family Jewels) has compared the blend of their voices to the 60s folk duo Ian & Sylvia. Locally, Sharon starred as Kaye in The Taffetas, which enjoyed a run of sold-out performances at the Orcas Center and in summer stock at the Bellingham Ferry Terminal. Michael became known around town as “Jesus” after starring in Godspell at the Orcas Center. On Orcas they have appeared in the Brown Bag concert series, Music in the Park and Songwriters-in-the-Round at Orcas Center. Sharon has appeared in Night of the Living Divas, One World Concerts, as a soloist with the Orcas Choral Society, and as a guest singer and violinist with the Olga Symphony. Sharon’s classical voice recital at the Orcas Center in October 2007 received a standing ovation from a full house. Also in Western Washington, they have sung for Martin Luther King Day events in Mount Vernon, the Stanwood Historical Society, the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship, The Magic Skagit, and the Northwest Folk Life Festival in Seattle. Sharon and Michael have been heard on radio stations across the U.S. including WFUV in New York, WFDU in New Jersey, WLRN in Florida, WRUW in Ohio, WGLT in Illinois, KUNI in Iowa, KMUD in California, KSVR in Mt. Vernon, Washington, and KSER in Everett, Washington. References available on request. Please contact: |