NEW AMSTERDAM SINGERS TO PRESENT
NEW AMERICAN ROMANTICS
Program To Feature American Music by Living Composers on
Poems by Frost, Yeats, Agee, Graves, Hardy, and Others
Premieres of Works by Donald Grantham, Matthew Harris, and Ben Moore
Friday, March 6, 2015 at 8:00 P.M.
Sunday, March 8, 2015 at 4:00 P.M.
The Church of the Holy Trinity
316 East 88th Street (between First and Second Avenues)
The New Amsterdam Singers (NAS), led by music director Clara Longstreth, will present New American Romantics, a program of American music featuring poems of Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, James Agee, Robert Graves, and Thomas Hardy written by living composers. They include Dominick Argento, Donald Grantham, Matthew Harris, Morten Lauridsen, Elizabeth Lim, Ben Moore, and Ronald Perera. The two performances will take place Friday, March 6, 2015, at 8:00 P.M., and Sunday, March 8, 2015, at 4:00 P.M., at The Church of the Holy Trinity, 316 East 88th Street.
These concerts of poetry settings include the World Premiere of “A Valediction” and the New York Premiere of “Let Evening Come” by Donald Grantham, and the New York City Premieres of Matthew Harris’s “If Music and Sweet Poetry Agree” and Ben Moore’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” — a work originally written for tenor Robert White, who performed it across the country.
“North Country,” a cycle of five pieces on poems by Robert Frost, was written by Ronald Perera in 2012. It is the seventh work by Mr. Perera performed by the New Amsterdam Singers. West Coast composer Morten Lauridsen is represented by two works: “Sure on This Shining Night” from Nocturnes, commissioned by the American Choral Directors Association in 2005, and his earlier work, “O Love Be Fed with Apples While You May.”
Dominick Argento’s “So I’ll Sing with My Voice” was written in 1997 as part of a collection titled Spirituals and Swedish Chorales. Elizabeth Lim wrote “Prayers for Wind” while a Ph.D. candidate at The Juilliard School in 2012.
Matthew Harris, whose works NAS has sung frequently over the past 20 years, will also be represented by three choruses from his three-act opera, Tess, based on Thomas Hardy’s novel, Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
New Amsterdam Singers
The New Amsterdam Singers was founded in 1968 by Clara Longstreth. A recent issue of The New Yorker called Ms. Longstreth “one of the more imaginative choral programmers around” and the New Amsterdam Singers “a superb amateur group.” The New York Times described the chorus’s June 2012 concert as “a varied and beautifully performed a cappella program.” NAS has performed with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein; American Russian Youth Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall under Leon Botstein; Concordia Orchestra and Anonymous Four in Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light with Marin Alsop at Avery Fisher Hall; and with the Limon Dance Company in Kodály’s Missa Brevis. In 2010, the chorus sang concerts in Cuba and at a Holiday Open House at the White House. In 2013, NAS toured South Africa.
For further information call (914) 712-8708 or go online to www.nasingers.org. Tickets are available at the door for $25, $15 for seniors and $10 for students. Tickets are also available online in advance for $20 at www.nasingers.org, by phone at (914) 712-8708, or by mail (New Amsterdam Singers, P.O. Box 373, Cathedral Station, New York, NY 10025).
New Amsterdam Singers
New American Romantics
Friday, March 6, 2015, at 8:00 P.M.
Sunday, March 8, 2015, at 4:00 P.M.
The Church of the Holy Trinity, 316 East 88th Street (between First and Second Avenues)
Ronald Perera (b.1941) “North Country”
Matthew Harris (b.1956) “If Music and Sweet Poetry Agree” (New York City Premiere)
Elizabeth Lim (b.1986) “Prayers for Wind”
Morten Lauridsen (b.1943) “Sure on This Shining Night”
Morton Lauridsen “”O Love, Be Fed with Apples While You May”
Donald Grantham (b.1947) “Let Evening Come” (New York Premiere)
Donald Grantham “A Valediction” (World Premiere)
Ben Moore (b.1960) “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (New York City Premiere)
Matthew Harris Three Choruses from Tess
Dominick Argento (b.1927) “So I’ll Sing with My Voice”
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Rakia Clark
Manager, New Amsterdam Singers
