AMERICAN MASTERPIECES
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Festival Information |
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Gregg Smith, founder and leader of the celebrated Gregg Smith Singers, announces a three day festival of American choral music. Five choruses will appear, performing the work of 28 American composers spanning three centuries. Five premieres are included. The festival takes place Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, April 24, 25 and 26, at Saint Peter’s Church, Lexington Avenue at 54th Street, New York City. The Festival also celebrates Gregg Smith’s personal legacy to American choral music, which spans more than 50 years of composing, arranging, performing, and recording. Other groups in the festival include:Long Island Symphonic Choral Association(LISCA), founded in 1968 by Gregg Smith, a seasoned community chorus noted for its fine intonation and blend … in adventurous programming from Renaissance masters to the avant-garde. They will be performing William Schuman’s The Mighty Casey, a baseball opera, on Friday evening, and works by William Billings, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Duke Ellington on Saturday evening. Cantori New York, a semi-professional group specializing in new music. It will premiere a work, Dive: a Water Music, by composer Paul Crabtree on Thursday evening, and will perform Samuel Barber’s Three Reincarnations on Saturday evening. (The Gregg Smith Singers were the first to record this now standard choral masterwork in 1962.) Saint Peter’s Church Choir, located at the nerve center of commercial midtown Manhattan, one of New York’s most beloved and respected ecclesiastical choirs. The choir provides weekly music in the Lutheran liturgical tradition, exemplified by its performance of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion every Good Friday. They will open the festival on Thursday evening with compositions by Gregg Smith, Roosevelt Andre Credit and Walter Hilse. On Saturday evening they will perform the Reverend Thomas A. Dorsey’s Precious Lord and William Dawson’s Spirituals. Syracuse Children’s Chorus, internationally acclaimed and widely recognized for musical excellence and as a model for performance-based choral music education. The Chorus will present a program of American music on Saturday afternoon, including works by Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Libby Larsen, Nick Page, H.T. Burleigh, Stephen Paulus, Francisco Núñez, and Jim Papoulis, as well as Gregg Smith’s Now I Walk in Beauty, Little Lamb, and his Spring Songs with soprano Eileen Clark. The final offering Saturday afternoon is Libby Larsen’s The Ballerina and the Clown. On Saturday evening, the children will present Gregg Smith’s Songs of Innocence. |
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Made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as part of its program American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of American Genius. This prestigious grant recognizes the Gregg Smith Singers’ historic contribution to American culture, which spans over 50 years of unparalleled achievement. Perhaps no other professional choral group has recorded more albums, leading to countless awards, including three Grammys. Nor has any group traveled more to give worldwide exposure to American music, including three Far East tours under the aegis of the State Department. Initially featured at the Brussels World’s Fair, they have appeared at the world’s leading music festivals, including Salzburg, Edinburgh, and Bergen. Since their 1955 founding by Gregg Smith, they have performed most of the major American composers, often premiering their works. These and other performances frequently have been in association with musical icons such as Igor Stravinsky, Leopold Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, George Balanchine, Elliott Carter, Dave Brubeck, and the New York Philharmonic. |
