Celebrating 15 Years!
This season we renew our commitment to arts education in the urban schools and celebrate our accomplishments through special collaborations with city-wide musical organizations and individuals who are also dedicated to Boston’s urban children.
Classroom Cantatas 15th Anniversary Celebration
Friday, May 8, 2009 @ 7:30pm
We celebrate the fifteenth year of our innovative education program, Classroom Cantatas, by bringing its fruits to the Jordan Hall series. Participating students from the Neighborhood House Charter School and the Boston Children’s Chorus will perform selections from an original cantata coupled with a newly commissioned composition for Cantata Singers by Andy Vores. Both works will be based on the same texts—works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christina Rossetti and Charles Darwin—that celebrate the wonders of the natural world.
Composer Andy Vores, collaborating with the 4th graders of Neighborhood House Charter School of Dorchester, will incorporate some of the children’s cantata melodies into the commissioned work, Natural Selection. A great way to hear a tune twice! The Boston Children’s Chorus will perform Britten’s Psalm 150. Then join us for fun and dessert at the post-performance birthday party!
Click here for concert tickets. Birthday event tickets available soon.
Click here for tickets.
Check out this recent story on about this season’s special Classroom Cantatas project on WGBH
audio file link
I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Songs of the Terezin Concentration Camp
Sunday, May 17, 2009
I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Songs of the Terezin Concentration Camp is the Cantata Singers’ On Tour theatrical performance combining spoken word and music written by composers imprisoned in Terezin. This moving and challenging performance returns to the Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture on Beacon Hill, Sunday, May 17.
The young students of Boston Arts Academy will join the cast to perform their original songs written in a composition workshop offered by Cantata Singers. Working with Cantata Singers’ teaching artists as well as their music and humanities faculty, these students will not only express themselves through music composition by writing several songs based on their current Holocaust studies but will deepen their understanding this tragic history of genocide and art’s power to transcend cruelty.
Please check back in late February for more details.
Classroom Cantatas Final Performance
Friday, June 5
Distler Hall, Tufts University
Medford, MA
Come listen to world premieres of Boston’s newest composers at the final gathering and performance of participating Classroom Cantatas schools featuring the students of Emerson Elementary, Ellis Mendell Elementary, Beethoven Elementary and Neighborhood House Charter School.
This season we are partnering with the Music Department of Tufts to present the final concert of student cantatas at Distler Hall in The Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center on the Tufts University campus. This event is open to the public and free of charge.
Click here for directions to Distler Hall.
Noye’s Fludde (Noah’s Flood)
Saturday, February 7 @ 2 pm
All Saints Parish, Brookline
The story of Noah and the ark, as told by the 20th century's greatest opera composer! A musical pageant employing everything from voices, strings, and recorders to sandpaper blocks and ceramic mugs, Noye's Fludde is filled with magical invention. Benjamin Britten's brilliance allows both young and professional talents to shine at their brightest in this staged performance. Grab your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews for an unforgettable afternoon of musical fun.
This performance features Cantata Singers, PALS Chorus and young instrumentalists of Community Music Center of Boston and Massachusetts Youth Wind Ensemble
Rehearsal photos
