Chamber Choir to Perform Tuesday, November 25 at Stamps Auditorium in the Walgreen Center

Betsy Goolian

November 2008

Jerry Blackstone, director of choral activities at SMTD, leads the Chamber Choir through a varied program of works by Bártok, Brahms, Copland, and more. The concert features Aaron Copland’s In the beginning, with Kristin Eder, mezzo-soprano and DMA student in voice. Considered one of the greatest a cappella choral works of the 20th century, In the beginning presents monumental challenges and opportunities for both the choir and the mezzo-soprano soloist. The work tells the familiar account of creation with lyricism, dramatic declamation, free-flowing rhythmic sections counterbalanced with sections of jaunty and off-kilter accents, all the while building to the electrifying creation of man as “a living soul.” Also on the program is the Sechs Quartette, op. 112, nos. 1 and 2, by Brahms who set them to the work of Franz Kugler, an undiscovered poet he met through a mutual friend. Both poems chosen for this work explore the ominous aspects of night. A sense of desolation and solitude permeate both texts. In Bartok’s Four Slovak Folk Songs, the composer draws on the peasant songs he so often used as source material for his concert music.