News and Notices

WORLD PREMIERE

THE ALL SING
“HERE LIES JOY”

January 8, 2022 at 2pm | Raindate: January 9, 2022 at 2pm at Times Square | 15 minutes

PROTOTYPE will kick off its 10th anniversary season with an exuberant cri de coeur, bringing communities together through what we know best – the voice. We have long missed the opera houses, black box theatres, and jazz clubs, but perhaps what we have missed most is singing – the joyous feeling of expressing one’s being through song.

The All Sing brings more than 1,000 people together to weave a vibrant tapestry of sound, poetic justice, and hope. From the voices who tread the boards of some of our most hallowed stages to those who tread the tiles of their shower, all are welcome in this ebullient celebration of connection, community, and our capacity for joy. Together we will craft an unforgettable moment and sing for a return to a more just, healthy, and music-filled life in a post-COVID world.

Commissioned, developed, and produced by PROTOTYPE: Opera | Theatre | Now

For more information: http://prototypefestival.org/shows/the-all-singhere-lies-joy/

“Lift Every Voice,” sponsored by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), is a mentoring program for talented young choral conductors from underrepresented groups.  The 2022 program will bring six female ACDA members nearing the end of their undergraduate music study to the UIUC campus to work with an outstanding faculty of experienced conductor-teachers, including Kimberly Dunn Adams, Hilary Apfelstadt, Ollie Watts Davis, Kirsten Hedegaard, and Andrea Solya, among others.  The week will include private conducting lessons, conducting classes, participation in graduate level choral courses, sessions on leadership, historical women composers, contemporary women composers, rehearsal technique, a history of women conductors, and round-table discussions on how to navigate the day-to-day challenges of being a female choral conductor.  All participants will rehearse and conduct UIUC ensembles in a closing performance.  All travel costs, housing, and tuition will be paid through the new Choral Music Engagement Fund at the University of Illinois.  “Lift Every Voice” in 2023 will focus on conductors of color, bringing aspiring choral musicians together with experienced leaders in the field.

Nominations are due to by October 15.

February 1-5, 2022
Deadline to apply is November 15, 2021

The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s annual Choral Conductors’ Symposium returns this season under the leadership of its new Artistic Director Jean-Sébastien Vallée.The program invites emerging conductors and those who wish to refine their skills to participate in a five-day series of workshops and masterclasses with Jean-Sébastien. Participants will have the rare opportunity to conduct the 100 voices of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and the 20-voice professional core of the TMC in rehearsals throughout the week and in the concluding public performance, which is webcast live.

Get all the details, including a link to the application form, on the Symposium webpage: https://www.tmchoir.org/tmc-choral-conductors-symposium/

The St. Charles Singers, led by founder and music director Jeffrey Hunt, will open its 38th concert season October 2 and 3, 2021, in St. Charles, Illinois, with a program featuring the world premiere of a new choral work by acclaimed American composer Jake Runestad.

The mixed-voice professional chamber choir’s 2021–2022 season, marking its first in-person performances since the pandemic, offers four different concert programs.

The ensemble’s heartfelt season-opener, Overturn the Night: Songs of Hope and Renewal, features a pair of works for choir and cello, including Runestad’s newly composed “Cello Songs,” commissioned for the St. Charles Singers. Its premiere was postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic.

December’s Candlelight Carols, with its signature mix of Christmas favorites and stylish, lesser-known seasonal songs, continues a Yuletide tradition that began with the choir’s founding in 1984.

April and August bring the final two installments of the ensemble’s multi-season Mozart Journey, an ambitious voyage through the beloved classical composer’s sacred choral works, including many that are rarely, if ever, heard in concerts or worship services.

“Many listeners find Mozart’s sacred choral music as thrilling and satisfying as his operas, symphonies, and chamber works,” Hunt says.

Overturn the Night: Songs of Hope and Renewal

The concert’s centerpiece is the premiere of Grammy-nominated composer Runestad’s Cello Songs, scored for choir, cello, and piano, with text by poet and librettist Todd Boss. The work’s four movements are named for the seasons of the year.

Also written for choir and cello is Dan Forrest’s romantic song, “The Sun Never Says,” about the sun, earth, and “a love that lights the whole sky.”

Guest cellist is Cameron Grimes, a British-American artist now based in the U.S., who performed with the St. Charles Singers during the choir’s most recent English concert tour.

Audiences will hear the world premiere of St. Charles Singers soprano Marybeth Kurnat’s “Epitaph for a Romantic Woman,” her musical setting of a poem by Louise Bogan.

The choir will perform Bob Chilcott’s “Unison”; Arvo Pärt’s “O Weisheit”; Will Todd’s “Remembrance”; the Black spirituals “My Lord, What a Mornin’” by Harry T. Burleigh and “Soon-ah will be done” by William Dawson; Jonathan Dove’s “In beauty may I walk”; Joan Szymko’s “River”; and pop singer Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run,” arranged by Grammy Award-winning choirmaster Craig Hella Johnson.

Performances are 7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 2, and 3:00 p.m. Sunday, October 3, at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church, 307 Cedar Avenue, St. Charles.

Candlelight Carols: ‘Musical Ornaments’

As in the past, the St. Charles Singers’ latest Candlelight Carols program combines holiday favorites with relative rarities and newer works.

Choirmaster Hunt likens the creation of each year’s Christmas program to trimming a Christmas tree, but with musical ornaments.

“We always include some treasured carols that everyone looks forward to,” Hunt says. “But as a choir of highly accomplished professional singers, we also like to offer less familiar, virtuosic works for audiences to discover and savor.”

This season’s program will include music of Harold Darke, Michael Head, Shawn Kirchner, Kenneth Leighton, Boris Ord, Alice Parker, Robert Shaw, Scott Stevenson, and others.

The choir will present “Candlelight Carols” at 7:30 p.m. Friday, December 3, at Baker Church, St. Charles; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, December 4, at Fourth Presbyterian Church, 126 E. Chestnut St., Chicago; and 3:00 p.m. Sunday, December 5, at Baker Church, St. Charles.

Mozart Journey XVI: Multiple Missas

The penultimate leg of the St. Charles Singers’ Mozart Journey, with the Metropolis Orchestra, offers a program of four works.

Mozart was just 12 years old when he composed the Missa solemnis in C minor, K. 139, for the opening ceremonies for a newly built church in Vienna. A local newspaper reported that the Missa “met with universal approval and admiration.”

Among highlights is the virtuosic operatic aria “Quoniam tu solus,” to be sung by guest soprano Michelle Areyzaga, a former St. Charles Singers choir member who is enjoying a high-profile career as soloist.

The Missa brevis in G major, K. 140, is unusual in that it bears no resemblance to Mozart’s other masses but does share stylistic traits with some of his other work.

Mozart’s “Tantum ergo” in D major, K. 197, is a setting of a motet text in folksong style. His “Two German Hymns,” K. 343, are in a simple hymn style. The hymns are “O Gottes Lamm” in F major and “Als aus Ägypten” in C major, the latter based on Psalm 114.

Performances are 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 9, and 3:00 p.m. Sunday, April 10, at Baker Church in St. Charles.

Mozart Journey XVII: Fitting Finale

A fitting finale to the St. Charles Singers’ Mozart Journey series, this last installment includes the composer’s final work, the Requiem in D minor, K. 626. Gravely ill, Mozart died in 1791 before he could finish it. His student, Franz Süssmayr, completed the Requiem for him.

Mozart also wrote the “Ave verum corpus” in D major, K. 618, during his last year of life. The Compleat Mozart reference work calls it “a piece of wonderful simplicity, a pure distillation of heartfelt devotion.”

The Metropolis Orchestra will perform Mozart’s turbulent, dramatic Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183. Considered an “extraordinary work” by musicologists, the Symphony No. 25, like other minor-key symphonies of the era, borrows its urgent, tempestuous character from the opera world.

The concerts are 7:30 pm. Saturday, August 27, and 3:00 p.m. Sunday, August 28, at Baker Church in St. Charles.

Tickets and Information

Single admission to each of the St. Charles Singers’ concerts is $40 for adults, $35 for seniors 65 and older, and $10 for students.

Tickets and information are available at www.stcharlessingers.com or by calling (630) 513-5272. Tickets are also available at Townhouse Books, 105 N. Second Ave., St. Charles (checks or cash only at this ticket venue). Tickets may also be purchased at the door on the day of the concert, depending on availability.

St. Charles Singers

Founded and directed by Jeffrey Hunt, the St. Charles Singers is a professional chamber choir dedicated to choral music in all its forms. Hailed by American Record Guide as “a national treasure,” the mixed-voice ensemble of 30-plus voices includes professional singers, choral directors, and voice instructors, some of whom perform with other top-tier Chicago choirs. ClassicsToday.com has called the ensemble “one of North America’s outstanding choirs,” citing “charisma and top-notch musicianship” that “bring character and excitement to each piece.” The Chicago Tribune has described the St. Charles Singers as “splendidly disciplined, beautifully responsive” and proclaimed, “Chamber chorus singing doesn’t get much better than this.” Among the St. Charles Singers’ prominent guest conductors have been English composer John Rutter, founder of the Cambridge Singers; Philip Moore, composer and former music director at England’s York Minster cathedral; and Grammy Award-winning American choir director Craig Hella Johnson. The choir launched in St. Charles in 1984 as the Mostly Madrigal Singers.

ChoralNet is a special kind of community. We can come, join with other people who love vocal music, and not worry about the spam or trolling that can happen in other venues. That doesn’t happen by accident.

We are indebted to an incredible team of moderators who help to create this space by staying connected with this site, reviewing new posts and comments, and generally working very hard behind the scenes to keep ChoralNet interesting, educational, and relational. I would like to thank our current group of moderators: Frank Albinder, Marie Grass Amenta, Tom Tropp, and Stephen Trumbell. They do an outstanding job and we are grateful for all they do.

ACDA is currently seeking another moderator to join this team. This moderator would become part of this established group and take a shift a week (likely Wednesdays) approving posts and comments, monitoring discussions, and otherwise keeping ChoralNet the incredible place that it is. This is volunteer work – one of service – that requires specific skills and a commitment to the ChoralNet community.

Might you be interested? Here is a little on what we are looking for in a candidate for ChoralNet moderator:

Required Qualifications for ChoralNet Moderators:

• High level of comfort working with social media and/or online communities
• Ability to commit to a regular block of time to stay connected with ChoralNet every week and respond promptly to approve posts and comments

Desired Qualifications for ChoralNet Moderators:

• Familiarity with ChoralNet
• Current ACDA membership
• Familiarity with WordPress

Interested? Please email Sundra Flansburg, ACDA’s Director of Membership & Communications () indicating your interest, any questions you might have, and the skills that you could offer in this role.

The Saint Louis Chamber Chorus (MO) will begin its 66th season at Washington University’s E Desmond Lee Concert Hall, on Sunday, October 3 at 3 pm. The program features music by Monteverdi and Vivaldi, and culminates with the first performance of “We Are The Music Makers” commissioned from Philadelphia-based composer, Melissa Dunphy. Melissa will be flying in for the concert, which will feature both the singers & instrumentalist faculty, conducted by Philip Barnes. For tickets and details of the COVID protocols, visit www.chamberchorus.org