Hudson Valley Chorale Season Ar7s7c Director: Constance Chase Accompanist: Steven Vosatka

Transcription

1 Hudson Valley Chorale Season Ar7s7c Director: Constance Chase Accompanist: Steven Vosatka

2 2008 June 6 Spring Concert Ar5s5c Director: Constance Chase Venue: First Reformed Church of Nyack,Nyack, NY Seasons of Time Samuel Adler Song of Peace Vincent PersicheE Fros7ana: Seven Country Songs Randall Thompson The Road Not Taken The Pasture Come In The Telephone A Girl s Garden Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Choose Something like a Star Three Songs from American Victoriana arr. Hubert Bird Grandfather s Clock Home, Sweet Home There s a Tavern in the Town If Ye Love Me Thomas Tallis Hallelujah, Amen G.F. Handel Ave Verum Corpus Wolfgang A. Mozart The Old Hundredth Psalm - arr. R.V. Williams Kiddush Kurt Weill My Shepherd Will Supply My Need arr. Vergil Thomson Steal Away arr. Paul von Hippel Ride the Chariot Arr. W.H. Smith Ain a That Good News William L. Dawson Precious Lord, Take my Hand Arr. Roy Ringwald Salmo 150 Ernani Aguiar The Word Was God Rosephanye Powell

3 Program Notes An American Season (1) An American Season features works by American composers, each evoking a par7cular season of the human spirit, an enduring moment of being. The juxtaposi7on of texts and musical seengs invites the suspension of 7me and conjures the memory of shared American experience and spirit. Samuel Adler's (b. 1920) Seasons of Time begins the journey by reminding - in a text taken from Ecclesiastes that there is indeed a season and a 7me for everything. A prolific composer of operas, symphonies, oratorios, concer7, string quartets and works for band, orchestra and chorus, Adler is a member of the composi7on faculty of The Juilliard School and is Professor- Emeritus at Eastman where he taught for over thirty years. Highly sought aeer for commissions and copiously awarded for his many achievements, Adler counts Randall Thompson among his own influen7al teachers. Vincent PersicheE ( ) was a virtuoso pianist and organist, a talented and wide- ranging conductor, and a master teacher of composi7on who had by the age of fourteen already begun to establish himself as a composer, eventually for nearly every musical medium. His innate feeling for the seeng of text to music is well illustrated in his Song of Peace. On this day of June 6t h the anniversary of the WWII D- Day invasion of Normandy - it is par7cularly fieng to remember that Americans are also currently embroiled in war. In this prayer for peace, PersicheE employs pungent musical language to portray the heart's agony in 7me of war. Randall Thompson ( ), like PersicheE and Adler, combined a teaching and a composing life. He served as director of the pres7gious Cur7s Ins7tute of Music as well as professor at his alma mater, Harvard University, among other schools. The roots of his dis7nc7ve composi7onal language are oeen traced to years of study as a young man at the American Academy in Rome where he was greatly influenced by master composers of the Renaissance.

4 Program Notes An American Season (2) FrosDana: Seven Country Songs is among the most beloved of American choral works. Commissioned in 1958 for the two- hundredth anniversary of the Town of Amherst, Massachuseis, the work was premiered the following October with the composer conduc7ng and the poet Robert Frost, who had lived in Amherst for some years, in aiendance. The symmetrical structure of the song cycle incorporates full chorus at beginning and end, and working from the inside out, frames a central conversa7on between men's and women's choruses, The Telephone, with two choruses each for women and men. Much has been wriien about Frost's poetry and Thompson's effec7ng music. We leave it instead for your own personal hearing. Hubert Bird (b. 1939) served for thirty years on the music faculty of the University of New Hampshire in Keene, NH. Now based in Baxter Springs, KS, the award- winning freelance composer writes for instrumental and vocal forces ranging from solo to symphony orchestra and full chorus. Among his many dis7nguished achievements is the selec7on in 1976 through a na7onal compe77on of his Blessed is the NaDon Whose God is the Lord by the NaDonal Bicentennial Commission as the official anthem of the Bicentennial Celebra7on. His numerous commissions are premiered throughout the United States, Europe and South America annually. Three selec7ons from Dr. Bird's forthcoming American Victoriana are presented by special permission of the composer. Familiar songs all, his inven7ve treatments call forth the longing for that simpler era - the Victorian age or our own childhoods? Filled with genuine sen7ment, they are never merely sen7mental. Listen for Dr. Bird's own snippets of text at the end of Grandfather's Clock and scaiered throughout There is a Tavern in the Town. - Constance Chase

5 2008 January 20 Premier Concert Ar5s5c Director: Constance Chase Venue: St. Francis of Assisi Church West Nyack, NY Hail Glorious Spirits, Heirs of Light - Christopher Tye If Ye Love Me Thomas Tallis Hallelujah, Amen G.F. Handel Ave Verum Corpus Wolfgang A. Mozart The Old Hundredth Psalm arr. R.V. Williams Kiddush Kurt Weill My Shepherd Will Supply My Need arr. Vergil Thomson Steal Away arr. Paul von Hippel Ride the Chariot arr. W.H. Smith Ain a That Good News William L. Dawson Precious Lord, Take my Hand arr. Roy Ringwald Salmo 150 Ernani Aguiar The Word Was God Rosephanye Powell