The San Francisco Lyric Chorus, under the direction of Music Director Robert Train Adams, presents: Voices of Immigration:  Stories From Our Chorus Members, Expressed Through Music

Program:

Ernst Toch—Geographical Fugue
William Byrd—All As A Sea
Salamone Rossi—Al Naharot Bavel
Heinrich Isaac—Innsbruck, Ich Muss Dich Lassen
Antonín Dvorák—Songs of Nature
Janika Vandervelde—Cançao de Embalar
Dale Warland, arr.—Boyo Balu
Robert De Cormier, arr.—Dortn, Dortn
Stephen Hatfield—Take A Step
Stephen Hatfield, arr—Mayn Rue Platz
Gabriel Fauré—Madrigal
Donald Patriquin, arr.—Ah! Si Mon Moine Voulait Danser
Donald Patriquin, arr.—J’Entends le Moulin
J. David Moore, arr.—How Can I Keep From Singing?

Featured Musicians:
Jerome Lenk, Piano
Marguerite-Marie Ostro, Violin
Mark Rosengarden, Percussion

Saturday, May 7, 2011
7:00pm

First Unitarian Universalist Church
1187 Franklin Street at Geary
San Francisco

Sunday, May 8, 2011
5:00pm

Martin Meyer Sanctuary
Temple Emanu-El
2 Lake Street at Arguello
San Francisco

Tickets: General $20; in advance & for seniors, $17  
Free admission for students 5-18 with ID.
Please, no children under five.
For ticket purchase and further information, visit our website:  www.sflc.org
Contact:  (415) 721-4077 or email info@sflc.org
 
For our Spring 2011 trimester concert, Voices of Immigration, we are presenting music inspired by stories from our chorus members.  Members of the San Francisco Lyric Chorus come from all over the country and abroad.  Their family journeys tell stories about the amazing variety of life adventures our chorus members and their ancestors have had before and after coming to the United States.  Our program will include the following:

Austrian-American composer Ernst Toch (1887-1964)’s Geographical Fugue is a spoken geography lesson.  It is his most famous work, part of a suite entitled Gesprochene Musik (Spoken Music).

William Byrd’s (ca,1540-1623) five-part madrigal, All As A Sea, uses the life and activities of a 16th century sailor and ships at sea as a metaphor for our own lives.

Italian Jewish composer Salamone Rossi (ca. 1570-ca. 1630) sets text from Psalm 137, Al Naharot Bavel (By the Rivers of Babylon), in which captives, who have been forced to emigrate to another land, long for their homeland.

Renaissance composer Heinrich Isaac’s (ca. 1450-1517) beautiful lament, Innsbruck, Ich Muss Dich Lassen, expresses the pain of having to leave a place one loves and travel far away.

Our major work, Antonín Dvorák’s (1841-1904) five Songs of Nature, speaks of the beauty of the natural world—farm, field, forest—and how that world affects us.

Wisconsin composer Janike Vandervelde (1955- ) wrote the text (in Portuguese) and composed the theme for the lullaby, Cançao de Embalar.  Minnesota composer-conductor Dale Warland (1932- ) has created a a variation on that theme, Boyo Balu.

American composer and conductor Robert De Cormier’s (1922- ) arrangement of Dortn, Dortn, is the song of a lover who has been “far away across the water, far away across the bridge” from his beloved for three years, and begs her to write.

Canadian composer Stephen Hatfield’s (1956- ) Take A Step, ‘ deals with an immigrant mother watching her baby daughter, and wondering how to find an equilibrium between the country they've left and the country they've found.’  Hatfield’s setting of Morris Rosenfeld’s poem Mayn Rue Platz, shares the experience of a Jewish immigrant who works on machines in a sweatshop.  The poem was written in response to the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911.

Gabriel Fauré’s  (1845-1924) Madrigal tells of the fickleness of love and how we can love those who flee from us, as well as flee from those who love us!

Canadian composer, organist, and choral conductor Donald Patriquin (1938-) sets two Canadian folksongs:  Ah! Si Mon Moine Voulait Danser (Oh, If The Monk Would Dance With Me) and J’Entends le Moulin (I Hear The Millwheel).

J. David Moore’s (1962- ) arrangement of the hymn, How Can I Keep From Singing?, is a San Francisco Lyric Chorus favorite and plays a part in one of our chorister’s stories.