CHORDLESS is a voice and piano duo breathing life into new and forgotten music. Sara LeMesh, soprano, and Allegra Chapman, piano, are passionate about exploring overlooked composers and contemporary music, creating innovative experiences for audiences to discover new music. They seek to expand the canon of vocal/piano music to include these incredible works that deserve to be heard and loved.

Soprano Sara LeMesh, hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle for her “powerhouse performance of vocal majesty and expressive translucency,” is a dramatic presence on the opera stage, an avid chamber musician, and an advocate of contemporary music. A third-prize winner in the 2023 Serge & Olga Koussevitzky Young Artist Awards sponsored by the Musicians Club of New York, LeMesh is quickly garnering attention for her “mesmerizing” and “affectingly plangent” singing (Opera News). In the spring of 2023, LeMesh was the resident soprano with Opera Naples where she performed the roles of Josephine in Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, Woman #1 in Rodriguez’s Frida, and Frasquita in Bizet’s Carmen, in addition to several concerts with the Southwest Florida Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Radu Paponiu. In September 2023, the rising soprano will join Opera Philadelphia to cover the leading role of Nellie in the world premiere of Rene Orth’s opera,10 Days in a Madhouse. 

A devoted recitalist, LeMesh returns to the Marlboro Music Festival for her second summer in June 2023. In October 2022, the soprano made her debut with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players in New York City singing Fauré’s La bonne chanson and Chausson's Chanson perpétuelle. She also founded a piano-vocal duo named Chordless with pianist Allegra Chapman, and in 2020, they produced a “heartbreakingly beautiful” (San Francisco Chronicle) music video for the final movement of George Crumb's Apparition and received international recognition from the Tokyo International Short Film Festival and Montreal Independent Film Festival. Additional operatic credits include Bess in the 2019 West Coast Premiere of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s award-winning opera, Breaking The Waves, with West Edge Opera. The San Francisco Classical Voice lauded her “lush tone, exceptional high-register clarity, dramatic breadth, and fearless command.” In November 2022, she portrayed Young Lisa/Leah in the New York Premiere of Lori Laitman’s Uncovered with City Lyric Opera, a role which she covered and ultimately performed for two of five performances. ​Also with City Lyric Opera, LeMesh played Lucy Brown in Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, and Opera News applauded her portrayal which “seemingly channeled Teresa Stratas.” Other triumphs include Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Pocket Opera and Norina in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale with the Mendocino Music Festival.

LeMesh has performed throughout the United States and Europe at venues and festivals including The Morgan Library & Museum, Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, Music Academy of the West, American Bach Soloists, and International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum Salzburg. While at Tanglewood, she was a soloist in Berlioz’s Les nuits d'été under the baton of Stéphane Denève and co-premiered Folk Songs by Bernard Rands. 

LeMesh received her Master of Music Degree from the Bard College-Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Music Degree from Rice University. She currently resides in New York City with her husband and rescue dog, Coco. When LeMesh isn’t singing in traditional venues, you can find her performing outreach recitals in prisons, rehabilitation centers, and nursing homes.

Pianist Allegra Chapman is an omnivorous soloist, chamber musician, and curator with a wide-ranging repertoire of music from Bach to Ligeti and a passion for connecting audiences with historically overlooked and living composers. Her performances have been described as “fervid but impeccably controlled” by the San Francisco Chronicle and “brilliant” by the San Francisco Classical Voice. A graduate of The Juilliard School and Bard Conservatory of Music, she is currently a member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. Allegra will be featured on a forthcoming album for Albany Records of works by composer Richard Aldag. Allegra has performed internationally at venues including Alice Tully Hall, San Francisco Jazz Center, and Xi’an Concert Hall. A passionate chamber musician and new music advocate, she has collaborated with members of the Eusebius, Orion, and Telegraph String Quartets and worked with celebrated American composers including Joan Tower, Charles Wuorinen, and Melinda Wagner. From 2020-2023, Allegra was the pianist of the Delphi Trio with violinist Liana Bérubé and cellist Tanya Tomkins. Recent concert highlights include performances at Festival Napa Valley and the National Arts Club in New York City and a concert of two triple concertos with Delphi Trio and the San Jose Chamber Orchestra—Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and the world premiere of Grammy-nominated composer Clarice Assad’s A Story of Mermaids. In 2020, her music video with Chordless, The Night in Silence, won the “Best Music Video” award at the 2020 Tokyo International Short Film Festival and screened at four other film festivals.

As a curator, Allegra was the founding co-artistic director and executive director of the critically acclaimed festival Bard Music West from 2017-2020. Described as “a brilliant San Francisco festival” by the San Francisco Chronicle and “stunning and moving” by the San Francisco Classical Voice, Bard West presented three multi-disciplinary festivals exploring the worlds of composers from the past 100 years, and a concert series featuring the music and influences of emerging composers.

Allegra is currently on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory’s Pre-College division. She makes her home in San Francisco with her equally omnivorous husband and rescue dog, and an ever-growing library of over 800 books.