Chorus pro Musica and Music Director Jamie Kirsch Present James Whitbourn's Annelies

Sunday, March 2 at Old South Church, Boston, Massachusetts at 3 PM
By: Chorus pro Musica
 
 
Annelies
Annelies
BOSTON - Feb. 25, 2014 - PRLog -- Boston, MA--Chorus pro Musica, marking its 65th Anniversary and celebrating its new Music Director Dr. Jamie Kirsch, will present James Whitbourn's Annelies featuring soprano Lynn Eustis and Stephen Paulus's Hymn to the Eternal Flame at Old South Church [645 Boylston Street, Boston] on Sunday, March 2, 2014 at 3 PM.  Just added to the afternoon program is a pre-concert discussion beginning at 2 PM with Music Director Jamie Kirsch and Reverend Amy Fisher.

Concert tickets for this performance at Old South Church are $25, $35 and $45 with 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.  For more information, please take a look at www.choruspromusica.org.

About the concert:

For more than six decades, since its publication in 1946, Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl has stood as one of the most poignant accounts to emerge from the Holocaust. Written by Frank over a period of two years, while her family lived in secret rooms atop her father’s office building during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the diary puts a very human face on the destruction wrought by Hitler’s Final Solution.

Frank began her diary two days after her 13th birthday. The last entry is dated August 1, 1944. On the morning of August 4, the rooms were stormed and the Franks deported.  The identity of their betrayer has never been discovered. Her mother perished of starvation at Auschwitz. Anne and her sister died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. Anne was only 15 years old. Her father, separated from the family at Auschwitz, miraculously survived. After the war, he was given the diary and associated papers by Miep Gies, one of the employees in the building who had aided the family in their seclusion. She had collected the papers from the ransacked apartment in the hope of one day returning them to Anne.

It was while in hiding that Anne had heard a radio broadcast from London. Gerrit Bolkestein, a representative of the Dutch government-in-exile, stated that after the war he would be collecting evidence, in the form of written documentation, of the oppression the Dutch people suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Anne, who by this time aspired to be a writer, set about revising portions of her diary for publication. It is a sad bit of irony that she never lived to see her book become an international best seller, embraced by generations, one of the most potent arguments against racial intolerance and persecution.

Nearly 70 years after Frank’s death, English composer James Whitbourn turned to the diary for his inspiration in the writing of a large-scale choral work, Annelies. Annelies exists in two versions: the larger, for full symphony orchestra, and a more intimate telling, for four solo players. Both versions feature soloist and chorus, with identical vocal writing.  The work was given its world premiere in its full orchestral, large choral form, on April 5, 2005, at the Cadogan Hall in London. Leonard Slatkin conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Choir of Clare College Cambridge. Louise Kateck was the soprano soloist.

One of the most prominent and prolific composers of our time, Stephen Paulus has written over 400 works which have received premieres and performances throughout the world. Critics from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer and Opera News have hailed him as a "bright, lyrical inventor whose music pulsates with a driving, kinetic energy." He is a recipient of both NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships. Hymn To the Eternal Flame is a sacred three-minute Holocaust memorial oratorio rooted in themes and subjects of mutual interest to the Jewish and Christian faith communities

About Lynn Eustis

Soprano Lynn Eustis appears regularly as a soloist with numerous professional organizations such as the Dallas Bach Society, the Fort Worth Symphony, Texas Ballet Theater, and the Æxxus Vocal Ensemble (NY). She has been heard internationally with the Americke Jaro Festival (Czech Republic), the Compania Lirica Nacional (Costa Rica), the Guangzhou Symphony, (China), and as a soloist at Chichester Cathedral (UK). She has sung over thirty operatic roles, most notably the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor and The Daughter of the Regiment, Zerbinetta,Olympia, Pamina, Susanna, Rosina,and Gilda.

Dr. Eustis is also Chair of the Voice Department at Boston University.  In addition, she is the author of The Singer’s Ego (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2005), and Finding Middle Ground (GIA, 2007 and 2009), two collections of music for teaching “in-between” voices (female and male). She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Florida State University and Bucknell University. A frequent lecturer on music of the Holocaust, Dr. Eustis is a native of Long Island, New York.

About Jamie Kirsch

Dr. Jamie Andrew Kirsch was selected as Chorus pro Musica's next Music Director in early May 2013.  The 34-year-old Long Island-native and-now-Medford-resident Kirsch holds a Bachelor of Music degree with Honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he graduated in 2001.  He also received his Master of Music degree in Choral Conducting from the Yale School of Music in 2003 and his Doctorate of Music in Choral Conducting from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music in 2008.  While a conducting student at Yale, Kirsch met his wife, Dr. Diana Lemly, who sang in the Yale Camerata and who now is an internist and pediatrician at Mass. General and is also completing a fellowship in Adolescent Medicine at Boston's Children's Hospital.

In addition, Kirsch is a Lecturer of Music and the Director of Choral Activities at Tufts University, where he conducts the Tufts Concert Choir and Chamber Singers and teaches music theory and conducting. From 2008 to 2013 he was Music Director of the Cambridge Community Chorus.  From 2009 to 2011 he was Director of Children's Choruses at New England Conservatory.  In 2006-08 he served on the faculty of the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, where he was Interim Director of Choral Activities from 2007-08.

Sunday, March 2, 2014, 3:00 PM
Discussion with Jamie Kirsch and Rev. Amy Fisher, 2:00 PM
Old South Church
645 Boylston Street, Boston

Annelies
Stephen Paulus: Hymn to the Eternal Flame (2005)
James Whitbourn: Annelies (2005); libretto based on the Diary of Anne Frank
Lynn Eustis, soprano

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617-522-1394
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