Gabriel Fauré – Requiem in d minor
Francis Poulenc – Gloria

Fauré’s Requiem is a sublime statement of faith with some of the most beautiful melodies he ever composed. By contrast, Poulenc’s Gloria is an exuberant declaration of praise.

This choral tribute to the music of our Latin American neighbors will feature Columbian tenor David Rivera Bozon,  Andean woodwind specialist and flutist Gonzalo Cortes, and Alturas Duo, who are specialists in South American music, performing guitar, charango and  percussion.   They will join the Assabet Valley Mastersingers in performing the popular Misa Criolla byArgentinian composer Ariel Ramírez. The program will also include shorter choral arrangements of folk music from Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. Composers Carlos Guastavino and Heitor Villa-Lobos will be represented as well as folk songs such as “Alma Llanera,” and “Morena Faceira.”

Howell’s “Behold, O God, Our Defender” was composed for Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 coronation and performed at her Jubilee and her funeral. Handel’s “Coronation Anthems” were commissioned for the coronation of George II of Great Britain in 1752 and “Zadok the Priest” has been performed at numerous coronations since. Mozart’s popular “Coronation Mass” was first performed in 1792 at the coronation of Francis II, the last king of the Holy Roman Empire.

Assabet Valley Chambersingers present Turn the World Around, a choral concert of short works and solos including madrigals, folk songs from many cultures, Vocal Jazz, and contemporary settings of great texts. 

Our annual Messiah Sing is an eagerly anticipated opportunity for participants to sing the choruses of the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah and to enjoy talented soloists.

Robert R. Jay Performing Arts Center Saint John’s High School 378 Main Street, Shrewsbury, MA

Three settings of the text ‘Dona Nobis Pacem,’ Give Us Peace. The iconic Dona Nobis Pacem by Vaughan Williams, the serene meditative setting by Latvian composer Peteris Vasks and a contemporary setting by Keane Southard a prolific young composer with diverse musical styles. Southard is an Algonquin Regional High School graduate from Southborough, Massachusetts.

Haydn’s masterpiece presented in this Alice Parker (1973) translation now becomes a “popular oratorio” for English speaking audiences as well. No musical knowledge is necessary to delight in the simple folk song melodies and vivid orchestral tone painting.

One of the best loved 20th century choral works, Orff’s Carmina Burana is an exuberant celebration of the power of music’s essential building blocks: raw and powerful rhythms, beautiful melodies. Monks in a Benedictine Abbey in Germany recorded the texts. They represent stories, poems, and songs of traveling scholars and clerics and portray worldly and earthy themes from the randomness of Fate, joys of spring, and the pleasures of drinking, gluttony, gambling and lust.

The Assabet Valley Mastersingers breathe life and breath into singing with Michael John Trotta’s beautiful setting For a Breath of Ecstasy. Seven love poems of Sara Teasdale are sensitively and wonderfully set to music that perfectly matches the intimate text.

Our annual Messiah Sing is an eagerly anticipated opportunity for participants to enjoy talented soloists as well as to sing with us the choruses of the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah.

Unity in Diversity – Cynthia Lee Wong
LUX: The Dawn From On High – Dan Forrest
We Exist – Oliver Caplan

Commissioned by AVM in honor of its 40th anniversary, Unity in Diversity is a song cycle with texts by Wordsworth, Teasdale and Tagore, touching on themes which resonate today—nature and destruction, love and unity. LUX: The Dawn From On High explores ancient liturgical chant, scripture, and modern secular love poetry. The lyrics of We Exist respond to the 2017 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia…honoring all races, all faiths and all genders.

We celebrate the end of our 40th anniversary season with a juxtaposition of great historic choral classics with music by two of the 21st century’s most accomplished composers. The concert will begin with Bach’s cantata # 80 Ein Feste Burg which was sung at AVM’s very first concert in May 1978. It will be followed by Ola Gjeilo’s Song of the Universal based upon a poem by Walt Whitman. This is a 2016 arrangement for mixed chorus of a 2014 setting for women’s voices. Mozart’s Regina Coeli will serve as the choral foundation for Part II of the concert to be followed by Latvian composer Peteris Vasks’ moving and heart wrenching Dona Nobis Pacem.

The excitement and creativity of folk music arrangements will make performers and audience alike smile and want to dance as AVM explores the world of American folk music. Gwyneth Walker’s River Songs was commissioned by AVM in 1996 and is constructed around familiar folk songs about rivers. AVM will also reprise Aaron Copland’s Old American Songs which are based upon early American folk tunes. Finally, lively arrangements by Mack Wilberg, conductor and principal arranger for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for many years will be a delight to all.

AVM’s Messiah Sing has become a holiday tradition to which many from throughout the region look forward. It is an opportunity to not only hear superb soloists perform but an opportunity for all to participate in singing the choruses of the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah.

AVM continues its 40th anniversary season with a work that represents the foundation of AVM’s repertoire, Handel’s grand oratorio Israel in Egypt. This work, one of Handel’s most popular, relies on the chorus rather than soloists to tell the exciting story of the people of Israel. Its vivid word painting, where the sound of the music imitates the meaning of the text, makes this work unique and especially exciting for listener and performer alike.

Requiem in d – Mozart

Song for St. Cecilia’s Day – Noble

AVM opens a year-long anniversary celebration with a work performed at its first concert in May 1978, Mozart’s Requiem. Mozart Requiem program notes

Clifton Noble’s Song for St. Cecilia’s Day was commissioned by AVM for its 20th Anniversary in May 1998. 

Mass in f minor – Rheinberger
Missa Choralis – Liszt
Solemn Mass – Vierne

“Music is above words; it begins where words no longer suffice…” (Joseph Rheinberger, 1890)

This unique program will feature three rarely-heard works: short masses specifically written for organ and chorus by some of the Romantic era’s greatest masters of choral music. Rheinberger’s finely crafted, classically styled writing–“absolute” music which avoids the programmatic descriptions so popular with other Romantic composers—will present a sharp contrast to the dense textures of Vierne and the chromaticism of Liszt.

An annual holiday tradition. Be sure to join AVM in singing the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah.

Let God Arise – Chandos Anthem #11, Chapel Royal Version – Handel

As Longs the Hart – Chandos Anthem # 6 – Handel

Te Deum – Charpentier

Handel’s inventive genius is on display in two anthems first written for a wealthy patron, the Duke of Chandos. Let God Arise was later reimagined for use in George I’s Chapel Royal. This performance uses an edition of As Longs the Hart which incorporates the best of several versions of the work. Handel program notes

The brilliant Te Deum by Charpentier, perhaps the greatest French musician of the 17th century, will close the concert on a festive and royal note.

The bright and classical Haydn Mass in Time of War with its restless rumblings of war will be followed by Lauridsen’s ethereal and lush Lux Aeterna with its promise of eternal light. Also titled Pauken Messe for its uses of timpani (pauken), Haydn’s work was written at a time when Austria was being mobilized for war. The Mass was perceived by some as anti-war, but its joyful nature at least suggests a happier time.

The powerful emotions and the serenity of Lux Aeterna have been compared by some to Brahm’s A German Requiem. Lauridsen uses exquisite harmonic colors and fluid rhythms to express the feeling and meaning of the text ‘light eternal.’

“My songs lead but a half life… until music breathes life into them.”
Wilhelm Müller (poet of Schubert’s song cycles)

This concert features choral settings of some of the world’s greatest poetry. Poems of Wordsworth, Whitman, Byron, Bishop, Blake, E.E. Cummings and others will be featured in compositions by Dello Joio, Whitaker, Stroope, Lauridsen, Finzi and Vasks.

2:30 PM – A Conversation with Lloyd Schwartz
Lloyd Schwartz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, acclaimed poet, scholar, and teacher. He is the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at University of Massachusetts Boston, and an authority on the American poet Elizabeth Bishop (whose poem “I am in Need of Music” leads off our program). Join us before the concert for an interactive discussion of poetry and music.

3:30 PM – Concert
Each poem will be read aloud by Mr. Schwartz and then followed by its choral setting.

An annual holiday tradition. Be sure to join AVM in singing the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah.

With orchestra and AVM chorus conducted by Dr. Robert Eaton, with the Algonquin Regional High School Chorus, Kathrine Waters, Director.

Eriks Ešenvalds’ 2015 work The Time Has Come will establish the theme for this concert. Based upon Nelson Mandela’s inauguration speech, this powerful and moving work states that “The time for healing… to bridge the chasms… has come… Let freedom reign.” “The Armed Man”: A Mass for Peace by Karl Jenkins, first performed by AVM in May 2008, has become a very popular and frequently performed choral work throughout the US. Commissioned for the millennium by the Royal Armouries, UK, and dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis, this work is a contemporary example of a mass based on the 15th-century French song “L’Homme Armé” (The Armed Man). The complete composition sets sacred and secular texts including Tennyson, Kipling, The Koran and the Hindu Mahabharata within the framework of the Christian mass.