Chicago Chorale Newsletter: Back To School Edition, Sept. 2011

Hello, and welcome to the 2011-12 Season of Chicago Chorale!

Fall is in the air, the kids are back in school, Chorale is back in rehearsal, and that means it’s time to become a Chicago Chorale Season Member!  When you become a Season Member, rather than buy individual concert tickets, you help Chorale by helping us plan for the concerts better and focus our marketing energy where it is most needed.  In exchange, you receive a discount on the tickets, special reserved seating, and other benefits.  So please consider becoming a Season Member today.  And don’t forget, they make great gifts!  You can find out more and buy your Membership online here.

This season promises to be an exciting follow-up to last year’s 10th Anniversary, with more Seriously Sublime music in store.  We start in the fall with Northern Light, a typically atypical concert of Baltic and Scandinavian music in November.  I say “typically atypical” because this concert follows Chorale’s tradition of presenting musically challenging a cappella music that you are not likely to here elsewhere.  We will perform two concerts of this music, one in Hyde Park and one in Lincoln Park’s St. Vincent De Paul Parish, a new venue for us, but one that will provide the perfect acoustic for this beautiful and haunting music.  Check out Bruce’s Blog for his perspective on this concert.

For the winter concert, we once again feature a major orchestrated work.  What better piece to follow the Bach Mass in B Minor performance of last spring than Beethoven’s response, the Missa Solemnis? Chorale will perform this work at Symphony Center in partnership with The Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest.  Following the success of the Mahler 8 with SOPRF in 2010, and the sell-out performance of Bach last spring, we hope to fill Symphony Center for this concert as well!

In the spring, not be be outdone, we return to the beautiful Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, where we present the Voices Aloft concert.  Here the voices truly will be “aloft,” as we present two works, Bach and Schoenberg, from upon high in the Chapel’s choir loft, utilizing the sonic properties of the Chapel as they were designed to be used.  The centerpiece of this concert is Vierne’s Messe Solennelle, which will feature Chapel organist Tom Weisflog on the magnificent E.M. Skinner organ, the largest organ in Chicago.

So come join us for this exciting, eclectic concert.  Truly Seriously Sublime music, performed as only Chicago Chorale can!

Excelsior!

David Houggy
President of the Board