The Cecilia Chorus of New York Presents the World Premiere of Daron Hagen’s Everyone, Everywhere and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem on December 16 at Carnegie Hall

Saturday, December 16, at 8:00 PM, The Cecilia Chorus of New York, Mark Shapiro, Music Director, will present the World Premiere of Daron Hagen’s Everyone, Everywhere, along with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, 57th Street & 7th Avenue in Manhattan. Soloists will be Brianna Robinson, soprano, Amanda Lynn Bottoms, mezzo-soprano, and Shavon Lloyd, baritone.

Participating choruses include New York City All City High School Chorus (Kristy Jung, Director) and Every Voice Concert Choir children’s chorus (Nicole Becker, Director).

In honor of the event, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk and U.S. Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN Human Rights Council Michèle Taylor will offer spoken introductions.

This program honors the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, celebrating the seasonal yet timeless theme of peace. Daron Hagen’s historic new work Everyone, Everywhere – a Cecilia commission and world premiere – weaves moving passages from the Declaration together with the words of human rights luminaries Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Eleanor Roosevelt, and others. Maestro Shapiro and High Commissioner Türk can be seen in conversation about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Hagen’s cantata here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cgtnuruZFA.

Hagen’s cantata is paired with Ralph Vaughan-Williams’s impassioned Dona Nobis Pacem in an evening of music that brings the world we seek into view.

Daron Hagen’s list of commissions includes major orchestral works for ASCAP’s 75th Anniversary, the New York Philharmonic’s 150th, the Curtis Institute of Music’s 75th, the Corporation of Yaddo’s 100th, and institutions such as the Seattle Opera, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; groups such as the Amernet, Borromeo, Cassatt, Cavani, and Lark string quartets; the Amelia, Horszowski, Lincoln, and Prometheus piano trios, Duo YUMENO, and numerous others. The composer of a dozen operas and operafilms (four with libretti by Pulitzer prizewinning poet Paul Muldoon), he has composed cycles and roles for numerous operatic and concert vocal luminaries, including the Kings Singers, William Burden, Jane Eaglen, Nathan Gunn, Susanne Mentzer, Marni Nixon, Robert Orth, Ashley Putnam, Paul Sperry, and Robert White. Visit him at https://www.daronhagen.com/.

For tickets:

Single tickets for December 16 range from $25 to $90 and will be available online at https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2023/12/16/The-Cecilia-Chorus-of-New-York-with-Orchestra-0800PM, by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800 or visiting the box office at 57th Street and 7th Avenue.
For more about this concert, visit http://www.ceciliachorusny.org/ or call 646-638-2535. CCNY Carnegie Hall concerts are ADA accessible. For MTA transportation information, visit https://new.mta.info/tripplanner/results.

About the Chorus:

Founded in 1906, The Cecilia Chorus of New York, winner of the ASCAP/Chorus America Alice Parker Award, has evolved into one of the finest avocational performing arts organizations in New York City. The 150-voice chorus has been described as “reliably venturesome” (The New Yorker, 2017) and “admirable,” (New York Times, 2017). Recent highlights have included commissions from The Brothers Balliett, Jonathan Breit, Tom Cipullo, and Raphael Fusco; collaborations with five-time Obie Award-winning actor Kathleen Chalfant, two-time Tony Award-winning actor Stephen Spinella, and opera singers Julia Bullock and Ryan Speedo Green; the New York premieres in Carnegie Hall of the Mass in D and The Prison by Dame Ethel Smyth; the World Premiere of Fifty Trillion Molecular Geniuses by The Brothers Balliett; the US Premiere of Messe Romane by Thierry Escaich; the Carnegie Hall Premiere of The Ballad of the Brown King: A Christmas Cantata by Margaret Bonds with text by Langston Hughes; and the Carnegie Hall Premiere of Neither Separated, Nor Undone by Derrick Skye. Much more at http://ceciliachorusny.org/.

Mark Shapiro was appointed the seventh Music Director of The Cecilia Chorus of New York in 2011. Conductor Emeritus of The Prince Edward Island Symphony, Principal Conductor of Marshall Opera in New York, and Artistic Director of Cantori New York, he is one of a handful of artistic leaders in North America to have won a prestigious ASCAP Programming Award six times, achieving the unique distinction of winning such an award with three different ensembles. The New York Times has characterized his conducting as “insightful” and acknowledged its “virtuosity and assurance” and “uncommon polish.” The Star-Ledger calls his artistic leadership “erudite and far-reaching.” Bio at https://ceciliachorusny.org/about/#music-director.

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