The Journey Begins

by Music Director Sanford Dole

Music Director Sanford Dole

As always, I’m looking forward to our first concert of the season with great anticipation. One of my goals as Music Director of the Guild Chorus has been to develop a more mature and confident choral sound, working to improve the blend and vocal color in our performances. We’ve made great strides in the past two years, and I’m happy to report that we’re continuing to grow in these areas this fall. Toward that end, we’ve welcomed eight new choristers to our ranks: Janis Arrigoni, Loren Chuse, Christine Doyle, Peter Gourevitch, Ruthann Lovetang, Beau McCrury, Liz Nielsen, and Dyana Vukovich. I think you’ll be pleased with our progress.

If you’re a regular subscriber then you’ll know that I delight in performing offbeat repertoire. A key part of the Guild’s mission is to discover and present little known works of great quality. This fits nicely with my own personal philosophy. Happily, many of our audience members have told me how much they appreciate our programming choices and look forward to the discoveries we offer. While I can tell you that selecting repertoire is difficult, I’m also here to report that this season is full of wonderful music that will surprise and delight you. We’re taking The Grand Tour this season in more ways than one. Buy your tickets and get ready for an exciting musical journey.

The season begins with an all-Baroque program on December 14 and 15. But don’t expect Handel’s Messiah, or even Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Instead, we’ll be fielding a strong line-up of little known works from around the world. Toward this end, I spent the summer preparing performance editions for the pieces on the concert. After I had done a lot of research looking for a nice blend of compositions, it turned out that for one piece, the only available edition was prohibitively expensive, for another piece, the one edition, found only after an extensive library search, was out of print, and for the other three, no edition in modern notation existed at all. For the results, however, all this activity behind the scenes is well worth it.

We travel first to Germany for J. S. Bach’s exquisitely crafted Missa Brevis in A major, then to Italy for Alessandro Scarlatti’s haunting O Magnum Mysterium, and on to France for Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s charming account of the angel’s announcing to the shepherds the birth of Christ, In Nativitatem Domini Canticum. These pieces alone make our trip worthwhile, but this is a world tour that includes stops in Mexico and Bolivia. Along with the missionaries, the influences of European musical styles came to the Americas in the 16th century. The way local musicians adapted the Old World forms and made them their own is intriguing. Mexico’s leading composer of the Baroque era, Francisco López Capillas, is represented with Magnificat tertii toni, one of his eight Magnificats. And Dime Amor, a villancico by Bolivian composer Juan de Araujo, brings our program to a lively conclusion.

You won’t want to miss any of the stops on The Grand Tour this season. We’ll have a great time together. So pack your bags and get ready for an exciting excursion. While you’re at it, share the fun and bring a friend—or three.

Volume 11, Issue 2

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