Ending with a bang

Season finale June 1 and 2

The Guild Chorus concludes its 23rd season on June 1 and 2 with a bang, lots of bangs in fact, plus clangs and booms. Entitled “Pipes and Drums,” the concert features exciting works for chorus with organ and percussion.

The program opens with the sinfonia and chorus to J.S. Bach’s Cantata 29. Choral music aficionados will recognize the music as the “Dona nobis pacem” from the B Minor Mass; but for this concert BCG music director Sanford Dole has written a special arrangement of this work for organ and percussion instrumentation.

Organist Paul Rosas will accompany the chorus in four more pieces: Estonian Arvo Pärt’s shimmering The Beatitudes, written in 1990–91; Gerald Finzi’s celebratory God is gone up, which was especially composed for a St. Cecilia’s Day service; Sir Hubert Parry’s majestic I was glad when they said unto me, which contains a “vivat Regina” perfectly suited for Queen Elizabeth’s June 3 jubilee; and Charles Ives’s Psalm 90, with three percussionists joining the chorus and organ. The moving text of the latter, a psalm of Moses, is both chanted and sung by the chorus against a backdrop of deep organ chords and an array of chimes.

Sharing the spotlight

Each of the components of this program—chorus, organ, percussion—will have an opportunity to shine in the spotlight. The chorus and soprano soloist Debra Blodgett will perform Benjamin Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia. Britten actually finishedžthis work while he was on board a ship returning to England after an extended stay in the U.S. During the ocean voyage he emerged from a period of writer’s block with not only the Hymn but also a draft of A Ceremony of Carols. The Hymn to St. Cecilia is a three-part a cappella setting of the poem by W.H. Auden. The music and lyrics have been described as a double entendre, for they are aesthetic, spiritual, innocent yet also sensual, even at times erotic.

Paul Rosas, who is one of the Guild Chorus’s regular accompanists, will take center stage with J.S. Bach’s transcendental Prelude and Fugue in G minor.

For this program the Guild is thrilled to feature percussionists Ward Spangler, Galen Lemmon, and Mark Veregge, who will accompany the chorus and also perform Russell Peck’s Lift Off, an astounding percussion-only piece which is the perfect vehicle to show off the talents of these three men who together provide percussion services for most of the Bay Area’s leading orchestras: San Jose Symphony, Opera San Jose, San Francisco Opera, and the California, Oakland-East Bay, Berkleley, Fremont, and Marin Symphonies. This may be the most exciting piece on the program and not merely because the composer has specified that it be performed shirtless.

Music for our time

The program finale is William Mathias’s Ceremony After a Fire Raid. This work for chorus, percussion, and piano sets the Dylan Thomas poem describing the rebuilding of London after the bombings of World War II. This moving piece, which takes the listener from despair to rebirth, is an affirmation of hope. How appropriate for the struggles we face in the world today!

“Pipes and Drums” will be held on Saturday and Sunday, June 1 and 2, in Palo Alto and Berkeley. Details on the concert appear on page 4. A ticket order form is on page 3.

Volume 10, Issue 4

Baroque Choral Guild, 953 Industrial Ave. Ste 118, Palo Alto CA 94303, 650.424.1410