Family and friends have inspired me daily, as well as bringing me great joy outside of the world of opera. If you feel so inclined, check out these links and perhaps you will be inspired, too!

 

Pomegranate Center - a non-profit started over 20 years ago by my father, Milenko Matanovic. Pomegranate Center's work includes a wide range of projects and parks, as well as a highly successful process of community facilitation using the philosophy of healthy collaboration. This work can and should be applied everywhere! and check out  my father's PopTech talk on Art as a Community Builder and his tedx talk on collaboration and community.

Rancho La Puerta  I perform intimate concerts here several times a year. It is one of the most peaceful and rejuvenating places I've been to, and a very special place to make music. Check my schedule, as well as the schedule of events page on their site, to see when I am performing there. (Or just go any time you can! You won't regret it...)

A Fine & Curious Company of SIngers and Players - from the age of 5 to 14, I performed children's music with my family and Grammy-award winner Nancy Rumbel (of the acclaimed duo Tingstad and Rumbel). My parents, in a former life, were traveling folk singers and after my older sister and I were born and they discovered we could both hold a tune, my father began taking classical children's poetry and setting it to music. My mother (Kathi), father (Milenko), sister (Katya) and I sang and my father and Nancy (and occasional special guests) provided the music around us. During those years we put out three albums (including a parent's choice award winning album entitled Good Morning, Good Night) and toured around the Northwest performing. Now that many of the kids who grew up listening to these albums are parents themselves, two of the albums have recently been digitally restored and are available on iTunes here and here for a new generation to grow up with! 

Shelburne Farms - not only is this one of the most beautiful spots in the country, but it is also where my husband and I got married! In 1884 Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. landscaped and Robert H. Robertson designed a state of the art farm for Dr. William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb. It is now run as a non-profit organization that is leading the way in sustainable agriculture and education.