October 3, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chorus pro Musica opens its exciting 60th anniversary season with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil (Vespers) on Friday, November 7, 2008 at 8 pm at Old South Church, Copley Square, Boston, MA. Lisa Graham conducts this a cappella masterwork, which has been praised as Rachmaninoff’s finest achievement and indeed one of the high points of Orthodox music. Rachmaninoff himself requested that its fifth movement be sung at his funeral. First performed in 1915, the work was not heard in its entirety in Boston until 1993. Chorus pro Musica first performed it only seven months after its Boston premiere and last performed it in November 2000. Soloists are contralto Marion Dry and tenor Charles Blandy. The work will also be performed on Sunday, November 9 at 3 pm at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, West Roxbury, MA.
Concert tickets for the November 7 performance at Old South Church are $20, $30 and $40, with discounts available on selected seats for groups, students, seniors and WGBH members. Reserved seats may be selected and tickets purchased at www.choruspromusica.org, or by phone (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) at 800-658-4CPM (800-658-4276). For wheelchair-accessible seats, or to purchase tickets for the November 9 performance, call 617-267-7442.
Chorus pro Musica is celebrating its 60th anniversary season with a diverse repertoire of concerts led by four exceptional guest conductors, including former Music Director Jeffrey Rink, who returns in the spring to lead a concert performance of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot. The other guest conductors, each of whom conducts one subscription concert, are Betsy Burleigh, Music Director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, Assistant Director of Choruses for the Cleveland Orchestra, and Coordinator of Choral and Vocal Music at Cleveland State University; Michael Driscoll, Director of Choirs at Brookline High School, Music Director of Saengerfest Men’s Chorus, and former Associate Conductor of the Masterworks Chorale; and Lisa Graham, the Evelyn Barry Director of the Choral Program at Wellesley College, Music Director of the Brookline Chorus, and conductor of the Handel & Haydn Society’s Young Women’s Chorus.
The holiday season celebration, conducted by Betsy Burleigh, is at Old South Church in Copley Square, Boston on Friday, December 19 at 8 pm, and features Conrad Susa’s Carols and Lullabies, Music of the Southwest. Conceived as a companion piece to Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, the work is a medley of traditional Spanish carols from Spain, Mexico and Puerto Rico, arranged for chorus, harp, guitar and marimba. There are striking similarities with Renaissance music, but this is a Nativity celebration of the Americas: The composer said it was “the overriding image of a Southwestern pi–ata party for the new baby” that led him to add guitar and marimba to Britten’s harp. The concert will also include the traditional candlelight procession, brass chorale and carol singing with the audience.
On Saturday, March 14, 2009 at 8 pm at the Church of The Covenant in Boston, Michael Driscoll leads the chorus and a chamber orchestra in a concert of Baroque music that includes the Boston premiere of Jonathan Dove’s Köthener Messe, written in 2002, together with J.S. Bach’s Cantata 161, “Komm, du sŸsse Todesstunde,” and G.F. Handel’s Dixit Dominus. Dove, who turns 50 in 2009, won a British Composer Award for his Mass, which is inspired by Bach’s great secular compositions during his stay at the court in Köthen—mong them the Brandenburg Concertos and the Well-Tempered Klavier. It has been called “a tapestry that makes perfect musical sense,” grounded in Bach but in which “the spacious string chords of Arvo PŠrt and the running sequences of the American minimalists hover on the sidelines.” Bach’s Cantata 161, one of the most beautiful of his Weimar cantatas, concludes with a lushly harmonized chorale carrying a message of hope and peace. Handel’s Dixit Dominus, written when he was just 22, is a thrilling tour de force that marks a breakthrough for the young composer, his “explosion into genius.”
The season concludes with Giacomo Puccini’s grand opera Turandot, conducted in concert by Jeffrey Rink on Sunday, May 31, 2009 at 3 pm at NEC’s Jordan Hall. The performance will mark the 14th annual concert opera under Maestro Rink’s direction since 1992, a tradition that includes an exciting performance of Turandot in 1998 to a capacity crowd in Jordan Hall. Turandot, famous for the beloved aria “Nessun Dorma,” tells the story of an icy Chinese princess whose suitors must answer three riddles to win her hand-or die trying. Soprano Othalie Graham is Turandot and tenor Kip Wilborn is Calaf. The performance is in Italian with projected translations, and is sponsored by Concert Opera Boston. Jeffrey Rink, recipient in 2005 of the Jacopo Peri Award of the New England Opera Club for outstanding contributions in the art of opera, directed the Chorus pro Musica for 18 years before leaving in 2008 to serve as Music Director of the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra and the Mattie Kelly Distinguished Endowed Teaching Chair in Music and Conducting at Northwest Florida State College.
Subscriptions are available for all four concerts or for any combination of three concerts, at 10% off single-ticket prices, and may be purchased at www.choruspromusica.org, or by phone (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) at 800-658-4CPM (800-658-4276).
Chorus pro Musica also appears this season on January 18, 2009 with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras, Federico Cortese, Music Director, in W.A. Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro; and April 4–5, 2009 with the Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra, Jung-Ho Pak, Music Director, in Felix Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Barnstable High School Performing Arts Center. The Chorus appeared in September with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Charles Ansbacher, Music Director, in Giuseppi Verdi’s Requiem at the Hatch Shell in Boston.
Chorus pro Musica is a distinguished, independent Boston-based chorus recognized for versatility and excellence in performing traditional, adventurous and seldom-heard works. The chorus was founded in 1949 by the late Alfred Nash Patterson and quickly built a superb reputation for its professional-level musical standards and innovative programming. These strengths have led to collaborations with such organizations as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra as well as with opera companies including the Opera Company of Boston and Commonwealth Opera.
Visit the Chorus pro Musica online press kit at: www.choruspromusica.org/press.html or the Rachmaninoff page at: www.choruspromusica.org/press/Rachmaninoff2008/index.html.
Media, for more information contact:
Toni Ballard at 508-633-8583, toniballard@townisp.com.
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Peter Pulsifer, Concert Promotions Director, at 617-267-7442 or promotion@choruspromusica.org.
Betsy Burleigh is Music Director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh. She is also Assistant Director of Choruses for the Cleveland Orchestra and Coordinator of Choral and Vocal Music at Cleveland State University. Her musical career began in Boston, where she was Music Director of The Master Singers. Dr. Burleigh was chorus master for the Cleveland Opera from 2002–2006 and director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus from 1998–2006. Academic posts have included serving as Director of Choral Activities at Tufts University and Clark University. She holds a doctorate in choral conducting from Indiana University and a masters from the New England Conservatory of Music.
Michael Driscoll is Director of Choirs at Brookline High School, where he directs three choirs, advises three student-run a cappella ensembles, teaches music theory and is vocal coach for the annual musical production. He is also Music Director of Saengerfest Men’s Chorus, a Boston-based community chorus of 65 singers. Michael was Associate Conductor of The Masterworks Chorale. He has also directed the choirs at Emerson College and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Mr. Driscoll received his masters degree in Choral Conducting from the New England Conservatory.
Lisa Graham is the Evelyn Barry Director of the Choral Program at Wellesley College. She is also Music Director of the Brookline Chorus and conducts the Handel & Haydn Society’s Young Women’s Chorus. Before joining Wellesley College, she was on the faculty at California State University at Northridge, where she directed choirs at Sonoma State University and performed in and directed productions at Cinnabar Opera Theater in Northern California. She earned her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees at the University of Southern California.
Jeffrey Rink led Chorus pro Musica for 18 seasons, garnering critical acclaim in the full gamut of the choral repertoire, with particular success in concert opera. “The afternoon’s mastermind was, of course, Music Director Jeffrey Rink, an opera conductor to be reckoned with,” (T. J. Medrek, Boston Herald). Mr. Rink was honored in 2005 by the New England Opera Club with the Jacopo Peri Award for his significant contributions to the art of opera. Maestro Rink is now the conductor of the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra and the Mattie Kelly Distinguished Endowed Teaching Chair in Music and Conducting at Northwest Florida State College.