The Soul of American Music

Overview

In a concert of spirituals, gospel music and American folk music, the Worcester Chorus, celebrating its 150th Anniversary Season too, pays tribute to the "popular" music from the early days of its history - the songs that were sung outside the concert hall - a heritage as long and rich as our classical tradition. 

Talented solists from within the chorus will be stepping forward to perform on select pieces.  Renowned local pianist Sima Kustanovich will acompany the singers.

Joining the Chorus and Maestro Christopher Shepard will be the two previous Artistic Directors/Conductors:  Dr. Gerald Mack (conducting tenure 1975 - 2006) will lead the chorus in two spirituals, My Lord, What A Mornin', and Ain't Got Time To Die.  Andrew Clark (conducting tenure 2006 - 2009), appointed just this month as Director of Choral Activities at Harvard University, will take up his baton on a pair of arrangements by the great Moses Hogan, Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel and another still TBD.

This concert will feature wonderful and  familiar songs  - from Amazing Grace to Shenandoah - choral arrangements spanning a century and a half, and should prove to be a rousing good time for audiences of all ages.

United Congregational Church is open seating:  $25,  students $18.  Tickets available at door the evening of performance.  Call Music Worcester office for tickets noon to 5PM on Friday.

PLEASE NOTE:  Cash or check only at door - no credit cards.

Program

PROGRAM AND PROGRAM NOTES

African-American Spirituals

• Lift Every Voice and Sing         - J.R. and J.W. Johnson

• Set Down Servant                  - arr. Robert Shaw        Susan d'Entrement, Alto, & Alan Hoffsommer, Bass

• It's My Desire                        - Freda Bagley & Horace Boyer

• My Lord What a Mornin'           - arr. H.T. Burleigh

• Ain't Got Time to Die               - arr. Hall Johnson         Larry Smith, Tenor; and Janice Seymour & Paula Leary, Soprano Duet

                                                                                 Dr. Gerald Mack, Conductor

• Precious Lord, Take my Hand    - arr. Roy Ringwald       Anna Granquist, Soprano

• Elijah Rock                            - arr. Jester Hairston

• Ezekiel Saw the Wheel            - arr. William Dawson     Paul Dexter, Tenor

American Folksongs I

• Wondrous Love                      - Gwyneth Walker

• Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal   - arr. Shaw-Parker

• All My Trials                          - arr. Norman Luboff

• Shall We Gather at the River    - arr. Aaron Copland

• Shenandoah                         - arr. Marshall Bartholomew

• Let Us Break Bread Together   - Traditional                 Anna Granquist, Soprano

Folk Music of the 1960s

• 500 Miles                                   - Traditional           John Wells, Tenor
• Abraham, Martin and John             - Dick Holler           Rick Rudman, Baritone
• The Times They Are A-Changing    - Bob Dylan            Patsy Molica, Alto

American Folksongs II

• Amazing Grace                            - arr. Jack Schrader
• Down By the Riverside                  - arr. John Rutter

Moses Hogan Spiritual Arrangements

• Deep River                                 - arr. Moses Hogan
• Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel          - arr. Moses Hogan   Patricia Renner, Pamela Mahoney, Susan d'Entrement, Trio,

                                                       Andrew Clark, Conductor

• We Shall Walk Through the Valley   - arr. Moses Hogan
• Ride On, King Jesus                      - arr. Moses Hogan

NOTES

   "We have had a wonderful year traversing some of the classics of choral music that have been performed in our first 150 years - the Brahms Requiem, Handel's Messiah, and a program of excerpts from the greates choral masterworks.  These works, composed for the church and the concert halls, represent a significant part of the canon of western art works from the past few centuries.

    However, it is important to acknowledge that these classical works are only part of our rich musical heritage.  This concert presents the other side of the coin - works that began their lives more modestly, in church services, in homes and in the fields.  These folksongs and African-American spirtiuals passed orally from one generation to the next, are an equally significant part of our cultural legacy.  Even the arrangements presented here, which themselves span a century, reflect their own time and place.  These traditional songs are encoutnered anew with each fresh group of performers and arrangers, bringing a new vitality with each generation.

    Most of the arrangements in the first set of African-American spirituals date from the mid 20th century, with straightforward harmonies and lush vocal colors - reminiscent of the age of the great radio choirs.  Anyone who has sung in a high school, college or church choir will recognize at least a few of these arrangements, which have been a standard component of the choral repertoire for decades.  The opening song, Lift Every Voice and Sing, is of particular importance; it is often called the "African-American national anthem" and was quoted in the invocation at President Obama's inauguration.

   The American folksongs represent many places and traditions - Appalachia, Sacred Harp, Southern Harmony and Protestant hymnody.  Similarly far-reaching are the arrangements themselves.  Folksong arrangements were an important part of the early 20th century college glee club tradition; Shenandoah is but one of dozens of arrangements by Marshall Bartholomew, who led the Yale Glee Club for decades.  Copland's Shall We Gather at the River bears the composer's unmistakeable imprint, with its quintessentially "American" sound.  Amazing Grace has been given a rousing gospel treatment, paired here with John Rutter's Dixieland version of Down by the Riverside.  These varied approaches to age-old songs constitute the choral world's take on the oral tradition.  In the same way that different regions developed different variations on the same tunes over decades and centuries, modern composers give their own personal "take" on these works - never the final word, of course, but an excellent glimpse into the Zeitgeist of the arranger's own era.

    Many musicians and cultural anthropologists bemoan the ever-quickening loss of these oral-tradition folksongs.  In an age when group singing happens only in summer camps and churches (hardly even in schools anymore), how will these songs be passed along to future generations?  Or do we have our own new body of "folksongs"?  Perhaps the closest analogue to that ancient oral tradition was the renaissance of the folk tradition in the 1960s.  We present here a handful of our own talented singers to represent this newer tradition with three songs that surely deserve to enter the age-old folksong repertoire.

   Our final bracket of spirituals represents the outstanding contribution of Moses Hogan to the field of choral music.  Unlike the 1st set of spirituals, these arrangements from the past 20 years exploit harmonies imported from the jazz world, as well as colors and textures from gospel music.  Moses Hogan made these arrangements very well known through his recordings with the Moses Hogan Chorale.  Tragically, Hogan died at the age of 46 in 2003.  We are fortunate that he left behind such a significant body of work - arrangements that have come to represent our era as much as the Dawson, Hall and Burleigh arrangements represented their time and place."    - Christopher Shepard, Artistic Director, The Worcester Chorus

About the Artists

Christopher Shepard, Conductor, 2009 - present

In recent years, conductor Chris Shepard has been most associated with the choral music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He founded the Sydneian Bach Choir and Orchestra in Sydney, Australia, and was the music director of BACH 2010, a project to perform all of Bach’s choral cantatas. Under his direction, the ensemble performed over seventy-five cantatas, as well as the two Passions, B Minor Mass, and Christmas Oratorio. A Sydney reviewer wrote of the cantata series that “these well-attended events, using a fine choir and perceptive soloists, are high points in our musical terrain.”

In addition to the music of J.S. Bach, Chris has conducted many staples of the choral-orchestral repertoire, and he has commissioned and premiered a number of new choral works in both Australia and America. Chris was recently named Music Director of the Dessoff Choirs, one of New York City’s most venerable choral organizations. They perform regularly with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and have long had a commitment to new music. Since returning to America, Chris has also been a guest conductor at Emmanuel Church in Boston, a church renowned for its three-decade Bach cantata project. He currently serves as Music Director of the First Congregational Church in Watertown, CT. He has conducted avocational choirs for more than two decades, including the Stamford MasterSingers, Greater Middletown Chorale and Waterbury Chorale in Connecticut.

 Resident in Sydney from 1996 to 2008, Chris served as Director of Music at Sydney Grammar School, one of Australia’s most prominent high schools. Music education has been a major focus of his career; before moving to Sydney, Chris led the choral program at the Taft School in Connecticut, where his Collegium Musicum appeared at the 1994 ACDA Eastern Division convention. The Litchfield County Children’s Choir, which he founded in 1990, continues to thrive after nearly two decades. Since 2004, Chris has been Music Director of the Hotchkiss Summer Portals Chamber Music Program, an intensive chamber music program for advanced young players and singers from around the world. He conducts the chamber orchestra and choir, serving on the faculty alongside such guest ensembles as the Shanghai Quartet, the Brentano String Quartet and Cantus. Over the last two decades, Chris has given several presentations for the American Choral Directors’ Association and has conducted several high school regional festival choirs in New England.

With SBS-TV, an Australian national public television network, Chris presented two documentaries: Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and From Mozart to Morrison with eminent Australian jazz musician James Morrison. The Melbourne Age recommended the Mozart documentary as a “novel, thoughtfully produced hour”. In 2000, Chris was chorusmaster with the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs for their performance in the Olympics Opening Ceremony. Throughout his years in Sydney, Chris worked with a wide range of school and community choirs as conductor and clinician.

 Chris holds degrees from the Hartt School and the Yale School of Music, where he studied choral conducting with Marguerite Brooks. He is currently completing his PhD in Musicology at the University of Sydney, researching the performance history of Bach’s B Minor Mass in 20th century America.

 Andrew Clark, Conductor, 2006-2009

Andrew Clark has been recently appointed as the Director of Choral Activities at Harvard University and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music. Mr. Clark will oversee the Holden Choral Program of over 500 students and nine faculty-directed choruses and serve as music director and conductor of the Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Society, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum.

As the Artistic Director of the Providence Singers, the ensemble has earned critical praise for engaging and innovative concerts, distinctive community engagement programs, and dynamic artistic and organizational partnerships. Mr. Clark conducted the Providence Singers on its debut recording, Lukas Foss’s cantata The Prairie, receiving critical acclaim as “an artistic triumph” praising “Andrew Clark’s appropriately heroic interpretation” (Choral Journal), and as a “recording [that] belongs in any decent library of 20th-century music” (American Record Guide). In 2010, the Providence Singers released its second recording, Jonah and the Whale, by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Dominick Argento.

Mr. Clark has commissioned and premièred works by numerous composers and led frequent performances of contemporary music and masterworks for chorus and orchestra. Mr. Clark has collaborated with the Kronos Quartet, the Pittsburgh and New Haven Symphonies, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Opera Boston, and the Newport Jazz Festival, in venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris, Stephansdom, Vienna, Boston Symphony Hall, Mechanics Hall, and throughout Europe and the North America.

Mr. Clark previously served as Music Director of the Worcester Chorus from 2006-2009 and as Director of Choral Activities at Clark and Tufts Universities. He received degrees from Wake Forest and Carnegie Mellon universities, and is currently a doctoral student at Boston University. Mr. Clark is a member of the national music honor society Pi Kappa Lambda and has been recognized by Chorus America as one of our country’s most promising young conductors.

Dr. Gerald R. Mack, conductor 1975-2006

Dr. Gerald R. Mack, formerly Music Director of the Worcester Chorus for 28 years and Founder and Music Director of the Great Waters Music Festival (NH) was also Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford (CT). He gained a national reputation as an adjudicator, conductor and lecturer. At the Hartt School of Music he developed an outstanding choral program and his Hartt Choral groups were selected to appear on numerous music conventions throughout the United States by the American Choral Directors Association.

Dr. Mack has worked closely with such notable musicians as Gunther Schuller, Yehudi Menuin, Michael Lancaster and Seiji Ozawa. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Tully Hall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Jordan Hall and the Washington National Cathedral as well as at many of the renowned concert halls of Europe. His festival appearances include the New York Mostly Mozart Festival, the Salzburg Music Festival, the International Dubrovnik Music Festival and the Oaxaca Spring Festival with the Mexican National Symphony among others.

Twice Dr. Mach has been selected to represent the United States conducting his choirs at the International Music Festivals in Vienna, Austria, and Montreux, Switzerland. On the CBS radio station in Rochester, NY, he produced and directed over 200 radio shows with The Gentlemen Songsters, a professional male chorus, and appeared on Eastman Theater Productions with the Rochester Civic and Philharmonic Orchestras. While serving in the army he was Music Director for the weekly Soldier Parade Show on ABC TV network with Arlene Francis. Dr. Mack was selected for the first annual Connecticut Choral Conductor of the Year award and was guest conductor in 1991 at the ACDA National Convention in Phoenix. He received the National Business in the Arts Award given by Esquire Magazine for his organization and direction of the Greater Hartford Youth Chorale, a group of 140 young people bringing together urban and suburban talent from the Greater Hartford (CT) area. He has served on the grants committee for the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and has also been published by Carl Fischer and Lawson Gould Publishers. Upon his retirement from the Hartt School of Music he was honored with the creation of a choral scholarship in his name.

Gerry and his wife, Nancy, moved to Nantucket in 1999 where Dr. Mack became the Director of the Nantucket School of Music from 2002-2006. He presently serves on the Board of Director of the Nantucket Arts Council and the Great Waters Music Festival and is Director of the Winter Concert Series for Nantucket.

Sima Kustanovich, Pianist

Sima Kustanovich is one of the Northeast’s most sought after pianists. Hailed by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette for the “extraordinary intensity and brilliance of her playing,” she concertizes in some of the most acclaimed international venues, including France’s Courchevel Chamber Music Festival, Toronto’s Royal Conservatory Chamber Music Series, Sweden’s St. Jacob’s Cathedral, and major cities of Russia, Italy and Estonia. In 1990 she was the recipient of a rare invitation to perform on Steinway & Sons 500,000th piano that toured the United States from coast to coast.

 Through mastery of the keyboard repertoire equipped Ms. Kustanovich with a richly varied career. Cited as the “consummate musician” (Worcester Telegram), she is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician, collaborating with such ensembles as the Borodin String Quartet. She received a Masters in Music from the St. Petersburg Conservatory; she then joined its faculty and accepted a coveted appointment to the famed Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theater, working intensively with such luminaries as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova.

A recipient of the Telegram & Gazette’s 1995 prestigious Visions 2000 Cultural Enrichment Award, Ms. Kustanovich has won many grants and commendations for community contributions as performer and program administrator. An esteemed teacher, she is on the faculties at Clark University and the Walnut Hill School for Performing Arts. She is Co-Founder/Administrator if the Commonwealth Competition for Young Pianists, Music Director of Brown Bags for Kids at Mechanics Hall, and Founder/Director of the Neighborhood Music Program sponsored by Clark University.