Robert Simpson, Founder and Artistic Director of Houston Chamber Choir announced the program for its 17th season of captivating music. The sounds of the professional musicians of Houston Chamber Choir will envelope the audience in beauty and emotion as they perform works by Bach, Tchaikovsky, Mozart and The Who. Special guests include acclaimed English conductor Simon Carrington, Houston jazz great Paul English and Grammy Award-winning vocalist Cynthia Clawson. This season reveals the heart of Houston Chamber Choir – its technical prowess and its luminosity. These traits of the Chamber Choir will be showcased on a new and rare recording of Psalmi ad Vesperas (1694) by Giovanni Paolo Colonna on the MSR label available this fall.
Season subscriptions for Beyond the Notes are available by visiting the Choir web site at http://www.houstonchamberchoir.org or by calling (713) 224-5566.
Soul Music of Tchaikovsky, Tavener and Górecki
Tuesday, September 18, 2012, 7:30 pm
Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, 1111 St. Joseph Parkway, Houston, TX 77002
The Houston Chamber Choir opens its 17th season with Tchaikovsky’s deeply moving Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Written in 1878, the same year as his opera Eugene Onegin, this is music of Old Russia: ancient, profound and mystical. Also included on the program are Song for Athene by John Tavener and Henryk Górecki’s Totus tuus. What more appropriate setting for music of the soul can there be than the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart?
Sponsored by Valobra Jewelry
Bach and All That Jazz
Friday, November 2, 2012, 7:30 pm
Lone Star College – Montgomery, Music Recital Hall
3200 College Park Drive, The Woodlands, TX 77384
Saturday, November 3, 2012, 7:30 pm
St. Philip Presbyterian Church, 4807 San Felipe, Houston, TX 77056
The art of improvisation was highly prized during the Baroque era, and Bach was a particularly skilled practitioner. The Chamber Choir adds a modern twist to this venerable practice with the help of noted Houston jazz pianist Paul English. Between the Chamber Choir’s performances of Bach’s magnificent motets, Singet dem Herrn, Der Geist hilft and Jesu, meine Freude, English and his jazz trio will create responses inspired by the motet’s music and text. The point-counterpoint promises to be fascinating. While the idiom will be jazz, the spirit will be Baroque.
Sponsored by Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.
For Unto Us
Messe de Minuit pour Noël: Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Messiah, Part I: George Frideric Handel
Saturday, December 8, 2012, 7:30 pm
The Church of St. John the Divine, 2450 River Oaks Boulevard, Houston, TX 77019
The Houston Chamber Choir presents an intimate and exquisite opening to the Christmas season by pairing Part I of Handel’s timeless classic Messiah with the lilting French noëls of Charpentier’s Midnight Mass for Christmas. Though overshadowed by Jean-Baptiste Lully during his lifetime, Charpentier was in every way Lully’s equal, as this exuberant setting from the time of Louis XIV proves. The Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah and Charpentier’s Mass make an unforgettable pair.
Sponsored by St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System
Christmas at the Villa
With Cynthia Clawson
Saturday, December 15, 2012, 3:30 and 7:30 pm
Sunday, December 16, 2012, 3:30 and 7:30 pm
Chapel of the Villa de Matel, 6510 Lawndale Avenue, Houston, TX 77023
Once again the Chamber Choir shares the joy of the season as it presents Christmas at the Villa. Performances of familiar carols in fresh arrangements, along with new works sure to become classics, create an experience that has made these sell-out concerts a “must” throughout our city. This year’s special guest is Grammy Award-winning vocalist Cynthia Clawson. Described as “a singer’s singer,” Clawson’s extraordinary career has brought her before audiences throughout the United States and abroad, including an appearance at London’s Wembley Stadium. The Treble Choir of Houston lends their angelic voices to the Chamber Choir’s matinee performances.
Sponsored by Raymond James & Associates, Inc.
What Sweeter Music
The British A Cappella Tradition with Simon Carrington
Saturday, March 2, 2013, 7:30 pm
The Church of St. John the Divine, 2450 River Oaks Boulevard, Houston, TX 77019
Sunday, March 3, 2013, 6:00 pm
St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 906 George Bush Drive, College Station, TX 77840
England has been a wellspring of timeless a cappella music from the Renaissance to the present day. The Chamber Choir and world-renowned guest conductor Simon Carrington will offer us a rich sampling of this tradition, including works by Robert White, Hubert Parry, James MacMillan – even The Who. As a founding member of the celebrated English a cappella group, The King’s Singers, coupled with an impressive academic career, most recently at Yale University, Mr. Carrington is the perfect guide for this adventure.
Sponsored by The Empty Vase
with support from The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts
Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor, K. 427
Saturday, May 18, 2013, 7:30 pm
The Church of St. John the Divine, 2450 River Oaks Boulevard, Houston, TX 77019
Belonging with Bach’s B minor Mass and the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven as one of the greatest masses ever written, Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor is a magisterial — if unfinished — masterpiece inspired by love. Mozart set about composing the Mass between the years 1782–83 to give thanks for his wife, Constanze, who was the soprano soloist when portions of it were premiered. This concert marks the Chamber Choir’s first performance of this work, which is scored for double choir, soloists, and chamber orchestra.
Sponsored by Apache Corporation
Education and Outreach Activities
Hear the Future
14th Annual Invitational School Choral Festival
Sunday, January 27, 2013, 4:00 pm
South Main Baptist Church, 4100 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002
FREE ADMISSION
One of the highlights of the Houston Chamber Choir season is the annual invitational school choral festival, Hear the Future, which showcases three outstanding choirs from the Houston region. This year, the invited choirs are the Spring Branch Girls Choir under the direction of Tracey Aycock, Knox Junior High School Choir under the direction of Lanna Flowers, and Cypress Falls High School Choir under the direction of Deidre Douglas.
This season the Chamber Choir has expanded its community outreach to allow the Hear the Future program to have an even greater impact on students in Houston. Students will participate in a specialized curriculum focused on choral music and its history. And, four times during the school year, small ensembles of professional singers from the Houston Chamber Choir will travel to the participating schools and work directly with the student singers.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Robert Simpson, Founder and Artistic Director of the internationally renowned Houston Chamber Choir, was honored by Chorus America with the Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art in June 2010. Throughout his illustrious career, Simpson has worked tirelessly to cultivate America’s passion for choral music. As noted by Gramophone magazine, an internationally recognized authority on classical recordings, the Houston Chamber Choir’s 2009 release, Ravishingly Russian, is highlighted by “exquisite harmonic illustration and enriched by an outpouring of graceful melody and restrained sentiment.” In 2011, Musica Russica, the world-wide source for Russian music named this recording as one of the finest Russian choral CDs and noted that this “fine anthology explores the little-known area of Russian secular choral part-songs.” In April 2012, Houston Chamber Choir made their New York City debut at Trinity Church Wall Street performing A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass. The Choir continued their tour to Yale University at the invitation of the Yale School of Music and the Institute of Sacred Music where they presented a masterclass and concert in Marquand Chapel.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.