|
Director Terry Shaw’s vision was to take the chorus and our audience soaring to the heights of human emotion and probing the depths of human despair. The title of the concert referred to European traditions, from Bach to the Beatles.
The operative words were FROM and TO, for our own grand tour extended from Leipzig, Germany where Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a multitude of cantatas, to the banks of the river Mersey, where the Beatles spawned a new and exciting breed of music. Our musical odyssey included stops in London, Vienna, Paris, Seville, and a monastery in Italy.
|
There were brief side trips to the Gulliby Isles where the Poo-Poo smiles, to the new world where Longfellow’s poem “Song of Hiawatha” inspired Dvorak to write his New World Symphony and to Vietnam where we witnessed the horrors of war. We went from deeply religious to mildly irreverent; from ear-straining pianissimo to ear-splitting fortissimo; from peace and serenity to pulse-pounding rhythms.
With consummate skill, our audience was taken:
From Bach's Cantata No. 150, a masterpiece of 18th Century polyphony, to Hey Jude, often thought to be among the Beatles most enduring tunes.
From the coronation of a king (Handel's Zadok the Priest) to the death of a princess (Candle in the Wind) Elton John's commemoration of Diana, Princess of Wales.
From the bullring of Seville (March of the Toreadors) to the Bui Doi of Saigon, the homeless children - the dregs of the Vietnam War
From the marble altar of a Vienna Cathedral (Mozart's magnificent Ave Verum) to the catacombs underlying the Paris Opera in the Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
From the music of inner harmony (Faure's Agnus Dei) to the Last Night of the World, the antithesis of peace - the end of the tragic Vietnam war, the cost of which in human misery has yet to be counted.
From the infinite and eternal glory of love (Puccini's Turandot) to the cynicism of the Beatles You Can't Buy My Love.
From a haunting prayer for divine mercy (Dvorak's Kyrie) to the haunting cry of despair that nothing matters any more (Freddy Mercury's Bohemian Rhapsody).
From the joy of youth found in a Benedictine monastery (Tempus est Iacuncum from Orff's Carmina Burana) to the depression of disenfranchised youth who don't need no education, 'cuz they're just another brick in The Wall (Roger Waters)
From a cry for freedom that became an unofficial anthem for liberation (March of the Hebrew Slaves) from Verdi's opera Nabucco to a raucous declaration that the freedom of the sea is the place for me (A Capital Ship)
From the romantic illusion of the Brahm's Liebeslieder Waltzes to the romantic reality of I Know Him So Well (from the Anderson and Ulveus musical, Chess)
From mere madness to total lunacy in a song entitled Brown Bird, sung by a nut, and accompanied by pianist for whom middle-C was a challenge, that left the audience rolling in the aisles.
Scholarships:
Jacob Tyrell (Tumwater High School
Cara Pirie (Timberline High School)
|
THE ENTIRE PROGRAM
Cantata No. 150
Johann Sebastian Bach
Zadok the Priest
Georg Friedrich Handel
Ave Verum Corpus
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Liebeslieder Waltzes Nos. 8 and 11
Johannes Brahms
Agnus Dei
Gabriel Faure
Kyrie
Antonin Dvorak
Oboe Solo: Karen Gheorghiu
March of the Hebrew Slaves
Guiseppe Verdi
March of the Toreadors
Georges Bizet
Flute solo: Cheryl Sears
Carmina Burana
Carl Orff
Solo: Alan Newman
Final Chorus from Turandot
Giacomo Puccini
A Capital Ship
An English Sea Chantey
Brown Bird
Haydn Wood
Solo: Mary Petzold
I Know Him So Well
Anderson and Ulvaeus
Soloists: Carrie Niebanck and Shannon Rowan
Miss Saigon Medley
Claude Michel Schonberg
Wishing You Were Here Again
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Solo: Jennifer Shaw
Candle in the Wind
Elton John and Bernie Taupin
Solo: Suzanne Grimm
The Wall
Roger Waters
Bohemian Rhapsody
Freddie Mercury
Solo: Shannon Rowan
Beatles Medley
John Lennon and Paul McCartney
|
|
