Schumann-Cass Cabaret

Liz Cass

Liz Cass enjoys a lively schedule of performing, teaching, and producing in Austin, TX and beyond. Liz has been on the faculty and staff of the Armstrong Community Music School since 2004 and is the founder and Executive Producer of the opera company LOLA, Local Opera Local Artists, which won 3 Austin Critics Table Awards in 2015 for La Femme Bohème.
Recent performance highlights include Graham Reynold’s new chamber opera, Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance, for which she received an Excellence in Singing award from the Austin Critics Table; The Manchurian Candidate with Austin Opera; and the premiere of Donald Grantham’s “Meditations on Hafiz” with Chorus Austin. Liz’s upcoming schedule includes concerts in Guatemala, concerts in Austin with Austin Chamber Music Center and LOLA, tours to Los Angeles and Seattle with Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance, and Austin Opera’s production of La Traviata in the spring of 2018.
Liz Cass is a graduate of the University of Missouri at Kansas City Conservatory of Music. She began studying with Inci Bashar at UMKC in 1997, and continues studying with her to this day.

Michelle Schumann

Hailed for her “sensitive, flexible, and tempestuous dexterity” (Fanfare Magazine), pianist Michelle Schumann has built a reputation for evocative and moving performances. Since 2006, Michelle has served as Artistic Director of the Austin Chamber Music Center, where she “is fearlessly expanding our definition of chamber music.” (Austin-American Statesman). Her brand of performance includes an enthusiastic interplay with the audience and her trademark includes bringing diverse music together under a blanket of narrative events.

Schumann is artist-in-residence and professor of piano at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. She received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin and additionally holds a Performance Diploma from the Vienna Conservatory.

This production has been generously funded by The Creative Fund’s Q Rental Subsidy Grant program. The Creative Fund is a funding mechanism that provides much-needed support to local performing artists enabling them to further their creative endeavors.