Chorus pro Musica presents Bloch's Avodath Hakodesh & premieres Andrew Rindfleisch's Kaddish Prayer

Feb. 5, 2010 - PRLog -- Boston, MA--Chorus pro Musica, led by Music Director Betsy Burleigh, performs Ernest Bloch's masterpiece Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service) with baritone soloist David Kravitz on Sunday, March 14 at 4 pm in John Hancock Hall, 180 Berkeley Street, Boston. Also featured is the world premiere of Kaddish Prayer, commissioned by the chorus from distinguished composer Andrew Rindfleisch.  The chorus is joined on the stage by the Zamir Chorale of Boston, Joshua Jacobson, Artistic Director, and the New England Philharmonic, Richard Pittman, Music Director.  The performance is part of the first Boston Jewish Music Festival and commemorates the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death.

Concert tickets for the March 14 performance are $25, $40 and $50, with 10% discounts available on selected seats for groups, students, seniors and WGBH members.  Reserved seats may be selected and tickets purchased at www.choruspromusica.org, or by phone (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) at 800-658-4CPM (800-658-4276).  For wheelchair-accessible seats, call 617-267-7442.

Bloch’s Sacred Service is a monumental work for chorus, soloists and full orchestra, one of the 20th century’s great expressions of devotion and certainly one of the greatest works of Jewish concert music.  Commissioned by Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco and premiered in 1934, it is a grand Jewish Oratorio that has been compared in ambition to Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.  It rises from rich ethnic roots to offer a universal vision of peace and unity.

Baritone David Kravitz is widely celebrated for his vocal skill, power and intelligence in a wide variety of roles on both operatic and concert stages.  He last delighted Chorus pro Musica audiences as Ping in last year’s Turandot.  He has recently appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under James Levine (in Berlioz’s Les Troyens and Damnation of Faust) as well as with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Cantata Singers, Providence Singers, Boston Baroque and Emmanuel Music, among others, to uniformly high critical praise.  He is featured on two recordings scheduled for release this year on the BMOP/sound label: Andy Vores' song cycle "Goback Goback" and John Harbison's Winter's Tale.

Andrew Rindfleisch is an internationally active composer, conductor, and pianist who is currently a Professor of Music and Head of Music Composition Studies at Cleveland State University.  His dozens of compositions include solo, chamber, vocal, choral, orchestral, and wind music as well as jazz and related forms of improvisation. Rindfleisch is the 1997–98 recipient of the Rome Prize, and more recently received the Cleveland Arts Prize, the Aaron Copland Award, and the Koussevitzky Foundation Commission from the Library of Congress.  He received a Masters of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Debuting March 6–14, 2010, the Boston Jewish Music Festival presents concerts, workshops, lectures and school programs that represent the full range of Jewish music, from Horas to Hip Hop, classic cantorial to contemporary compositions, including rock, Klezmer, and Ladino.  Programs take place throughout Greater Boston, including Berklee Performance Center, John Hancock Hall, the Vilna Shul, Leventhal Sidman JCC, North Shore JCC, Solomon Schechter South, Temple Israel Boston, Temple Israel Natick, and Gann Academy.

Chorus pro Musica’s 61st season concludes on Sunday, June 6, 2010 at 3 pm at NEC’s Jordan Hall with works celebrating Spring, Love and the Tavern, including Carl Orff's Carmina Burana and Dominick Argento’s Odi et amo (I Hate and I Love). The performance will feature Carl Orff’s own arrangement of Carmina Burana for two pianos and percussion. Regular-price tickets for the June 6 concert are $27, $42 and $57; the price includes a $2 restoration fee for Jordan Hall.

Chorus pro Musica also appears this season on January 24, 2010 at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras, Federico Cortese, Music Director, in W.A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni, as part of a continuing partnership with BYSO that is not part of the chorus’s subscription series.

Chorus pro Musica is a distinguished, independent Boston-based chorus recognized for versatility and excellence in performing traditional, adventurous and seldom-heard works.  The chorus was founded in 1949 by the late Alfred Nash Patterson and quickly built a superb reputation for its professional-level musical standards and innovative programming.  These strengths have led to collaborations with such organizations as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra as well as with opera companies including the Opera Company of Boston and Commonwealth Opera.

Betsy Burleigh, in her debut season as Music Director, has been Music Director since 2005 of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, a renowned 115-voice chorus founded in 1908 that is the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's chorus of choice. She recently moved to Boston from Cleveland where she was Assistant Director of Choruses for The Cleveland Orchestra and a full professor at Cleveland State University. For five years she served as Chorus Master for Cleveland Opera.

Ms. Burleigh has led the Pittsburgh Symphony, Opera Cleveland, the Akron Symphony, and the Canton Symphony Orchestras. She conducted the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus on an Emmy award-winning benefit concert for the 9/11 Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, and received the Northern Ohio Live Achievement Award for music direction of Viktor Ullman’s opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis with Cleveland Public Theater.  In February 2009 she conducted the Mendelssohn Chamber Chorus on the Library of Congress concert series in Washington, D.C.

She is no stranger to Boston: She was Music Director of The Master Singers from 1985-1991 and Music Director for the Longy Chamber Singers and the Cambridge Madrigal Singers, among other positions. She holds a doctorate in choral conducting from Indiana University and a masters degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.


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