Upcoming Concerts and Past Performances
Borderless: A World of Music
November 17th, 2024 3PM
First Reformed Church of Scotia
224 N. Ballston Ave., Scotia, NY 12302
Adults $25, students with valid ID $10, children 17 and under Free.
Tickets may be purchased in advance from a chorus member. They will also be available at the door.
Love is a verb
Last fall, a fellow voice teacher and I were discussing what a challenge it is to teach our students how to convey emotion through their singing. While every student is taught the principles of vocal technique, and employs them while learning a piece of music, each must take the final leap of expressing a song’s true message in performance. My colleague was describing the frustration she felt while trying to get a particular student to connect with the poetry of a certain song. “Love is a verb, Sue,” she said. “Love doesn’t exist unless it is given away.”
So many songs are written about Love; the search for it, the ecstasy of finding it, the agony of losing it, and the power it exerts over one’s life. Singers can best bring these songs to life through convincing performances that remind, encourage -- and even demand -- an emotional response from the listener.
Handel, With Care
Why Handel? For a chorale which concentrates on performing mostly contemporary music, why this Master Composer of the past?
First, a little bit about this man: born in Germany, George Frideric Handel was a prolific composer. In his 74 years of life, Handel wrote over 600 works, including 42 operas, 25 oratorios, more than 120 cantatas, trios, duets, Italian arias, chamber music, 16 organ concerti, incidental music, hymns, English songs, Latin church music, canticles, sonatas, and orchestral music. He suffered from a stroke in 1737 and was completely blind in his last seven years of life. It is difficult to imagine how one person created so much memorable and still-performed music.
The Persistence of Memory:
SONGS OF REMEMBERING
How does one name a program about memories? …My concept was to give singers an opportunity to remember their own losses and express their feelings through their music making. If Brahms was off my list, then next up was my favorite husband’s requiem, For Us the Living. But I needed a program title that encompassed good memories, also. …the longer I thought about it, music creates or re-creates memories, binding us to the time when we first experience it.
Copyright Sabra Field “Snow Moon” Woodcut
LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS:
SONGS OF WINTER SOLSTICE
Winter in the northern hemisphere can be harsh, with frigid temperatures, shortened days, and varying amounts of snow. Today’s concert music was chosen to give some light to these dark days, to warm your hearts if not your toes!
An augmented 5th
Stillness …
Silence …
Absence …
This is what the world experienced over the past 2 years. Collective music-making evaporated in March of 2020 as a virus took hold of our lives.
This journey with the pandemic is not yet over. But we are learning how to sing again both individually and collectively. Thank you for supporting us today by coming to hear our voices blend in song once again. The inner urge to create vibrations in the air is powerful and life-affirming! We are grateful for this opportunity to sing!
Shakespeare & Company
William Shakespeare, the “Bard of Avon,” is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the English language. Many generations of composers have had 38 plays and 154 sonnets from which to choose.
Women of Note and Word
Feminine and masculine, the yin and yang of humanity. What better way to express the coming together of all voices and encouraging an all-inclusive world society than music. But too often the words and notes of women have been overlooked, so today the chorale will feature a variety of music created by living women composers using either their own words or those of poets, both male and female, who inspired them.
PC: Kisah Bari
Celebrating America!
Music has the power to change us. The words composers use in choral music can make us pause and think, or can entertain us, or evoke emotions in us. In this program, our hope is that you will be “Celebrating America” with us and be motivated on a personal level to emphasize the good that unites us.
On the water
The music in this performance has something to do with that resource so essential to life on this planet—water: what it means and how we use it.
'tis the season
This program is a diverse mix of sacred and secular music appropriate for the upcoming season of winter...