Star Tribune: Choral music: VocalEssence, the Singers announce 2014-15 seasons

Posted: March 28, 2014

Two of the Twin Cities’ leading vocal choruses have announced their programs for the 2014-15 season.

VocalEssence opens Oct. 26 featuring music of Minnesota composers Dominick Argento, Stephen Paulus and Libby Larsen. In addition, hip-hop artist Dessa makes her choral premiere.

The Ensemble Singers will tour with broadcaster Don Shelby
in “River Songs and Tales With Mark Twain.” The show will visit four
Minnesota towns — Faribault, Austin, Red Wing and Dawson — Nov. 13-16.
It also will be featured at a May 2 fundraiser on the Minnesota
Centennial Show Boat.

On Nov. 22, the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, founded by Francisco J. Núñez will be presented.

The Welcome Christmas program (Dec. 5-7, 13-14) will feature a Nordic theme with fiddler Sara Pajunen. A new Christmas cantata, “A Light in the Stable” by British composer Alan Bullard, will feature narration by actor Katherine Ferrand. The family concert, “Star of Wonder,” will be Dec. 13.

Next
years’ Witness program (Feb. 8) will bring the Grammy-winning vocal
group Sounds of Blackness to the stage with VocalEssence.

Composer Jake Heggie’s
new vocal opera “The Radio Hour” will be performed March 14-15 at the
Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. The show will feature a salute to Fred
Waring, the bandleader and radio host.

Musician Peter Schickele
brings his P.D.Q. Bach show to VocalEssence April 10, in a celebration
of Schickele’s 80th birthday. P.D.Q. Bach is Schickele’s creation of a
character who is an offspring of the famous composer. The University of
Minnesota Wind Ensemble joins VocalEssence in the show.

The Cantaré! Community Concert will be May 21, with music from Mexican composers.

www.vocalessence.org, or 612-371-5642.

The Singers, led by artistic director Matthew Culloton, will bookend their season with new music from Kevin Puts, the Pulitzer-Prize winner for “Silent Night” and Craig Carnahan, the Twin Cities-based choral composer.

The
season opens with Puts’ nine-movement suite “To Touch the Sky,”
featuring texts from women poets including Emily Bronte and Christina
Rossetti. The program, Oct. 18, 19 and 24, also includes work by
Minnesota composer Jake Runestad.

The Christmas program, Dec. 6-7 and 13-14, features Hugo Distler’s variations on “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” Rene Clausen’s “Magnificat” and Herbert Howell’s “A Spotless Rose.”

The music of Brahms is featured Feb. 21.

William
Byrd’s “Mass for Five Voices,” along with works by Thomas Tallis,
Thomas Tomkins and Orlando Gibbons, is featured in a program of music
from Tudor England April 11, 12 and 18.

The season ends May 29-30 with the first collaboration between the Singers and Zeitgeist,
the new-music ensemble. The two groups will perform the world premiere
of Carnahan’s “Ghost Camp,” which is based on Walt Whitman’s Civil War
poetry. The program features bass James Ramlet.