THE CANTATA SINGERS & ENSEMBLE
David Hoose, Music Director
Allison Voth, Director, Chamber Music
2007–2008
Unveiling Weill— The Kurt Weill Season
Seductive | Subversive | Haunting | Sublime
Cantata Singers' long river of J.S. Bach that sprang up in 1964, now gives rise to a series of fresh, exciting year-long streams. This year, the vibrant Kurt Weill flows through our concerts. A man of two voices and one heart, Weill spoke with social conscience and moral force equally in his edgy concert works and in his ground-breaking music for Broadway. Weill's sophisticated, seductive and haunting music interweaves with music of Gershwin, Schoenberg, Dallapiccola and Fussell, and with Orff's primal Carmina Burana, Lior Navok's extension of our Slavery Documents stream, and Brahms' ever-beautiful German Requiem.
Runway to the Season!
Sunday, September 23 at 3 p.m.
Launch of the Kurt Weill Season – Cantata Singers Benefit
Kurt Weill: The Lindbergh Flight
Collings Foundation Aviation Museum
Speakers: Bob Collings and David Hoose
William Hite, tenor
David Kravitz, baritone
Mark Andrew Cleveland, bass-baritone
“I need verse to set my imagination in motion; and my imagination is not a bird, it is an airplane!” – Kurt Weill
Weill's optimistic cantata celebrating Lindbergh's New York-to-Paris flight finds its perfect setting among the beautifully restored airplanes, gorgeous vintage automobiles, and lush gardens of the Collings Aviation Museum. Enjoy a lustrous autumnal afternoon of music, history, abundant hors d'oeuvres and wine.
Tickets to benefit Cantata Singers: $150
This performance is funded in part by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc.,
7 East 20th Street, New York, NY 10003 www.kwf.org
Tickets for the "Runway to the Season" event at the Collings Foundation Aircraft Museum can be purchased at the door beginning at 3 p.m. on Sunday, September 23, 2007.
Friday, November 9 at 8 p.m.
Jordan Hall
Speaker: Amy Lieberman, Director of Choral Activities at New England Conservatory
7:00 p.m. in St. Botolph Hall (241 St. Botolph St.), Room 118
Seating is limited and not reserved; early arrival is recommended.
Kurt Weill: Legend of the Dead Soldier
First Boston performance
Luigi Dallapiccola: Canti di prigionia
Carl Orff: Carmina Burana
Janet Brown, soprano
Rockland Osgood, tenor
David Kravitz, baritone
“Every text I set looks entirely different once it's been swept through my music.” –KW
Weill's eloquent post Great War ballad, Legend of the Dead Soldier, and Dallapiccola's passionate 1939 anti-Fascist political protest unleash the social force of music. Together, they push against Orff's provocative playing with the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, and the pleasures (and perils) of drinking, gluttony, gambling and lust. Hypnotic. Primal. Seductive.
Sunday, January 13 at 3 p.m.
Meet the Composer: Lior Navok
And the trains kept coming...
Goethe-Institut Boston
170 Beacon St., Boston
Composer Lior Navok shares his thoughts and inspiration on writing his powerful
And the trains kept coming...
Free and open to the public.
Friday, January 18 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, January 20 at 3 p.m.
Jordan Hall
Pre-concert conversation with Lior Navok
Kurt Weill: The Prophets, from The Eternal Road
First Boston performance
Lior Navok: Slavery Documents 3: And the Trains Kept Coming . . .
World Premiere, commissioned by Cantata Singers
With guest artists from
PALS Children’s Chorus
Johanna Hill Simpson, Conductor
Spectrum Singers
John W. Ehrlich, Music Director
Soloists include
James Petosa and Jason McDowell-Green, narrators
Rockland Osgood, tenor
David Kravitz, baritone
Karyl Ryczek, soprano
Majie Zeller, mezzo-soprano
Stephen Williams, tenor
Brian Church, baritone
Dana Whiteside, baritone
Pre-concert Discussions
Lior Navok, speaker www.liornavok.com
Friday, January 18 at 6:45 p.m.
Sunday, January 20 at 1:45 p.m.
NEC’s St. Botolph Hall, Room 118, 241 St. Botolph Street
Seating is limited and not reserved; early arrival is recommended.
Listen to composer Lior Navok's interview with Richard Knisely on WGBH Radio
“I seem to have a very strong awareness of the suffering of underprivileged people; of the oppressed, the persecuted. I can see that when my music involves human suffering, it is, for better or worse, pure Weill.” –KW
Giving voice to the unspeakable, Israeli-American composer Lior Navok confronts the tragedy of the Allies' refusal to destroy the railroad tracks leading to the concentration camps. Weill's Die Propheten, from his colossal pageant The Eternal Road, takes a dark turn in the prophecies of the Book of Jeremiah.
Lior Navok's And the trains kept coming... was commissioned with support from the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund and funded in part by a grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Creative Connections program of Meet the Composer, Inc., and with additional support from the Argosy Foundation, the six New England state arts agencies and the National Endowment for the Arts.
This performance is funded in part by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music,
Inc., 7 East 20th Street, New York, NY 10003 www.kwf.org
Navok Text
Navok Notes
Weill Prophets Notes
Weill Prophets Text
Sunday, February 17 at 1:30 p.m.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Songs of Kurt Weill, George Gershwin and Arnold Schoenberg
Allison Voth, Director
Buy tickets
“I have never acknowledged the difference between serious music and light music. There is only good music and bad music.” – KW
Few composers could entertain the company of both Schoenberg and Gershwin as comfortably as Weill. The two faces of Weill – the edgy and the frothy – reveal one deeply human and fascinating man.
Friday, March 14 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 16 at 3 p.m.
Jordan Hall
Pre-concert speaker: Richard Dyer
Ferruccio Busoni: Berceuse élégiaque
Kurt Weill: Concerto for Violin and Wind Instruments
Jennifer Koh, violin
Johannes Brahms: A German Requiem
Jennifer Foster, soprano
Dana Whiteside, baritone
Pre-concert Discussions
Friday at 6:45 p.m. in Jordan Hall
Sunday at 1:45 p.m. in Jordan Hall
Program Notes
Buy tickets
“But the great ‘classic' composers wrote for their contemporary audiences. They wanted those who heard their music to understand it, and they did. As for myself, I write for today. I don't give a damn about posterity.” –KW
Nostalgic, jazzy, and bittersweet, Weill's only concerto brilliantly reflects his sweeping genius. Brahms' life-affirming, spirit-sustaining German Requiem is the very essence of beauty.
This performance is funded in part by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc.,
7 East 20th Street, New York, NY 10003 www.kwf.org
Sunday, April 6 at 3 p.m.
Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center, Newton
In Berlin, on Broadway: A Kurt Weill Cabaret
Allison Voth, Director
“Slowly I'm beginning to advance toward ‘my real self.' My music is getting to be much freer, looser, and simpler.” – KW
Travel from pre-war Germany to Broadway's golden age, from Weill's sardonic The Threepenny Opera to the swing of Lady in the Dark and the heartbreak of Lost in the Stars and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.
 Friday, May 9 at 8 p.m.
Jordan Hall
Pre-concert talk: Charles Fussell, 7:00 p.m., Keller Room
Kurt Weill: Symphony No. 2
Charles Fussell: High Bridge —A Choral Symphony After Poems of Hart Crane
First Boston performance
Karyl Ryczek, soprano
Janna Baty, mezzo-soprano
William Hite, tenor
David Kravitz, baritone
Buy tickets
Program notes, Weill
Program notes, Fussell
Texts
"I write absolute music in order to – how can I say it? – control my own style. You must turn away from your own habitual way occasionally." – KW
Just before Weill turned completely toward a populist style, he wrote his terrifically witty Second Symphony in an already lighter voice. Fussell's High Bridge brings to vibrant life American poet Hart Crane's “mystical synthesis of America.'”
Funders: This performance is funded in part by The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc., 7 East 20th Street, New York, NY; and by the Performing Ensembles Program of The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc.
Still flying high after Cantata Singers concerts?
Then head over to Betty's Wok and Noodle for a post-concert party following our Friday evening performances at Jordan Hall. Be sure to bring your ticket stub for a complimentary cup of cappuccino or coffee to enjoy with one of Betty's scrumptious Symphony of Desserts! You'll find Betty's at 250 Huntington Avenue, next to the Huntington Theatre and across from Symphony Hall.
And following our Sunday afternoon Jordan Hall concerts – January 20 & March 16 – we're gathering for dinner at Brasserie Joe's, located at the Colonnade Hotel, 120 Huntington Ave. Contact the Cantata Singers office at 617-868-5885 or bach@cantatasingers.org for more information.
Cantata Singers' Second Annual VOICE YOURSELF Benefit & Auction
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at 6:30 p.m.
Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center
41 Second Street, Cambridge
Cantata Singers' VOICE YOURSELF Benefit & Auction gives you a chance to share your time, talents and treasures with us! Donate your vacation home in Maine, Red Sox tickets, or a few dozen of your legendary chocolate chip cookies to our auction fundraiser. Last May's benefit was a smashing success, so be sure to save the date for this year's VOICE YOURSELF Benefit & Auction. Hear members of the Cantata Singers like you've never heard them before at our Piano Bar, enjoy scrumptious hors d'oeuvres and wine with your CS family and friends, and bid on our fabulous array of items. For more information on how you can donate or volunteer, please contact the Cantata Singers office at 617-868-5885 or bach@cantatasingers.org. |
