August 14, 2017
For Immediate Release
Contact: Jeffrey James Arts Consulting
516-586-3433 or
The Cecilia Chorus of New York, Mark Shapiro, Music Director
2017-2018 Concert Season at Carnegie Hall –
US premiere by Dame Ethel Smyth – Bach Christmas Oratorio – Mozart Requiem
Also: US premiere by Thierry Escaich – 200th birthday tribute to Charles Gounod
New York, NY – The Cecilia Chorus of New York, Mark Shapiro, Music Director, has announced its 2017-2018 concert season, including two concerts at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage and a third concert at Manhattan’s Church of the Holy Trinity. Dates and programs are:
Saturday, December 9, 2017 at 8:00PM – J.S. Bach Christmas Oratorio
Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, 57th Street & 7th Avenue
Bach’s Christmas Oratorio comprises six cantatas written for the period between Christmas and Epiphany. The Cecilia Chorus of New York will be singing all six, with full orchestra and soloists to be announced in September.
More concert information at http://ceciliachorusny.org/#/oratorio/.
Sunday, March 4, 2018 at 3:30PM – Messe Romane by Thierry Escaich and Requiem by Charles Gounod
Church of the Holy Trinity, 316 E. 88th Street in Manhattan
The U.S. premiere of leading French composer Thierry Escaich’s Messe Romane, for double chorus and organ. Escaich (born in 1965) is an organist-composer in the grand French tradition of Franck, Messiaen and Durufle, whom Escaich succeeded as organist of the church St.-Etienne-du-Mont. The Messe Romane premiered three years ago in Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral.
Following the Messe Romane will be Charles Gounod’s Requiem, his last work, written for his young grandson. The composer died of a stroke just a few days after completing it in 1893. The performance commemorates the composer’s 200th birthday.
More concert information at http://ceciliachorusny.org/#/messeromanerequiem/.
Saturday, May 11, 2018 at 8:00PM – The Prison by Dame Ethel Smyth and Mozart’s Requiem
Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, 57th Street & 7th Avenue
The Prison, on a metaphysical text written expressly for her by the composer’s soulmate Harry Brewster, was the last major work (1930) by Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944). For reasons undoubtedly attributable not only to her sex but also to the complexities of her personality and gender identity, Dame Ethel’s powerful, skillful music has yet to win the recognition it unquestionably deserves. The composer’s extraordinary life included close friendships with Tchaikovsky (and his dog), Virginia Woolf, and many others – and a stint in prison for throwing a brick and breaking a window as a Suffragist.
Although The Prison is in the genre of oratorio, the composer called it a symphony, wishing to avoid any connotations of organized religion. Mark Shapiro conducted this piece in 2016 with his chamber chorus Cantori New York, using the composer’s own piano reduction. About this performance, Boston Musical Intelligencer reflected: “….The Prison marked [Smyth’s] return to a profound moral tone and weighty subject matter….Smyth’s musical language spans the late-romantic, post-romantic and even modern.”
The Cecilia Chorus of New York will perform the piece in its full original orchestration, making this the second U.S. premiere of our season.
Mozart wrote his beloved Requiem as he lay dying; he did not live to finish it. This third work in the Chorus’s triptych of last works (Gounod, Smyth, Mozart) will complete the 2017-18 season. Music Director Mark Shapiro: “Composers, like any of us, engage in soul-searching later in life. An artist’s ‘late style’ typically entails both a summing up and a concentrated seeking that are charged with the wisdom and perspective earned through a lifetime of art-making. All of us are deepened — our lives become fuller and more joyful — when we are confronted with the inevitability of our own mortality and that of those we love. Artists especially can invoke and communicate this deepening, and lead us to experience it ourselves in a beautiful, exhilarating way.”
More concert information at http://ceciliachorusny.org/#/requiemtheprison/.
Single tickets for the December 9 and May 11 concerts range from $25 to $85 and are available online at http://www.carnegiehall.org/, by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800 or visiting the box office at 57th Street and 7th Avenue. Season subscriptions are also available.
For more information about these concerts, visit http://www.ceciliachorusny.org/ or call 646-638-2535.
CCNY Carnegie Hall concerts are ADA accessible. For MTA transportation information, visit http://tripplanner.mta.info/MyTrip/ui_web/customplanner/TripPlanner.aspx.
The Cecilia Chorus of New York was founded in 1906 as The St. Cecilia Chorus. The Chorus was the 2015 winner of the Chorus America/ASCAP Alice Parker Award. Recent highlights include the New York premiere of the 1892 Mass in D by Dame Ethel Smyth. The Chorus takes pride in offering hall and role debuts to talented young singers, recently including soprano Julia Bullock and baritone Ryan Speedo Green.
Music Director Mark Shapiro was appointed the seventh Music Director of The Cecilia Chorus of New York in 2011. He is one of a handful of artistic leaders in North America to have won a prestigious ASCAP Programming Award five times, achieving the unique distinction of winning such an award with three different ensembles. The New York Times has praised his work as “insightful” and has noted its “virtuosity and assurance,” as well as its “uncommon polish.” His bio is online at http://www.ceciliachorusny.org/music-director-mark-shapiro/.
For photos or press inquiries, please contact Jeffrey James Art Consulting at 516-586-3433 or .
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