CONDUCTOR DAVID HILL LEADS YALE SCHOLA CANTORUM AND JUILLIARD415
IN WORKS BY BEETHOVEN AND HAYDN
AND NEW COMMISSIONS BY DANIEL KELLOGG AND RODERICK WILLIAMS
U.S. Concerts Take Place in Woolsey Hall on Thursday, April 30, 2015 at 7:30 p.m.
and in Alice Tully Hall on Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 8 p.m.
ENSEMBLES EMBARK ON MAJOR EUROPEAN TOUR AFTER U.S. CONCERTS WITH APPEARANCES
IN CAMBRIDGE, LONDON, OXFORD, WINDSOR, AND PARIS, MAY 24-31, 2015
NEW YORK –– Conductor David Hill leads Yale Schola Cantorum and period-instrument ensemble Juilliard415 in Beethoven’s Mass in C Major, Op. 86 and Haydn’s Symphony No. 94, “Surprise” on Thursday, April 30, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. at Woolsey Hall in New Haven, CT and on Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 8 p.m. in NYC in Alice Tully Hall. The program also features two new commissions: Daniel Kellogg’s Shout Joy! and Roderick Williams’s O Brother Man.
Tickets for the Alice Tully Hall concert are $20 and available at events.juilliard.edu, through CenterCharge (212) 721-6500, or at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard student tickets with valid I.D. may purchase tickets at $10, only at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office. Admission is free for the New Haven concert. For further information, go to: Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
A tour of England and France follows from May 24 through May 31, 2015. This will be Juilliard Historical Performance’s third international tour with Yale Schola Cantorum and the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale. The ensembles will perform at University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford on Sunday, May 24 at 7:30 p.m.; St. George’s Chapel in Windsor on Tuesday, May 26 at 1:10 p.m.; St. John’s Smith Square in London on Wednesday, May 27 at 7:30 p.m.; Trinity College Chapel in Cambridge on Saturday, May 30 at 7:30 p.m.; and at St. Sulpice in Paris on Sunday, May 31 at 4 p.m.
About the Program
Beethoven’s Mass in C Major is a masterpiece from the composer’s middle period, composed alongside the Fifth Symphony. Beethoven led the premiere at the Esterházy Palace chapel in Eisenstadt on September 13, 1807.
Haydn composed his Symphony No. 94, “Surprise” for his first of two visits to England. It is part of Haydn’s “London” symphonies, all composed for impresario Johann Peter Salomon, who contracted Haydn to conduct a series of new symphonies in England. At the premiere of the work in London on March 23, 1792, Haydn led the orchestra from the fortepiano.
British composer Roderick Williams was approached by conductor David Hill to write a piece for the Yale Schola Cantorum. He writes: “I was keen to find texts that would have some geographical and historical relevance both to this Connecticut student choir and to me as an English composer. I was therefore pleased to discover poems by writers who belong to New England and yet have transatlantic history, too; Anne Bradstreet was born in Northampton and emigrated with the early Puritans to Massachusetts in her late twenties. Phillis Wheatley was seven when she was taken from North Africa to serve as a slave, and James Pennington was born into a slave family in Maryland. Education saved them both from a life of slavery, and Pennington became the first black man to be admitted to Yale. The Quaker abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier was born and died in Massachusetts; for us English, he is most fondly remembered for his words to the ever popular hymn, ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.’ The 20-minute work is performed unaccompanied. Roderick Williams, a baritone as well as a composer, studied music and composition at Oxford University. His works include an opera, Alice in Wonderland, and numerous choral and instrumental works.
Composer Daniel Kellogg set his work to Madeleine L’Engle’s poem Shout Joy!. He writes: “Madeleine L’Engle’s poem Shout Joy! bursts with gratitude, energy, and whimsy. It offers an unabashed moment of ecstatic worship in the spirit of the joyful Psalms. My setting of this poem seeks to honor L’Engle’s clear and beautiful expression.” Daniel Kellogg, assistant professor of composition at the University of Colorado in Boulder, has had recent premieres by the Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, the Takács Quartet with the University of Colorado Wind Symphony, and the Aspen Chamber Orchestra. His honors include a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, six ASCAP Young Composer Awards, the BMI William Schuman Prize, and the ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Award. He holds a Master of Music and a Doctor of Musical Arts from Yale School of Music.
About David Hill
David Hill is widely respected as both a choral and orchestral conductor. His talent has been recognized by his appointments as chief conductor of The BBC Singers, music director of The Bach Choir, music director of Southern Sinfonia, music director of Leeds Philharmonic Society, associate guest conductor of The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and from July 2013, principal conductor of Yale Schola Cantorum. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Southampton in 2002 in recognition of his ‘Services to Music.’ His broad-ranging discography of more than 70 recordings include many award-winners, and can be found on the Decca/Argo, Hyperion, Naxos, Signum, and Virgin Classics labels. Mr. Hill has appeared as guest conductor with the London Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, among others. Mr. Hill’s commitment to new music has led to his conducting first performances of works by Judith Bingham, Carl Rütti, Francis Pott, Patrick Gowers, Jonathan Harvey, Philip Moore, Naji Hakim, Sir John Tavener, and Philip Wilby, among others. He was educated at Chetham’s School of Music, where he is now a governor, and was made a fellow of the Royal College of Organists at age 17. He was an organ scholar at St. John’s College, Cambridge under the direction of Dr. George Guest and returned to the college as director of music from 2003-2007.
About Yale Schola Cantorum
Yale Schola Cantorum, under the direction of principal conductor David Hill, is a chamber choir that performs regularly in concert and for occasional choral services throughout the academic year. Supported by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music with Yale School of Music, the choir specializes in repertoire from before 1750 and the last hundred years. Schola Cantorum was founded in 2003 by Simon Carrington; from 2009 to 2013, it was led by conductor Masaaki Suzuki, who remains its principal guest conductor. In recent years, the choir has also sung under the direction of internationally renowned conductors Simon Halsey, Paul Hillier, Stephen Layton, Sir Neville Marriner, Nicholas McGegan, James O’Donnell, Stefan Parkman, Krzysztof Penderecki, Helmuth Rilling, and Dale Warland.
In addition to performing regularly in New Haven and New York, the ensemble records and tours nationally and internationally. Schola Cantorum’s live recording of Heinrich Biber’s 1693 Vesperae longiores ac breviores with Robert Mealy and Yale Collegium Musicum received international acclaim from the early music press, as have subsequent recordings of J.S. Bach’s rarely heard 1725 version of the St. John Passion and Antonio Bertali’s Missa resurrectionis. A commercial recording on the Naxos label of Mendelssohn and Bach Magnificats was released in 2009, and the past two years have seen the release of two albums by Delos Records. On tour, Schola Cantorum has given performances in England, Hungary, France, China, South Korea, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Japan, and Singapore.
Highlights of Schola’s 2014-15 season include performances of Handel’s Judas Maccabeus with David Hill; works by Zelenka with Masaaki Suzuki and Juilliard415 at Boston’s Jordan Hall; works by Charpentier with Simon Carrington; and Beethoven’s Mass in C Major and a newly commissioned work by Roderick Williams with David Hill and Juilliard415 at Alice Tully Hall. The ensemble will tour the U.K. and France in the spring of 2015.
About Juilliard415
Since its founding in 2009, Juilliard415, the school’s principal period-instrument ensemble, has made significant contributions to musical life in New York and beyond, bringing major figures in the field of early music to lead performances of both rare and canonical works of the 17th and 18th centuries. Among the many distinguished guests who have led Juilliard415 are William Christie, Ton Koopman, Harry Bicket, Nicholas McGegan, Christopher Hogwood, and Monica Huggett. In 2011 the ensemble made its Carnegie Hall debut accompanying David Daniels and Dorothea Röschmann in a program of Handel arias, a concert that was cited as one of the 10 best of the season by the New York Times. A 2012 performance of Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo, led by William Christie, earned this same distinction.
Juilliard415 has toured extensively overseas with Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music under the direction of Masaaki Suzuki. In the 2014-15 season, Yale and Juilliard team up again for performances of Beethoven and Haydn and two new commissions by Daniel Kellogg and Roderick Williams in New York, Boston, New Haven, and throughout the U.K. Their joint performance of Bach’s St. John Passion was broadcast on WQXR-FM in April 2014. Other highlights of the 2013-14 season included a fully staged production of Handel’s Radamisto; tours of Charpentier’s Actéon with William Christie; incidental music for Shakespeare in collaboration with the Juilliard Drama program, conducted by Jordi Savall; and the rare opportunity to hear both Bach Passions in successive months.
During the summer of 2014, members of Juilliard415 returned to Germany for a second collaboration with the Leopold-Mozart-Zentrum for concerts in Augsburg and Munich, and to William Christie’s festival Rencontres musicales en Vendée, where they appeared with members of Les Arts Florissants. The ensemble also gave two concerts at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in The Netherlands, where Juilliard was honored to be the first-ever conservatory-in-residence.
Highlights of the 2014-15 season included return visits from William Christie for Handel’s La resurrezione; Robert Mealy for a program of Italian Baroque music; Monica Huggett for an all-Beethoven program; and Jordi Savall who led Juilliard415 in a concert entitled “Amid the Charms of Nature.” Debuts included: Kristian Bezuidenhout in a program of music by Mozart, and British violinist Rachel Podger in an all-Vivaldi program. In a joint venture between the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and Juilliard’s Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts,
Jane Glover conducted Juilliard415 in several performances of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide. The season concludes in June 2015 with Juilliard415 teaming up with London’s Royal Academy of Music and Masaaki Suzuki for an all-Bach program that will be performed in New York, Boston, Leipzig, and London.
# # #
Conductor David Hill
Program:
Daniel KELLOGG Shout Joy!
(text by Madeline L’Engle)
Roderick WILLIAMS O Brother Man
- O Brother Man (John Greenleaf Whittier)
- By night when others soundly slept (Anne Bradstreet)
- Divine Humanity! Behold. (Phillis Wheatley)
- Liberty’s Champion (Anonymous, from James Pennington’s The Fugitive Blacksmith)
Franz Josef HAYDN Symphony No. 94 in G Major, “Surprise”
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN Mass in C Major, Op. 86
U.S. Concerts:
Thursday, April 30, 2015, 7:30 p.m. – Woolsey Hall, New Haven, CT
Saturday, May 2, 2015, 8:00 p.m. – Alice Tully Hall, NYC
Tickets for the Alice Tully Hall concert are $20 and available at events.juilliard.edu, through CenterCharge (212) 721-6500, or at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard student tickets may purchase tickets at $10, only at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office. Admission is free for the New Haven concert. For further information, go to: Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
U.K. / France Tour:
Yale Schola Cantorum
Juilliard415
David Hill, conductor
Music of Beethoven, Haydn, Daniel Kellogg, and Roderick Williams
Sunday, May 24, 2015, 7:30 p.m. – University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford
Music at Oxford – tickets at http://www.musicatoxford.com/Concerts/Events1415/Yale.html
Tuesday, May 26, 2015, 12:30 – 1:00 p.m. – St. Georges Chapel in Windsor
Admission free to those touring Windsor Castle
http://www.stgeorges-windsor.org/
Wednesday, May 27, 2015, 7:30 p.m. – St. John’s Smith Square in London
http://www.sjss.org.uk/events/classical-and-contemporary
Saturday, May 30, 2015, 7:30 p.m. – Trinity College Chapel in Cambridge
Cambridge Summer Recitals/Cambridge Summer Music Festival
http://trinitycollegechapel.com/
Sunday, May 31, 2015, 4:00 p.m. – St. Sulpice in Paris
Free concert; http://www.stsulpice.com/Docs/concerts.html
