Something new, something familiar: the 46th season of the Bach Chorale Singers
For the 46th season of the Bach Chorale Singers we welcome our new Artistic Director,
Dr. Michelle Louer, who has chosen an exciting program of familiar and not-so-familiar
music for the four concerts of the adult Chorale. In addition, our children and youth
choirs will be reaching out to young people in surrounding schools twice during the
season to help fill in for programmatic losses in the schools. The season's theme is "A
Taste of Heaven and Earth".
The adult Chorale opens its season with that much-beloved "taste of heaven", the Verdi Requiem. In order to mount that work with a full orchestra, the Chorale joins forces with Dr. Louer's choir from Second Presbyterian Church, Indianapolis, about 140 voices in all. The concert will be sung in Indianapolis on October 24 followed by the Lafayette performance on October 30. The holiday concert will feature Benjamin Britten's St. Nicholas, a cantata involving all the choirs of the Chorale, followed by carols of the season. The spring concert gets really "earthy" with a performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, another work in which our youth choirs will join the adult Chorale. The final adult Chorale offering is entitled "If Music be the Food of Love", selections focusing on food and drink in a cabaret setting. The Bach that evening will be PDQ Bach, not Johann Sebastian.
Our young people's Prelude, Concert, and Youth Choirs will be really busy assisting the adult Chorale in two of the above concerts plus several of their own. They begin the concert season with a Children's Choral Festival led by two well-known clinicians. Community children's choirs from around the region will join the Chorale's choirs to learn and perform music by Indiana composers in the concert, "Indiana Voices of Song". In the spring our young singers will turn their attention somewhat east of Indiana to focus on the music of the Scots-Irish immigrants to Appalachia, "Ireland Ascending". This Celtic music has had a huge impact on American music, both in pops and classical modes. The youth choirs are planning to present this concert in the Appalachians in June. The last children and youth concert of the season will be our traditional postworkshop concert for children and youth in the region around Lafayette, this year focusing on the family, "Family Frenzy".
We hope you'll agree that the Bach Chorale has something for everybody of all musical tastes and styles. Please join us at all the concerts to sample the full range of the music of "heaven and earth"!