Music as Consolation
Presented by the Institute of Sacred Music
Sprague Hall, 470 College Street, New Haven
Free and open to the public.
Entitled Music as Consolation, the program consists of three works representing the intimate ways that music touches and consoles the troubled spirit. The program will include Musica Dei donum of Roland de Lassus, J.S. Bachs cantata Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten, and theMusikalische Exequien of Heinrich Schütz. William Hite will be the tenor soloist. Hite, a noted performer of opera, oratorio and recitals, has an extensive discography of medieval, renaissance and baroque music, and was recently appointed to the voice faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The Yale Collegium Players will be directed by Robert Mealy, the Hogwood Fellow in Historical Performance for the Handel and Haydn Society. Mealy has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe to critical acclaim for his eloquent and imaginative performances on a wide variety of historical string instruments, and has recorded over 50 CDs of early music on major labels.
The Schola Cantorum is a new 24-voice chamber choir specializing in music before 1750 and contemporary music. Its founder is Simon Carrington, the newly appointed Professor of Choral Conducting at Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Carrington is also the co-founder of The Kings Singers at Cambridge University, having spent 25 years as a creative force with this internationally acclaimed British vocal ensemble. He gave 3000 performances at many of the worlds most prestigious festivals and concert halls, made over 70 recordings, and appeared on countless television and radio programs. An active freelance conductor and choral clinician, Carrington has led workshops and masterclasses all over the world, most recently at the Marktoberdorf Chamber Choir Competition, Germany; the Fifth World Symposium on Choral Music in Rotterdam, Holland; the International Choral Convention in Singapore; and the Franz Liszt Conservatory of Music in Budapest, Hungary. In July 2003 he conducted the Monteverdi Vespers (1610) in Barcelona, Spain, sung by some of the finest youth choirs from all over Europe.
The concert, presented by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, is free and open to the public.