Welcome to Chicago Chorale’s 2024-25 Season
Chicago Chorale’s 2024-25 season is just around the corner. Work has gone on through the summer months, choosing repertoire, ordering music, reserving venues, hearing auditions, and preparing print materials to promote the season.
Our autumn concerts focus on repertoire of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from Scandinavia and the Baltic states. I am particularly drawn to this repertoire, perhaps because of my own Norwegian heritage; but I also find that the extraordinarily high level of choral performance in that region of the world inspires composers to write challenging, multifaceted music for virtuosic a cappella choirs. This is just the performance genre to which Chorale aspires.
A significant portion of our concert will be devoted to works by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, whose influence has in many respects transformed choral writing in the 21st century. We will also also sing two selections from Edvard Grieg’s final composition, Fire Salmer, Opus 74, which precedes Pärt’s work by a century, and was as revolutionary in its own time, as Pärt’s music is today. The program will also include works by Knut Nystedt, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Urmas Sisask, Otto Olson, and Ēriks Ešenwalds, along with a couple of folk song arrangements by Swedish composer Gunnar Eriksson.
Our winter concert features music by three seminal twentieth century English composers: Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Herbert Howells. Organist extraordinaire David Jonies, Director of Music at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral, will join us for Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb, a setting of the poem “Jubilate Agno" by visionary poet Christopher Smart, and a tour de force for both choir and organist. This will be preceded by Herbert Howells’ heart-rending setting of Psalm 42, Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks, also with David at the organ. The balance of the program will feature Ralph Vaughan Williams’ a cappella Mass in G, for double chorus.
In June, you will have a chance to hear Chorale’s regular pianist, Kit Bridges, in a featured role, playing Johannes Brahms’ Four Quartets, Opus 92, for choir and piano, and Kit’s own arrangement of the final movement of the Neue Liebeslieder, Opus 65, Nun, ihr Musen, genug! A graduate of Northwestern University and former faculty member at DePaul University, Kit has long been recognized as one of the premier collaborative pianists in Chicago; I frequently shake my head in disbelief at our door fortune to have him at Chorale rehearsals, leading and teaching by example from the keyboard. The concert will open with three motets by J.S. Bach: Ich lasse dich nicht, Komm, Jesu, komm, and Fürchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir, and include a set of motets by Anton Bruckner, my favorite 19th century composer of sacred choral music.
A special treat with this blog entry, to whet your appetite for the coming season: a video filmed and recorded at Monastery of the Holy Cross, of Chorale singing “God is Seen,” an American hymn from the Sacred Harp tradition, arranged by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw.
I look forward to seeing you at our concerts!