 The Concert Singers 2010-2011 Season
Sign up for an audition today! Come audition for Westchester, California's only community choir that has been bringing choral music to Los Angeles since 1948! We perform three major concerts a year plus additional performances around town including a recent appearance at the 99th Rotary International Conference at the Nokia Plaza in downtown Los Angeles! Audition materials will be provided on this website soon, but will include a short excerpt to sing (an mp3 will be posted for rehearsal purposes). Auditions will be held on Tuesday, September 7th from 6pm-7:30pm at Covenant Presbyterian Church
(6323 West 80th Street, Los Angeles CA 90045)
Email us today through the "Contact Us" section to schedule an audition or to find out more information.
Audition Material for 2010-2011 SeasonPlease PRINT scores and bring with you to your audition! You do not need to have selections memorized, but please practice before your audition! Soprano - Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind SCORE - opening through the bottom of page 2
Soprano - Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind RECORDING Alto - S'Vivon SCORE - begins at m. 33 (read ALTO LINE) through m. 48 THEN jumps to m. 67 (see score - it is marked clearly) Alto - S'Vivon RECORDING Tenor AND Bass - Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind SCORE - begins at rehearsal #29 through rehearsal #30 Tenor AND Bass - Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind RECORDING Some Highlights of the 2010-2011 SeasonRandall Thompson's Testament of Freedom for SATB choir and orchestra
Premiere of a NEW CHORAL WORK by Music Director Jenni Brandon!These works will also be performed as The Concert Singers go to Carnegie Hall in May 2011 as part of MidAmerica Productions' Spring/Summer 2011 Season. Jenni will guest conduct all participating choirs in Carnegie Hall! See BELOW for more information about some of these highlights of our 2010-2011 season!
Carnegie Hall Concert – Saturday, May 28th, 2011, 8:30 pmRepertoireWe will be preparing and performing two pieces for our portion of the evening. (Remember – there are other works being performed that evening, but with different ensembles and different conductors. We are only responsible for our portion of the concert.) We will be joined by other choirs from around the country to sing with us on our portion of the concert.
Here’s what we will be singing: The Testament of Freedom by Randall ThompsonThe Testament of Freedom is a four-movement work for men's chorus and piano composed in 1943 Randall Thompson. It was premiered on April 13, 1943 by the Virginia Glee Club under the direction of Stephen Tuttle; the composer served as pianist. Thompson later orchestrated the piece, and also produced an arrangement for mixed chorus. The music was published in 1944. The piece was written for the Virginia Glee Club while Thompson was teaching at the University of Virginia and was meant to celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of Thomas Jefferson, and the text was chosen by the composer. Although it was meant as an occasional work, the piece was soon seen as an opportunity to project an uplifting message about the United States in wartime; its premiere was recorded by CBS and quickly broadcast nationwide. It was also transmitted by shortwave radio over the Office of War Information network to Allied servicemen stationed in Europe. On April 14, 1945, it was performed by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall as part of a concert in memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died two days earlier. In tribute to the President, Koussevitzky insisted that the concert be given, but open to the public without charge.
Texts
I. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.
—A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
II. We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honor, justice, and humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them. Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great… We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favor towards us, that His Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
—Declaration of Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms (July 6, 1775)
III. We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offense. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death. In our native land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it; for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves; against violence actually offered; we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.
—Declaration of Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms (July 6, 1775)
IV. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance... And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them...The flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
—Letter to John Adams, Monticello (September 12, 1821)
The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them[1].
Stars (working title) by Jenni Brandon. Poem by Bobbi J. NicoteraThis new work is being written specifically for our West Coast/East Coast premiere here in Westchester and in Carnegie Hall. I wanted to write something that could be a compliment to Thompson’s Testament of Freedom while also bringing a new work to the choral repertoire.
I approached my good friend Bobbi J. Nicotera who is a poet and author. She and I had just finished working together on the work Dog Tales for soprano, flute, clarinet, and piano commissioned by the Cincinnati new music ensemble Conundrum. I knew that her story-telling voice and her vivid and descriptive language would be a wonderful choice for the poetry of this piece.
What she has given us is a story of immigrants, or displaced people, moved on from all that they know and sent into a new land with nothing but the memories of their former lives. The stars in skies serve as the placeholders of those memories, and the chance to add new memories to the vastness of the universe is what brings our story to a hopeful conclusion.
This is a wonderful complimentary text to The Testament of Freedom in that all people seek freedom and liberty, and this is what drives us forward and creates new opportunities for the future.
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