Musica Viva NY Announces 2024-25 Season of New Album (Naxos) and Concerts (Sep-May)

New York, NY (For Release 07.08.24) — Hailed as “a treasured institution (Front Row Center),” New York City’s leading chamber choir, Musica Viva NY, today announced its 2024-25 season centered around the 10th anniversary of its intrepid Artistic Director-Conductor Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez. Celebrating a decade at the helm, Alejandro curates a season of works and composers that are personally meaningful to him while showcasing the diversity that has been a hallmark of Musica Viva NY for the past 10 years. Bach and Brahms, two of Alejandro’s favorite composers, are at the center of the season’s live performances, joined by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, French composer Lili Boulanger and American composer Judith Shatin. The season’s capstone is Musica Viva NY’s recording Crimson Roses: Contemporary American Choral Music (TBR 11.22.24, Naxos), the first under Hernandez-Valdez’s baton. Featuring acclaimed mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade (2024 OPERA America’s Opera Hall of Fame inductee), the album comprises three gorgeous chamber choral works by living American composers: Joseph Turrin, Gilda Lyons, and Richard Einhorn. (Please scroll down for complete season details.)

About Musica Viva NY

Musica Viva NY is a non-profit arts organization that was established nearly 50 years ago. Its mission is to bring world-class music to a wide community through an annual concert series, an active community engagement program, and an ambitious artistic vision. Under the baton of Artistic Director Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez since 2015, Musica Viva NY strives to offer joy, solace and renewal in a complex world by presenting new compositions and classic masterworks in transformative interpretations that ennoble the human spirit.

Musica Viva NY’s superb chamber choir and world class collaborating instrumentalists make their concert home in Manhattan’s historic All Souls Church. It regularly combines its presentation of the classical repertoire with less widely known works, as part of its commitment to perform the works of living American composers, women composers and composers of color, including works that address social, racial or environmental issues. Composers whose works have been featured in recent Musica Viva NY performances include Florence Price, Alexandra T Bryant, Steve Reich, Frank Ticheli, Missy Mazzoli, Alice Walker, Joel Thompson and Jesse Montgomery.

Musica Viva NY has commissioned and premiered numerous works by contemporary composers including Bora Yoon, Seymour Bernstein, Elena Ruehr, Joseph Turrin, Bruce Saylor, Jean-Louis Petit, Eugenio Toussaint, Gilda Lyons, Richard Einhorn, Trent Johnson and Trevor Weston.

Beyond high-quality concert performances, Musica Viva NY also serves the communities of New York City through a growing variety of rich community engagement programs. Currently, Musica Viva NY partners with New York city public schools, extracurricular youth ensembles, New York Public Library branches and the All Souls’ Monday Night Hospitality dinner program, offering free performances, artist clinics, interactive workshops, and more. Musica Viva NY has nurtured young artists throughout its half century of existence. Great musicians who have been Musica Viva NY singers and soloists include the Metropolitan Opera stars Samuel Ramey and Renée Fleming, and Broadway’s Aladdin, Michael Maliakel.

The organization was founded as an annual concert series in 1977 by Walter Klauss, who directed the group for 38 years, and adopted the name “Musica Viva” in 1985. Under Walter Klauss’ baton the choir toured in Paris (2004), Germany and Czechoslovakia (2006) and Italy (2012).

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2024-25 Season at a Glance:                                                                                   

All concerts held at 5:00 p.m., at All Souls NYC, 1157 Lexington Avenue, New York City. Tickets go on sale August 2024 and are available at MusicaViva.org.
 

Sunday September 29, 2024

In Concert: SOUNDSCAPES: Shabnam Abedi & Musica Viva NY Soloists

Musica Viva NY presents Shabnam Abedi with seven Musica Viva NY soloists. A former member of the Musica Viva NY choir, Ms. Abedi currently performs with “Lyyra” (part of the The VOCES8 Foundation) and the Trinity Wall Street chorus. This program, featuring the harmonium, tabla and piano, contains a crossover of three worlds of sound. In addition to the choral ensemble of eight voices presenting jazz and Hindustani classical music, there is Hindustani raga music presented by Ms. Abedi, as soloist, and the choral ensemble.

November 2024

Album Release: CRIMSON ROSES: Contemporary American Choral Music

Celebrating its latest album, Musica Viva NY recorded three new contemporary choral works by living composers: And Crimson Roses Once Again be Fair (2018) by Joseph Turrin, Momotombo (2022) by Gilda Lyons, and The Luminous Ground (2023) by Richard Einhorn. To be released by Naxos in both digital and SACD format, Crimson Roses: Contemporary American Choral Music features performances by Musiva Viva NY’s choir and orchestra led by conductor Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, joined by soloists Erinn Sensening (soprano) and world-renowned Frederica von Stade (mezzo-soprano). This recording marks the group’s debut album at the helm of Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez.

Sunday December 8, 2024

In Concert: THIS LOVE BETWEEN US: Bach and Esmail 

Written for exactly the same instrumentation, Reena Esmail’s beautiful This Love Between Us: Prayers for Unity (2017) and Bach’s brilliant Magnificat make an interesting pairing, juxtaposing the familiar and the unfamiliar, the past and the present, and a young and talented Indian-American composer and a venerated German master. Both works capture the awe and magnificence of our humanity.  

Sunday March 2, 2025

In Concert: CURSE UPON IRON: Poulenc, Tormis, Boulanger, and Allegri 

This program showcases the range of the Musica Viva NY choir and the acoustic capabilities of All Souls NYC in a beautifully diverse program of familiar and less familiar works. The program centers around the concepts of war and peace and our relationship to these opposite human experiences. Program includes: Songs of War and Peace by Judith Shatin, In Pace by René Clausen, Curse Upon Iron by Veljo Tormis, Miserere by Gregorio Allegri, Pour les funerailles d’un soldat by Lili Boulanger, and Figure humaine for organ by Francis Poulenc.

Sunday May 18, 2025 

In Concert: A HUMAN REQUIEM: Brahms and Schubert

Musica Viva ends its 2024-2025 season with Johannes Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, which is one of the most imposing and profoundly moving musical statements in history. A work with personal significance to Artistic Director, Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, Brahms’ Requiem is the most humanistic and universal of all the works of its type. As a companion to the Requiem, Musica Viva NY presents the opening movement of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony,which was a formative early influence in Alejandro’s life-journey.

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