The internationally award-winning professional chamber choir, founded by Somerset Hills music teachers Joshua Copeland and Stephen Sands, returns to its hometown for a concert of beautiful choral works featuring Eric Whitacre’s “the city and the sea” and Matthew Brown’s arrangement of “True Colors” which made waves with the recent It Gets Better anti-bullying campaign. Join us for a splendid evening of world class choral music. Join local music teachers Mr. Copeland and Mr. Sands as they bring their professional ensemble back to the Somerset Hills.
Antioch is delighted to return to Vassar for this rescheduled concert. Works to include “the city and the sea” by Eric Whitacre among other choral gems, both sacred and secular. Admission is free and open to the public.
Antioch Chamber Ensemble presents contemporary choral masterworks by Mealor, Whitacre, Antognini in historic St. Paul’s Chapel
Lower Manhattan – On Friday, March 30, 2012 at 7:30 pm, the award-winning professional vocal ensemble Antioch will present Sets and the City: Modern Composer Portraits at historic St. Paul’s Chapel, located at Fulton Street and Broadway in Lower Manhattan. Featured will be several premieres of works by English composer Paul Mealor, whose international star is on the rise after the stand-out performance of his shimmering Ubi caritas at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton last spring. Mr. Mealor will be in attendance, having just conducted a week-long residency at Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary. Also featured will be “The City and the Sea,” a song set by the extraordinarily popular American composer Eric Whitacre, set to poetry by e.e. cummings. The concert will also include the premiere of a work written specifically for the occasion by Swiss-Italian composer Ivo Antognini, based upon Sara Teasdale’s poem “Faces.” Discounted tickets of are available by pre-sale only at www.AntiochChamberEnsemble.org/antiochmealor through 12pm on March 30. Thereafter, they may be purchased for either online or at the door, subject to availability.
“I have long admired the beautiful blend, colours and wonderful musicianship of the Antioch Chamber Ensemble and, having heard their fabulous performance of my Ubi caritas earlier this year I knew I had to work with them!” says Mr. Mealor. “This concert of some of my most deeply personal works infused by my strong Christian beliefs – performed in the heart of New York, at the stunningly spiritual St Paul’s Chapel – will be a very special and touching moment for me.”
First place prize-winners in the prestigious Tolosa International Choral Competition, the Antioch Chamber Ensemble, currently in its 14th season, is widely regarded as one of the finest professional vocal ensembles in the United States. The ensemble performs works ranging from Renaissance polyphony to contemporary masterpieces, but in recent years has earned a stellar reputation for their pitch-perfect and expressive interpretation of modern music. They gave the European premiere of Eric Whitacre’s “The City and the Sea” in France in 2010. The same year, they gave the world premiere of American composer Bruce Adolphe’s “Of Art and Onions: Homage to Bronzino” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a work commissioned by the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence to celebrate the unprecedented exhibitions of Bronzino’s drawings at the Met. The ensemble’s second CD, The Passing of the Year, featuring the titular cycle by contemporary composer Jonathan Dove, was released by MSR Classic in May of 2010 to glowing praise from the national press. Ronald E. Grames of Fanfare wrote, “The 12-voice Antioch Chamber Ensemble…projects the complex eight-part writing with remarkable authority. As elsewhere in this program, the flawless blend, excellent intonation, and enthusiastic but sensitive phrasing of these relatively young artists, pure and slightly bright in the English style, assures aural bliss… The recordings…are crystal-clear without being analytical, the parts distinct, but the voices beautifully integrated into the ensemble.”
More information may be found at the ensemble’s official website: www.AntiochChamberEnsemble.org/antiochmealor … See full description
Widely regarded as one of the finest professional choral music ensembles in the United States, The Antioch Chamber Ensemble is currently celebrating its 14th season of exceptional music-making, having made its debut at the gala opening of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in 1997. Under the leadership of founding Artistic Director Joshua Copeland, the ensemble strives to present as diverse a program as possible of the world’s greatest choral literature, both sacred and secular, and has performed works ranging from Renaissance polyphony to contemporary masterpieces with a core group of ten to twelve of the New York metropolitan area’s finest singers. In 2008, Antioch was awarded first-place honors in the highly prestigious Tolosa International Choral Competition in Spain, establishing them among the top rank of professional choirs in the world. In recent seasons, Antioch has been called “stellar,” “flawless,” “an exceptional group,” and “a spectacular example of what a classical choir should sound like” by the national press.
Antioch’s past performance highlights include feature performances for Carnegie Hall’s Neighborhood Concert Series, the Trinity Wall Street “Noon-Day” Concert Series, the American Choral Directors Association Eastern National Conference and the Nautilus Music Festival in Nova Scotia. In the past season, Antioch performed at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, hailed by the New York Times as a “technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses.” The ensemble also premiered a piece by composer Bruce Adolphe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of a special exhibition of works by the Renaissance painter Agnolo Bronzino in March, and returned to the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina for their ninth consecutive performance in the Choral Artists Series in May. In July, Antioch appeared at the Musique en Morvan Festival and the Festival des Choeurs Laureats in France.
Antioch’s first full-length recording, Winter Songs, featuring the Mid-Winter Songs by contemporary American composer Morten Lauridsen, was released in December of 2003 to wide-spread acclaim. The ensemble’s second CD, The Passing of the Year, was released by MSR Classics in May, 2010.
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The Antioch Chamber Ensemble