Ecstasies Above
A Concert of the Yale Schola Cantorum and the Yale Camerata
Woolsey Hall
Free and Open to the Public
Ecstasies Above, a choral concert by Yale Camerata and Yale Schola Cantorum, will take place at Woolsey Hall (corner College and Grove) in New Haven on Sunday, March 4 at 3 pm.
Yale Schola Cantorum, conducted by Simon Carrington, will perform works of Guerrero and JS Bach, and will present the world premiere of Tarik O’Regan’s The Ecstasies Above with Yale’s Hindemith Quartet. The work was commissioned for the choir by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music from the Robert Baker Commissioning Fund for Sacred Music. The work, a setting of the poem Israfel by Edgar Allan Poe, is scored for chorus, eight soloists (two solo vocal quartets), and string quartet. The following week the choir will perform all three works again in Miami at the national convention of the American Choral Directors Association.
Yale Camerata, conducted by Marguerite L. Brooks, will perform Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden (Op. 13), a work “firmly grounded in tonality” – that has been described as “one of the most challenging in the choral repertoire.” It is juxtaposed on the program with some of Mendelssohn’s a cappella masterworks, including Psalm 43, Heilig ist der Gott Zebaoth, and Nunc Dimittis (sung in English). Organist Soo Hyun Sonia Kim will join the Camerata to perform Mendelssohn’s Verleih uns Frieden. Camerata will also perform this program in Hanover, New Hampshire in a concert with the Handel Society of Dartmouth College. The concert at Woolsey Hall is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.