News
For Immediate Release Attn: Music & Arts/Calendar Editors
ST. CHARLES SINGERS
SLATE SUBLIME SONGS
FOR MARCH 8 & 9 CONCERTS
Program Titled:
“Faire Is the Heaven: Songs of Serenity and Light”
Will Be Performed in St. Charles and Wheaton
Editors: This concert’s title and program have been modified somewhat since the event was first announced in the fall.
ST. CHARLES, Ill., Feb. 4, 2008 — The St. Charles Singers’ first concerts of 2008 will look heavenward through works ranging from sacred music of the Spanish Renaissance to African-American spirituals.
The professional chamber choir will present “Faire Is the Heaven: Songs of Serenity and Light” on Saturday, March 8, 7:30 p.m., at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church, 307 Cedar Ave., St. Charles; and Sunday, March 9, 4 p.m., at St. Michael Church, 310 S. Wheaton Ave., Wheaton.
The concert takes its name from “Faire Is the Heaven,” a double-choir motet written to a Renaissance text by William Harris (1883-1973). The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians says the piece has “a spaciousness of conception and a richness” that rank it as among the composer’s “best work.” Harris was associated with England’s Christ Church Cathedral and St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.
The internationally acclaimed mixed chorus of some 30 singers will give its first-ever performance of contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s Berliner Messe (Berlin Mass), written in the early 1990s. Jeffrey Hunt, founder and artistic director of the St. Charles Singers, describes the work as “a very clever piece. Pärt takes compact ideas and turns them into something spacious and beautiful. He has a unique musical language.”
Herbert Howells was a musician at Gloucester and Salisbury cathedrals. He composed his heartfelt and extremely personal Requiem in 1936 under tragic circumstances and wouldn’t allow it to be performed until 1980. Hunt calls it a work of “unique, sacred sentiments.” The St. Charles Singers will perform the Requiem aeternum movement, which, for Hunt, evokes the image of a slow sunrise.
Franz Joseph Haydn’s joyous and optimistic oratorio The Creation (1797) is his most-loved work today — just as it was in his lifetime, when its fame rivaled that of Handel’s Messiah. The ensemble will sing an excerpt, the powerful “Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre” (The heavens are telling the glory of God).
Over the centuries, many composers wrote darkly dramatic Requiems. By contrast, the prevailing mood of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem (1888), a work of ethereal beauty, is one of peacefulness and serenity. The French composer said he viewed death as “a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards the happiness above, rather than a painful experience.” The ensemble will sing the In Paradisum movement, which begins, “May angels lead you into paradise.”
Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) received his earliest musical training at Avila Cathedral in his native Spain and spent most of his career in Rome. His Regina caeli laetare (Queen of Heaven, rejoice) is a spectacular work for eight-part choir, with an unusual division among the vocal sections: there are three soprano parts, two alto and two tenor parts, and one bass part.
Randall Thompson’s “Have Ye Not Known” and “Ye Shall Have a Song” are from his early masterpiece The Peaceable Kingdom (1936), a song cycle inspired by an idyllic Quaker painting of the same name. Thompson, perhaps America’s most famous choral composer, fuses Renaissance counterpoint and textures with an American sensibility. “A composer’s first responsibility,” Thompson wrote, “is, and always will be, to write music that will reach and move the hearts of his listeners in his own day.”
Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) was among the greatest German composers of the 17th century, a giant of the musical generation that preceded J.S. Bach. “Selig sind die Toten” is an excerpt from Schütz’s masterwork, Musikalische Exequien, which traces the arc of a righteous life, from birth to eternal rest.
The program concludes with spirituals arranged by African-American composers of the late 20th century. These include “Let the Heaven Light Shine on Me” and “Elijah Rock” by Moses Hogan (1957-2003). Hogan was one of the most celebrated contemporary directors and arrangers of spirituals — and a prize-winning classical pianist. His New Orleans-based Moses Hogan Chorale and Moses Hogan Singers performed and recorded to great acclaim.
“The Lily of the Valley” is one of the best-known works by Wendell Whalum (1931-1987), longtime director of the Morehouse College Glee Club in Atlanta. His concert arrangements of traditional spirituals honor both the beauty and power of the originals.
The St. Charles Singers will be accompanied by organist Scott Stevenson.
Single concert tickets are $35 (premium seating, Baker Church only), $25 (general admission), $20 for seniors 65+, and $10 for full-time students 23 and under. For concert tickets and information, call (630) 513-5272 or visit www.stcharlessingers.com.
About The St. Charles Singers
Founded in 1984 by Jeffrey Hunt, artistic director, the St. Charles Singers is one of America’s preeminent professional choral groups. Based in St. Charles, Illinois, near Chicago, the mixed chamber choir of approximately 30 singers has a repertoire comprising about 600 works.
In a review of the St. Charles Singers’ 2007 performance of Aaron Copland’s American Songs with the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Tribune critic John von Rhein praised the ensemble’s “winning warmth and charm.”
In a CD review, England’s Gramophone noted the ensemble’s “impeccable vocal blend . . . and clear precise diction.” ClassicsToday.com called the St. Charles Singers “one of North America’s outstanding choirs,” citing “charisma and top-notch musicianship” that “bring character and excitement to each piece.”
# # # #
