Sametz Chosen for 2011 Brock Commission

Steven Sametz is the 2011 recipient of the American Choral Director Association’s prestigious Raymond W. Brock Memorial Commission. As part of the commission, the Grammy Award-winning ensemble Chanticleer will premiere Dr. Sametz’s Three Mystical Choruses at the ACDA National Conference in Chicago’s Symphony Hall on March 9, 2011.

Three Mystical Choruses is a three movement work that includes sacred text from Christian, Jewish and Hindu-Islamic-Sikh traditions. The movements are titled Niño de Rosas (Child of Roses), En Kelohenu (There is none like our God) and Mein To ere Paas Me (I Am Within You). “My hope is that these pieces will point towards the greatness that choral music invites and that, in some way, may find a place in the long tradition of choral singing that is still very much alive today,” says Sametz.

Chanticleer – based in San Francisco – is known around the world as “an orchestra of voices” for the seamless blend of its twelve male voices ranging from countertenor to bass and its original interpretations of vocal literature, from Renaissance to jazz, and from gospel to venturesome new music. They have been a vital force in the presentation of new music in the US and abroad and have collaborated with Steven Sametz since 1987, when he wrote one of his first major works for them, ¡O llama de amor viva! (A Mystical Vision of St. John of the Cross). Since then, Chanticleer has performed and recorded many of Sametz’s works, including in time of on their Grammy-Award winning “Colors of Love,” and the very popular I Have Had Singing. They most recently premiered and recorded Sametz’s Not an End of Loving (commissioned specially for Chanticleer) and performed an earlier Sametz work commissioned for them, Two Medieval Lyrics, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 

The Raymond W. Brock Memorial Choral Series was established in 1991 to honor the life and contributions of Raymond W. Brock, who served as Administrative Assistant for ACDA from 1987-1991. Annually, the ACDA Executive Committee will commission a recognized composer to write a choral composition in an effort to perpetuate quality choral repertoire. Funds for this commission will be paid from the Raymond W. Brock Memorial Endowment, a fund established and maintained by the membership of ACDA.