Location: St Mary’s Church, Hillhouse, New Haven
Open to: General public
Admission: Free
Description: Yale Schola Cantorum, conducted by Simon Carrington; Yale Collegium Players, Robert Mealy, director; Yale Voxtet, James Taylor, director
Each performance has a preconcert talk by Markus Rathey at 7 pm in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall (across the street from St. Mary’s at 1 Prospect)
Simon Carrington will conduct the Yale Schola Cantorum in its final performances of the season with J.S. Bach’s masterpiece, the Mass in B Minor. The work will be presented twice at St. Mary’s Church (5 Hillhouse Ave.) in New Haven at 8pm on Friday, April 24 and Saturday, April 25. There will be a preconcert talk before each performance by Markus Rathey, associate professor of music history at Yale, at 7 pm in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall (across the street from St. Mary’s Church at 1 Prospect St.).
The performances are based on the new edition by the American Bach scholar Joshua Rifkin. Following the New Haven performances, the ensemble will take this glorious masterpiece on tour to Korea and China.
The score calls for eight soloists (all the members of the Yale Voxtet directed by James Taylor), double chorus (the 24 voices of Yale Schola Cantorum) and a chamber orchestra of strings, winds, and trumpets (the Yale Collegium Players directed by Robert Mealy).
There is no evidence that Bach ever performed the entire Mass in his lifetime. When he completed the work, his aim was to collect and conserve some of his most remarkable compositions, and he integrated them into a Mass that would reflect his finest accomplishments as a vocal composer.
The Yale Schola Cantorum was founded in 2003 by its conductor, Simon Carrington. Prof. Carrington will retire from Yale at the end of the current season, returning to Europe. The great Japanese Bach specialist, Masaaki Suzuki, has been appointed to a two-year term at Yale as visiting professor of choral conducting and conductor of the Yale Schola Cantorum.