AGO Convention

concerts, music, rose ensemble | 1 comment

A big week is about to happen in Minneapolis.  The American Guild of Organists is holding their National Convention in our fair city with lots of events that will be open to the public (click here for the schedule).

Central Lutheran The opening celebration will the the church service at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis. Musical highlights of the evening will include works by Minnesota composers Stephen Paulus (AGO Composer of the Year), Dominick Argento, and Libby Larsen, as well as anthems by Steven Stucky and Stephen Fraser. Both the Larsen and Stucky pieces were commissioned for the 2008 National Convention. The Fraser anthem is the winning entry of the AGO/ECS Publishing Award in Choral Composition.

All of the downtown church choirs will be participating as well as brass choir and organ and  47-bell carillon and takes place Sunday evening, June 22nd beginning at 6:30pm.

Next on the agenda will be a Russian Vespers sung by The Rose Ensemble at St. Olaf Church in Minneapolis on Monday morning, June 23rd at 11am and also on Thursday afternoon at 2pm.

This all leads up to the grand finale on Thursday evening at the Cathedral in St. Paul – a concert of massive scale with singers from VocalEssence, The National Lutheran Choir, Magnum Chorum and The Minnesota Boys Choir.

I will be one of six soloists to perform Siegfried Matthus’ Te Deum in its US premier along with full orchestra.  For more information and complete program visit http://www.ago2008.org/HTML/Artists/FinalConcert.html.

I welcome your comments and thank you for reading!

1 Comment

  1. lisa
    lisa on July 11, 2008 at 7:10 am

    from the Minneapolis Star Tribune June 27th 2008:

    The centerpiece was the U.S. premiere of German composer Siegfried Matthus’ 70-minute “Te Deum.” Premiered in 2005 in conjunction with the reconsecration of the Dresden Frauenkirche, a Lutheran cathedral destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II, it is an intense journey from violent destruction to celebration.

    This is a dramatic oratorio, full of extreme musical gestures. The opening section created a dense wall of orchestral and vocal sound, making clear that this is not a subtle work, but a monumental one.

    The most extended movement, titled “Inferno,” included effective settings of Friedrich Schiller’s prose description of the carnage of the Thirty Years War, a poem of Rainer Maria Rilke, movements from the Latin Requiem, a passage from Virgil’s “Aeneid” and an eyewitness account of the cathedral’s destruction.

    The solo writing was not always grateful to the voice, but the soloists — sopranos Maria Jette and Sonja Tengblad, mezzo-soprano Angela Young Smucker, alto Lisa Drew, tenor Dan Dressen and bass Kevin Deas — handled their difficult assignments fearlessly.

    Reply

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