FREE CONCERT! "Holiday Sparkle" is Friday, Dec 15 at noon.

HIAWATHA THEN and NOW

Here are some images from the history of HIAWATHA'S WEDDING FEAST:

The program page from the premiere at the Royal College of Music, November 11, 1898.

Memories of an early visit to the U.S. by the composer, by noted conductor Albert Stoeckel.

This poster of David's Connecticut performance of "HWF" has hung on his wall since 1983.

The poster for the CBASO and CBA Chorus performance on November 8, 2017

Click to PURCHASE Ticket (takes you to the CBASO & CBA Chorus online ticket site.)


A detailed biography of the composer with many photos can be found here:
http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.homestead.com/song.html#27

Tenor CAMEO HUMES is soloist for "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast"

Chicago tenor CAMEO HUMES will solo with the CBASO and the CBA Chorus in "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" at St James' Episcopal Cathedral on Wednesday, November 8th as the winner of The American Prize Chicago Oratorio Award. Mr. Humes was chosen from a field of more than a dozen vocalists from all over the country who applied for the opportunity. A bio of the artist is below.

Cameo Humes

CAMEO HUMES is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after tenors in the operatic and concert repertoire. He has performed with Fort Wayne Philharmonic, the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, Hilton Head Choral Society, Gainesville Civic Chorus, and the Orchestra Sinfonica dell’International Chamber Ensemble in Italy. His most recent engagement included a debut with Teatro alla Scala in the roles of Peter, Crab man, Mingo and Robbins in their production of Porgy and Bess. Other operatic credits include the title role in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, Ottavio (Don Giovanni) with Operafestival di Roma, Almaviva (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Gastone (La Traviata), Prunier (La Rondine), Peter (Porgy and Bess) with Lyric Opera of Chicago (cover), Dayton Opera and Skylight Music Theatre of Milwaukee, Crab man (Porgy and Bess) with The Princeton Festival, Nelson (Porgy and Bess) with Cincinnati Opera, Ballad Singer (Of Mice and Men), and Ensemble (Show Boat) with Houston Grand Opera. Mr. Humes has also performed regularly in the chorus of the Lyric Opera of Chicago since the 2014-15 season. He has performed as tenor soloist for the world premiere of Mozart’s Requiem staged with the Cincinnati Ballet, a performance that he repeated in the spring of 2015. Other recent concert engagements include Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, Mozart’s Grand Mass in C minor, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass with the Bach Society of Dayton, Bach St. John Passion and Mass in B minor, and The Seven Last Words of Christ by Théodore Dubois. He has recorded the lead role in Richard Thompson’s The Mask in the Mirror, a modern opera based on the life of Paul Laurence Dunbar; a role that Mr. Humes successfully portrayed on the stage with Trilogy Opera of New Jersey in 2014. A lover and avid performer of the Negro spiritual, he has toured Spain, France and Ireland with the world renown American Spiritual Ensemble, and has served as Adjunct Professor of Voice and Opera workshop at Central State University. Mr. Humes completed his undergraduate studies at Stetson University and earned a Master of Music degree from the University of Florida.

TICKETS are available here, or at the door.

HIAWATHA program note by Miriam Scott

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Anglo-African composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was just 22 and recently graduated from the Royal College of Music (RCM), London, when he completed Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast. Hiawatha, a cantata for chorus, orchestra, and tenor, is based on a section of The Song of Hiawatha, the epic poem by noted American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

The piece was an instant hit from its first performance at the RCM on November 12, 1898, and during the beginning of the 20th century gained the young composer wide acclaim, if not financial security.  Insecure in his own abilities, and a novice in the music publishing business, Coleridge-Taylor sold the Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’s copyright to music publisher Novello’s for a mere 15.15 British pounds, in today’s terms the equivalent of 1,855.18 GBP or $2,404.64.   During his 1910 visit to the United States Coleridge-Taylor remarked more than once:  “If I had retained my rights in the Hiawatha music I should have been a rich man.”

Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast was Coleridge-Taylor’s most successful production, in its time rivaling Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Elijah in popularity. After the cantata’s premiere, Sir Hubert Parry, a contemporary composer, pronounced it “one of the most remarkable events in modern English musical history.” The work was received enthusiastically not only in England, but also in South Africa, New Zealand, and the United States. 

Despite the popular success of Hiawatha (more than 200,000 copies of the music sold during his too-brief lifetime), Coleridge-Taylor struggled to make a living for himself and his family and his extraordinary efforts to write original commissions, to conduct his and other composers‘ works, and to teach contributed to his premature death from pneumonia at the age of 37. 

From 1904 until his death in 1912 he was principal conductor of the Handel Society of London, and professor at Trinity College of Music, at the Crystal Palace School of Art and Music, and at the Guildhall School of Music.  At the time of his death, Coleridge-Taylor had produced 82 numbered compositions and some 25 other works.

Unlikely Musical Career

The composer in is studio

Coleridge-Taylor’s humble origins and dark skin would not necessarily anticipate his illustrious musical future, even if his unmarried white English mother named him after the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge-Taylor’s black African physician father (Daniel Hughes Taylor) returned to his native Sierra Leone before the child’s birth and, apparently, never knew of his existence. The composer experienced racism in England, although not as extreme as the racism in the United States.  In his early childhood, Coleridge-Taylor lived with his mother in his maternal grandfather’s modest household in the London suburb of Croydon. This grandfather sparked Samuel’s musical gift when he gave the five year old a small violin and his first music lessons.  

In addition to his violin mastery, Coleridge-Taylor was an in-demand boy treble soloist at several churches. His musical talent recognized, Coleridge-Taylor in 1890 at age 15 entered the RCM.  The young man soon showed promise as a composer and in 1892 was accepted as a student to RCM composition teacher Charles Villiers Stanford, at the time a noted composer.  By the age of 20, Coleridge-Taylor had already scored nearly 30 vocal and instrumental works.  Inspired by Johannes Brahms’ Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, Coleridge-Taylor wrote his own clarinet quintet, leading Stanford to acclaim the originality of his student’s work.  Thus Coleridge-Taylor became the RCM’s star student in composition, and in 1893 he received the RCM’s only composition fellowship.

Referring to young Coleridge-Taylor, the music critic Auguste J. Jaeger wrote to his future wife that “I have long been looking for a new English composer of real genius and I believe I have found him.” Mr. Jaeger became a champion of Coleridge-Taylor’s music and pressed music publisher Novello’s to publish Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Coleridge-Taylor in 1897 completed his studies at the RCM where several of his student compositions (mostly small group chamber pieces) were performed. Edward Elgar, even in Coleridge-Taylor’s lifetime considered a top English composer, was among the music luminaries of the time who were impressed by Coleridge-Taylor’s work and promoted it.  Elgar urged the directors of the prestigious Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester to perform Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade in A Minor for Orchestra in 1898.

Hiawatha

Longfellow’s poem, completed in 1855, adopted the trochaic tetrameter [a rapid meter of poetry consisting of four feet of trochees; a trochee is made up of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable] of the Finnish epic poem The Kalevala. When he chose to set the poem to music, Coleridge-Taylor acknowledged his attraction for the characters’ curious-sounding Indian names such as Nokomis, Chibiabos, and Iagoo, and that “The essential beauty of the poem is its native simplicity, its unaffected expression, its unforced realism”. Furthermore, Coleridge-Taylor was a great admirer of the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, and of that composer’s Symphony from the New World which, some experts say, was inspired in part by Longfellow’s Hiawatha. The unusual rhythms of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast are said to be a reflection of Coleridge-Taylor’s admiration for Dvořák’s music.

African-American Influence

Although many of Coleridge-Taylor’s works resemble the style of white English composers, even from his student days he was interested in reflecting his African heritage.  In this last pursuit, Coleridge-Taylor looked to African-Americans.  He found inspiration from the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a gospel chorus from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, that had toured in England.  Coleridge-Taylor also partnered with African-American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, whom he met in London in 1896, to set some of Dunbar’s poems to music.  And he composed some African-themed orchestral works.  The overture to Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast even incorporates strains from the African-American spiritual “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”  and the composer used melodies of African-American spirituals in his “Twenty-Four Negro Melodies, P. 59” for piano.  Contemporaries reported that he advocated for black classical music.

U.S. Reach

Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast was performed in the U.S. before Coleridge-Taylor’s tours here in 1904, 1906, and 1910.  The Ann Arbor, Michigan Argus-Democrat of December 15, 1899 announced a December 18 performance by the Choral Union with the Chicago Festival Orchestra.  The Chicago Apollo Club on April 15, 1901, at the Chicago National College of Music, presented the premiere Chicago performance of the cantata which “is creating quite a furore both in England and in this country”, the monthly magazine Music reported.  Also in 1901, the African-American Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society of the District of Columbia was founded specifically to perform Hiawatha and it invited the composer to conduct the piece when he would tour the U.S. which he did for the first time in November 1904.  In an unusual honor at the time for an individual of African descent, President Theodore Roosevelt received Coleridge-Taylor at the White House during the composer’s 1906 visit.

The composer was well-known and respected among African-American communities in the early 20th century, much as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X are well known today.  Schools were named after him, including The Historic Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland, and Coleridge-Taylor Montessori Elementary School in Louisville, Kentucky.

In a spring 1908 letter to Coleridge-Taylor, the honorary treasurer of the S. Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society summed up African-Americans’ high regard for the composer and his cantata: “In composing Hiawatha you have done the coloured of the U.S. a service which, I am sure, you never dreamed of when composing it.  It acts as a source of inspiration for us, not only musically but in other lines of endeavor. When we are going to have a Hiawatha concert here, for at least one month we seem, as it were, to be lifted above the clouds of American colour prejudice, and to live there wholly oblivious of its disadvantages, and indeed of most of our other troubles.”

Chicago Pleasure

During his visits to Chicago in late November/early December 1904 and 1906, Coleridge-Taylor conducted a program of his shorter pieces but not Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.  Although the composer’s 1904 Chicago concert was arranged with only 10 days’ notice, the hall was full.  Reportedly, the Chicago concert pleased him more than the others:  “My best time was in Chicago.  The audience was made up almost entirely of those whom you would call really musical people, and there was no mistaking the immense German element among the listeners. Coloured people always put in a large attendance, and they were most enthusiastic.”

Song of Hiawatha Trilogy

A memorial to the composer in his hometown of Croydon (SCT in the center).

Following Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’s success, Coleridge-Taylor completed two more sections in 1899 and 1900, The Death of Minnehaha, and Hiawatha’s Departure, respectively.  The trilogy, published as The Song of Hiawatha, was first performed in its entirety in 1900 at the Royal Albert Hall. The last two parts never attained the success of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.   However, from 1924 until the beginning of World War II, the complete trilogy and the Hiawatha Ballet Music were performed with costumes, scenery, and up to 1,000 performers at the Royal Albert Hall for two weeks annually.  The famous English conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent recorded Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast in 1929 and again in 1961. 

While in modern times Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, and Coleridge-Taylor’s music, had declined in popularity, interest in black composers has grown most recently spurring new performances and recordings.  On the 100th anniversary of the work’s premiere, it was revived in Boston in 1998.  The Colour of Music Festival in Charleston, South Carolina scheduled a performance for October 21, 2017.

On August 24, 2017, during Chicago’s classical radio station WFMT’s Mid-Day program, host Lisa Flynn played a cut from a new release (Music by Composers of African Descent, or Violin Gems from Black Composers issued summer 2017) by Hungaro-Ethiopian violinist Samuel Nebyu playing Coleridge-Taylor’s Romance, Op. 39.  Again on September 6, 2017, WFMT aired Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet in A.  Rachel Barton, Chicago’s own star violinist, in 1997 released a new recording under the Cedille label of Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th and 19th Centuries including Coleridge-Taylor’s Romance in G Major for Violin and Orchestra.

The British paper The Guardian in a June 2, 2015 article titled “Ten black composers whose work deserve to be heard more often” says of Coleridge-Taylor: “Even better [than Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast] are Coleridge-Taylor’s works for violin and orchestra, which are elegant pieces of fin de siecle romanticism.”

- Program note by Miriam B. Scott

LISSA VISHNESKI'S fun FLIER for this week's CHAMBER CONCERT—Thanks, Lissa!

CLICK HERE for TICKETS!

WONDERFUL PROGRAM for the CHAMBER CONCERT this Sunday, October 1, 2017

CLICK for TICKETS!

CHICAGO BAR ASSOCIATION SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
CHAMBER MUSIC RECITAL
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2017, at 3:00 P.M.
PIANOFORTE STUDIOS, CHICAGO, IL

PROGRAM


Wind Quintet No. 1 in D major, Op. 124    Giulio Briccialdi

The Fair Use Quintet
Judith Grubner, flute
Mary Callaghan, oboe
John S. Vishneski III, clarinet
Katherine Erwin, bassoon
Michael McVickar, French horn

Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3    Ludwig van Beethoven
Movement I: Allegro con brio

The Tribunalle Trio
Patricia Bronte, violin
Julia Nowicki, cello
Neil B. Posner, piano

“Dove sono i bei momenti” from La nozze di Figaro    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Patricia Mehler, soprano
Janet Eckhardt, piano

“Shiao Lu”    Inner Mongolian Traditional Folk Song
(arranged by Ting-Yi Ma)

Ann Shih-Hoellwarth, soprano
Janet Eckhardt, piano

Trio for Flute, Clarinet, and Bassoon, Op. 32    Kaspar Kummer
Movement I: Allegro

Judith Grubner, flute
John S. Vishneski III, clarinet
Brian Chang, bass clarinet



~ INTERMISSION ~



Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043    Johann Sebastian Bach
Movement I: Vivace

Sara Su Jones, violin I
Carlin Metzger, violin II
Dennis Moore, piano

Album Leaf    Mikhail Glinka

Sara Su Jones, violin
Dennis Moore, piano


Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38    Johannes Brahms
Movement I: Allegro non troppo

Gary DeTurck, cello
Neil B. Posner, piano

“Vocalise” from 14 Romances, Op. 34, No. 14    Sergei Rachmaninoff

Juditha A. Seghers, soprano
Emily A. Chen, violin
Janet Eckhardt, piano

Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34    Johannes Brahms
Movement I: Allegro non troppo

Marian L. Chen, violin I
Patricia Bronte, violin II
Emily A. Chen, viola
Gary DeTurck, cello
Neil B. Posner, piano

HIAWATHA POSTER by Carl Klein

Poster designed by CBA Chorus member Carl Klein.

CLICK for TICKETS

OUR 2017-18 season AT-A-GLANCE

The Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra
32nd Season—2017-18
David Katz, founding music director and principal conductor
Marek Rachelski, resident conductor
Michael Poulos, assistant conductor

The Chicago Bar Association Chorus
12th Season—2017-18
Stephen Blackwelder, chorus director
Janet Eckhardt, chorus accompanist
Rebecca Patterson, director emerita

The Fair Use Wind Quintet will perform on October 1st

SPECIAL SEASON EVENT:
Chamber Music at PIANOFORTE featuring members of the CBASO and the CBA Chorus
Sunday, October 1, 2017 at 3pm at PianoForte, 1335 South Michigan Avenue
TICKET LINK: http://chamberpianoforte.bpt.me

The Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra & the CBA Chorus

David Katz, founding music director

Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

November Concert: chorus and orchestra
“HIAWATHA in CHICAGO”
TICKET LINK: http://hiawathainchicago.bpt.me
SPECIAL WEBSITE: http://hiawathainchicago.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, Nov 8, 2017 at 7:30 pm St James Cathedral—Wabash @ Huron

David Katz conducting
Dvorak—New World Symphony
Coleridge-Taylor—Hiawatha's Wedding Feast (chorus and orchestra)

Michael Poulos, CBASO assistant conductor

Joanne Burne

December Concert: orchestra only
“HOLIDAY SPARKLE”
TICKET LINK: None. Concert is free.
Friday, Dec 15, 2017—noontime concert at Harold Washington Library

Michael Poulos, conducting
Joanne Burne, piccolo soloist
Rossini—Overture to La Gazza Ladra
Vivaldi—Piccolo Concerto
Rimsky-Korsakov—Polonaise from “Christmas Eve”
plus Holiday Favorites

Stephen Blackwelder & Marek Rachelski

Sara Su Jones

March Concert: chorus and orchestra perform separately
“DOUBLE DEBUT”
welcoming our new CBA Chorus Director and CBASO Resident Conductor
TICKET LINK: http://doubledebut.bpt.me
Wednesday, March 7, 2018 at 7:30 pm St James Cathedral—Wabash @ Huron

Marek Rachelski conducting orchestra portion
Stephen Blackwelder conducting choral portion (without orchestra)

ORCHESTRA:     Mozart—Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major
                Sara Su Jones, violin soloist
            Schubert—Symphony No. 3

CHORUS:        Pachelbel Magnificat in D
            Schubert Miriam's Song of Triumph
                solo soprano: Susan Nelson
            Gywneth Walker I Will Be Earth   

Rossini's Stabat Mater will feature soloists from The American Prize

May Concert—chorus and orchestra
VERDI & ROSSINI’S “STABAT MATER”
TICKET LINK: http://rossiniverdi.bpt.me
Wednesday, May 16, 2018 at 7:30 pm St James Cathedral—Wabash @ Huron

David Katz conducting
Verdi—Oveture to La Forza del Destino
Rossini—Stabat Mater
Soloists—winners of The American Prize

HIAWATHA'S WEDDING FEAST returns to CHICAGO

HIAWATHA in CHICAGO
HIAWATHA in CHICAGO: November 2017. Join The Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra and the CBA Chorus, Chicagoland's unique musical ensemble of attorneys, judges and legal professionals, for a very special revival of Anglo-African composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's once world-famous cantata, HIAWATHA'S WEDDING FEAST, returning to Chicago on November 8, 2017 at St James Episcopal Cathedral, conducted by Maestro David Katz.

HIAWATHA TICKETS

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor as a young man.

BACKSTORY

by David Katz, founding music director and principal conductor
of the Chicago Bar Association Symphony

Anglo-African composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was black—his mother was English, his father from Sierra Leone—the first classical composer of African descent to be recognized internationally for his music.

Coleridge-Taylor achieved fame overnight with the premiere of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, his setting of lines from Longfellow's epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha, which premiered at the Royal College of Music in November 1898, when the composer was just 22 years old. Hiawatha proved a sensation, was soon performed hundreds of times, selling hundreds of thousands of copies across the globe.

Because of the success his Hiawatha cantata garnered for him, Coleridge-Taylor toured the U.S. three times, meeting President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House and conducting the work in many places, including St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Boston, Washington, and in Chicago.

Racial prejudice being what it was (and sometimes, unfortunately, still is) it is perhaps not surprising that the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor disappeared into the void in the years following his early death at the age of 37. But for a time, during the first decades of the last century, as the article on Wikipedia states, "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast became so famous in Britain that for many years it rivaled Handel's Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elijah in the public's affections."

The composer in his studio

Thirty-five years ago, I conducted the first Hartford performance of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast heard in that city in fifty years. The moment seems right for this charming, tuneful, gentle and fragrantly themed choral-orchestral work to again be heard live in Chicago, where I hope it will capture some of the excitement and joy the work once generated in a very different time. I am proud that the CBASO and CBA Chorus, joined by a tenor soloist selected from The American Prize, will be the ones to present its latest revival, and it is my plan for us to work with colleagues from the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College to bring additional attention and additional scholarship to our performance of the music of this unjustly forgotten composer.

On our November concert, I will pair Hiawatha's Wedding Feast with Dvorak's New World Symphony.

On Coleridige-Taylor's headstone near London are inscribed these words by poet (and the composer's close friend) Albert Noyes: Too young to die, his great simplicity, his happy courage in an alien world, his gentleness, made all that knew him love him.

I hope, after our encounter with his music, both audience and musicians will discover we feel the same way.

***

A short documentary about the composer on You Tube, narrated by his daughter and including excerpts from the cantata: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsYU8WfmIoA

The Wikipedia Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_Hiawatha_(Coleridge-Taylor)#Background

A good recent performance on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr1sdM67oH8
(The recording includes all of the cantatas that make up SCT's "Song of Hiawatha." Hiawatha's Wedding Feast is first, running about 30 minutes.)

TICKETS: http://hiawathainchicago.bpt.me/

The Artistic Team for "HIAWATHA'S WEDDING FEAST"

DAVID KATZ, Founding Music Director and Principal Conductor 
of The Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra

David Katz

David Katz is one of the most versatile performing artists currently working in the Chicago area. Now celebrating his 32nd season as the founding music director of The Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra, Katz has led Chicagoland’s unique all-lawyer ensemble nearly two hundred times during his long tenure, in repertoire ranging from Trial By Jury, (the first performances of Gilbert & Sullivan’s courtroom operetta ever to be presented in a working courtroom with a cast and orchestra made up entirely of legal professionals) to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, as well as major orchestral and choral-orchestral works by Brahms, Britten, Bruckner, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Poulenc, Respighi, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and others.

In 2011, Katz and the CBASO, joined by the CBA Chorus and guest choirs, nearly three hundred musicians in all, presented Orff's Carmina Burana to a capacity crowd at Orchestra Hall, Chicago, in celebration of the CBASO's 25th season. The ensemble returned to Symphony Center in spring 2015 for Something Wonderful!, an all-Rodgers & Hammerstein concert.

David Katz has led more than sixty orchestras and opera companies throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico as guest conductor, including concerts with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Mississippi Symphony and the Corpus Christi Symphony. Former associate conductor of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra under Margaret Hillis, and for twelve years music director of the Adrian Symphony Orchestra and co-founder of OPERA!Lenawee in Michigan, Katz is currently artistic director of Hat City Music Theater, Inc., in Connecticut, where he is founder and chief judge of The American Prize national nonprofit competitions in the performing arts. In 2016, Katz was honored by Musical America as one of only thirty “Top Professionals of the Year” nationally for his work creating and sustaining The American Prize. TAP has awarded more than $40,000 in prize money to performing artists nationwide since its creation.

A professional playwright, actor and arts advocate, Katz tours internationally in his acclaimed one-man play, MUSE of FIRE, about the secrets of conducting. He has presented the play scores of times throughout the Midwest, Northeast, and in Canada, including an extended engagement in Chicago. Two books by David Katz, Muse of Fire: A Symposium on the Art of Conducting, and Bruck Stories, a companion volume, will be published by Del Gatto Press next year. Katz is also at work on Wonderful Counsellor, a memoir about three decades of music-making with Chicago lawyers.

David Katz holds baccalaureate and master’s degrees in composition and conducting from the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford. He was a student of the great Lithuanian maestro, Vytautas Marijosius, and was the first in the school’s history to be awarded an Artist’s Diploma in Conducting. Katz also studied for five years under Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors, in Maine, and later founded Opera Maine, the Monteux Opera Festival, and the Chamber Orchestra of Maine. He has partnered such artists as Itzhak Perlman and Misha Dichter in concert and has worked with some of the greatest twentieth century composers, including William Schuman, Hans Werner Henze, Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter. Katz’s own compositions are published by Carl Fischer and G. Schirmer, among others.



STEPHEN BLACKWELDER, Director of The The Chicago Bar Association Chorus

Stephen Blackwelder

Particularly noted for his fluent work with singers and choral groups, Stephen Blackwelder is currently celebrating his twelfth season as director of the DePaul Community Chorus. Under his direction, the DCC has grown to 150 members and recently collaborated with the Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago in successful performances of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bruckner’s Mass in D Minor, Haydn’s Mass in Time of War and Brahms’ Requiem. Now in his seventeenth season as Music Director of the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra, his 2017-18 schedule includes four subscription concerts with that ensemble, three concerts with the DCC and three concerts as newly appointed Director of the Chicago Bar Association Chorus. Stephen very much looks forward to collaborating with Maestro Katz and the spirited members of the CBA Chorus and Symphony Orchestra.

Choral music has always been an active component of Blackwelder’s musical life and he has led performances of the Downer’s Grove Oratorio Society, Camerata Singers of Lake Forest, Waukegan Festival Chorus and numerous university, church and temple ensembles. Formerly the conductor of the early music ensemble Ars Musica Chicago, he led that group in numerous concerts and recordings over 8 concert seasons. As an accomplished professional singer, he performed frequently under such conductors as Robert Shaw, James Levine, Sir Georg Solti, Claudio Abbado and Margaret Hillis while a member of the Aspen Chamber Choir and Chicago Symphony Chorus.

A former Music Director of the Hinsdale Chamber Orchestra, he continues to attract and delight audiences with fresh, innovative programming and an informal and appealing concert style. Highlights of past seasons include performances with celebrated flautist Carol Wincenc, Metropolitan Opera soprano Nancy Gustafson, Ruben Gonzalez and John Sharp of the Chicago Symphony, and the NIU Philharmonic with soloists from the famed Vermeer Quartet. Guest conducting engagements include the Richmond, Bremerton and Sacramento Symphonies, as well as the Chicago String Ensemble, where he was praised for his “warmly expressive” conducting by Robert Marsh of the Chicago Sun-Times.

A native of North Carolina, Blackwelder was the first undergraduate to receive a Bachelor of Music in conducting and voice from UNC-Chapel Hill. During his studies for the Master of Music degree at Northwestern University, he assisted Grigg Fountain with the Alice Millar Chapel Choir in addition to his duties with orchestral and opera groups. Professional study includes four seasons with the renowned Aspen Music Festival and master classes with Sir Georg Solti, Max Rudolf and Erich Leinsdorf.



MAREK RACHELSKI, Resident Conductor of The Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra

Marek Rachelski

Newly appointed Resident Conductor of the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra, Marek Rachelski enjoys a rich variety in his musical life as conductor, pianist/harpsichordist and as collaborative artist in recital. Marek holds degrees from Northwestern University, Wayne State University and the Academy of Music in Prague HAMU. He has appeared with orchestras in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Canada and the USA, and has served on the faculties of Loyola University and De Paul University. He is the Artistic Director of Musica Lumina Ensemble and Conductor/Founder of the Niles Metropolitan Chorus. In four seasons the NMC/ML has performed major works of the repertoire: Requiems of Mozart, Faure, Rutter; the Magnificats of Pärt, Bach and Pergolesi; Haydn’s Creation, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, a yearly Handel’s Messiah, and the St. John Passion of J. S. Bach.

Past Music Director of Opera Las Vegas, he accompanied aria recitals and conducted complete staged performances of Puccini’s La Boheme, Donizetti’s L'elisir d'amore, Mollicone’s The Face on the Barroom Floor and a Puccini 150th celebrating operas of Puccini including excerpts from La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, Turandot, La Fanciulla del West, La Rondine, and Gianni Schicchi. He founded the Las Vegas Diocesan Cathedral Choir and the Las Vegas Peoples Valley Chorus which performed Requiems by Faure, Rutter and Brahms, Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Vespers, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Vivaldi Juditha Triumphans and a yearly Handel’s Messiah.

As Assistant Conductor of the Elgin Symphony he conducted Young People’s Concerts and performed with Victor Borge; he was also Music Director of the Valley Civic Orchestra and conducted the Elgin Area Youth Orchestras. A composer of over 100 works, he was commissioned in 1989 for a setting of Psalm 145 for the Papal Mass in Detroit and for a Magnificat by the Lira Singers for their 25th Anniversary. In addition to awards from the Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society, he was presented with the Pulaski Award for his contributions to Polish American Culture. Rachelski enjoys collaboration as recital accompanist for a rich variety of musical artists, both instrumental and vocal.

WELCOME Stephen Blackwelder & Marek Rachelski!

The CBA Symphony Orchestra, David Katz, founding music director and principal conductor, and the CBA Chorus, are delighted to welcome STEPHEN BLACKWELDER as the new Director of the CBA Chorus and MAREK RACHELSKI as the new Resident Conductor of the CBASO!

Stephen Blackwelder

 

 

Particularly noted for his fluent work with singers and choral groups, Stephen Blackwelder is currently celebrating his twelfth season as director of the DePaul Community Chorus. Under his direction, the DCC has grown to 150 members and recently collaborated with the Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago in successful performances of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bruckner’s Mass in D Minor, Haydn’s Mass in Time of War and Brahms’ Requiem. Now in his seventeenth season as Music Director of the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra, his 2017-18 schedule includes four subscription concerts with that ensemble, three concerts with the DCC and three concerts as newly appointed Director of the Chicago Bar Association Chorus. Stephen very much looks forward to collaborating with Maestro Katz and the spirited members of the CBA Chorus and Symphony Orchestra.

Choral music has always been an active component of Blackwelder’s musical life and he has led performances of the Downer’s Grove Oratorio Society, Camerata Singers of Lake Forest, Waukegan Festival Chorus and numerous university, church and temple ensembles. Formerly the conductor of the early music ensemble Ars Musica Chicago, he led that group in numerous concerts and recordings over 8 concert seasons. As an accomplished professional singer, he performed frequently under such conductors as Robert Shaw, James Levine, Sir Georg Solti, Claudio Abbado and Margaret Hillis while a member of the Aspen Chamber Choir and Chicago Symphony Chorus.

A former Music Director of the Hinsdale Chamber Orchestra, he continues to attract and delight audiences with fresh, innovative programming and an informal and appealing concert style. Highlights of past seasons include performances with celebrated flautist Carol Wincenc, Metropolitan Opera soprano Nancy Gustafson, Ruben Gonzalez and John Sharp of the Chicago Symphony, and the NIU Philharmonic with soloists from the famed Vermeer Quartet. Guest conducting engagements include the Richmond, Bremerton and Sacramento Symphonies, as well as the Chicago String Ensemble, where he was praised for his “warmly expressive” conducting by Robert Marsh of the Chicago Sun-Times.

A native of North Carolina, Blackwelder was the first undergraduate to receive a Bachelor of Music in conducting and voice from UNC-Chapel Hill. During his studies for the Master of Music degree at Northwestern University, he assisted Grigg Fountain with the Alice Millar Chapel Choir in addition to his duties with orchestral and opera groups. Professional study includes four seasons with the renowned Aspen Music Festival and master classes with Sir Georg Solti, Max Rudolf and Erich Leinsdorf.

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Marek Rachelski

Newly appointed Resident Conductor of the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra, Marek Rachelski enjoys a rich variety in his musical life as conductor, pianist/harpsichordist and as collaborative artist in recital.

Marek holds degrees from Northwestern University, Wayne State University and the Academy of Music in Prague HAMU. He has appeared with orchestras in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Canada and the USA, and has served on the faculties of Loyola University and De Paul University. He is the Artistic Director of Musica Lumina Ensemble and Conductor/Founder of the Niles Metropolitan Chorus. In four seasons the NMC/ML has performed major works of the repertoire: Requiems of Mozart, Faure, Rutter; the Magnificats of Pärt, Bach and Pergolesi; Haydn’s Creation, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, a yearly Handel’s Messiah, and the St. John Passion of J. S. Bach.

Past Music Director of Opera Las Vegas, he accompanied aria recitals and conducted complete staged performances of Puccini’s La Boheme, Donizetti’s L'elisir d'amore, Mollicone’s The Face on the Barroom Floor and a Puccini 150th celebrating operas of Puccini including excerpts from La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, Turandot, La Fanciulla del West, La Rondine, and Gianni Schicchi.

He founded the Las Vegas Diocesan Cathedral Choir and the Las Vegas Peoples Valley Chorus which performed Requiems by Faure, Rutter and Brahms, Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Vespers, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Vivaldi Juditha Triumphans and a yearly Handel’s Messiah. As Assistant Conductor of the Elgin Symphony he conducted Young People’s Concerts and performed with Victor Borge; he was also Music Director of the Valley Civic Orchestra and conducted the Elgin Area Youth Orchestras.

A composer of over 100 works, he was commissioned in 1989 for a setting of Psalm 145 for the Papal Mass in Detroit and for a Magnificat by the Lira Singers for their 25th Anniversary. In addition to awards from the Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society, he was presented with the Pulaski Award for his contributions to Polish American Culture. Rachelski enjoys collaboration as recital accompanist for a rich variety of musical artists, both instrumental and vocal.

"TCHAIKOVSKY & VAUGHAN WILLIAMS", our season finale, is Wednesday, May 17, 2017 at St James Cathedral!

Flier designed by chorus member Carl Klein.
TICKETS ONLINE: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2558228

The BARRISTERS BIG BAND BENEFIT BALL is Friday, April 28th!

For tickets and more information, please contact TAMRA DREES at 312 554-2057 or email tdrees@chicagobar.org

Celebrating our MOZART VOCAL SOLOISTS

Maestro David Katz (center) showered praise on The American Prize-winning soloists for Mozart's Missa Brevis, K194, immediately following their performance of the work with The Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at St James Cathedral in Chicago, March 8, 2017. Pictured from left to right are baritone Stephen Lancaster, mezzo-soprano Nicollete Nazarowski, Katz, soprano Rosalind Lee, and tenor Christian Ketter. The CBASO and Chorus has presented award-winning soloists from The American Prize national nonprofit competitions in the performing arts in concert each of the last five years. www.theamericanprize.org

Meet our VOCAL SOLOISTS, CLARINET SOLOIST and CHORUS DIRECTOR CANDIDATE for "MOSTLY MOZART"

Vocal soloists for the CBASO and CBA Chorus performance of the Mozart Missa Brevis in D (K194) are all winners of The American Prize national nonprofit competitions in the performing arts, David Katz, chief judge.

 Rosalind Lee, soprano

Rosalind Lee, soprano

Rosalind Lee, soprano, has been described as “rich-toned” and "a beautiful soprano with a glowing voice." Among many other performances, Ms. Lee sang the "Echo" in "Flößt, mein Heiland" from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Kathleen Battle under the baton of Raymond Leppard and was the soprano soloist in the Vivaldi Gloria under Bernard Labadie, both with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Lee has presented Beethoven’s magnificent concert aria, Ah! Perfido with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and has appeared as a soloist in numerous other concert works including Bach’s Magnificat, Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem, Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass, Haydn’s Paukenmesse, Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de confessore, Orff’s Carmina burana, Schubert’s Mass in G, and the Chicago premiere of Mollicone’s Beatitude Mass. Ms. Lee has also appeared in the Kraft Family Concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and in a concert of works by Benjamin Britten at the Glimmerglass Festival. She has also been a featured artist with the Bach Week Festival, Chorus Angelorum, the Chicago Summer Sings festival, the Elgin Choral Union, the Handel Week Festival, the North Shore Choral Society, the Saint James Cathedral Concert Series, the Te Deum Ensemble, and the Windy City String Ensemble.

Recent appearances include Haydn’s Missa in Angustiis (Lord Nelson Mass) with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Bach's cantata BWV 21, Ich hatte viel Bekummernis with the Bach Week Festival, guest soprano soloist with the Fox Valley Orchestra and Chorus in their Baroque for Christmas concert, and her debut with Haymarket Opera Company in concert performances of Stradella’s oratorio San Giovanni Battista both in Chicago and at the Valletta International Baroque Festival in Malta.

Upcoming appearances include a return to the Handel Week Festival in Handel’s motet for soprano and strings, Haec est Regina Virginum, HWV 235 and as the soprano soloist for Will Todd’s jazz mass, Mass in Blue, at St. Paul and the Redeemer Episcopal Church in Chicago.
 
On the opera stage, Ms. Lee has appeared in the baroque opera, La Purpura de la Rosa (Venus) with the Bloomington Early Music Festival, as the title role in Floyd’s Susannah, in Argento’s The Boor (Widow), and in Verdi’s La Traviata (Annina) at Music by the Lake. Ms. Lee is excited to be making her debut with the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mozart’s beautiful Missa Brevis in D.


Nicolette Nazarowski, mezzo-soprano

Nicolette Nazarowski, mezzo-soprano

Mezzo-Soprano, Nicolette Nazarowski is proud to sing with many churches around the Chicago area. She is a regular cantor and at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, and an alto section leader with First United Methodist Church of Evanston. Nicolette works closely with North Shore Opera Hour, performing operettas and chamber works under the direction of Luis Galvez. Over the summer, Nicolette studied in Italy, working with Orvieto Musica. Nicolette received her Bachelor’s degree in Vocal Performance from North Park University, and a Masters of Music degree in Voice Performance at UMKC Conservatory, where she studied with Vinson Cole.


Christian Ketter, tenor

Christian Ketter, tenor

Tenor Christian Ketter, made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2014, as featured in the Washington Post, in “The Song Continues” with American Mezzo-Soprano Marilyn Horne. The 2013 winner of The American Prize Friedrich Schorr American Prize in Voice, Mr. Ketter has previously appeared as the tenor soloist with the Chicago Bar Symphony Orchestra & Chorus in Bruckner’s Te Deum under Maestro David Katz, making his Symphony Center debut with the orchestra again, in 2015 at Orchestra Hall. Mr. Ketter will be performing Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 as tenor soloist with the Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra this May. Recently, he performed the No. 9 under conductor Jay Friedman with the Symphony of Oak Park & River Forest as tenor soloist, as well as Tristan in their performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde Act II.

A frequent recitalist, Mr. Ketter recently gave a solo-recital on behalf of the Wagner Society of America, as well as a guest-lecture and recital at Northwestern University of Louisiana. As the 2013 American Prize Chicago Oratorio Winner, his past solo performances include: DuBois’ Les sept paroles du Christ; Händel’s Messiah; Saint-Saëns’ Oratorio de Noël. Mr. Ketter was privileged to be musically coached and staged by Carlisle Floyd in a 2011 concert celebrating his operatic works in which he sang Will’s aria from Cold Sassy Tree. Other stage performances include: Northwest Indiana Symphony 2014 Orchestra's Holiday Gala; Che in Evita with the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra; Cavaradossi in scenes from Tosca with the Calumet City Chamber Ensemble; Radamés in scenes from Verdi’s Aida with Music by the Lake; Willy Loman in Rizzer’s adaptation of Death of a Salesman; a televised-concert marking the Chicago-Premiere of Herrmann’s Wuthering Heights as Edgar Linton; Gaylord Ravenal in ShowBoat. At Ravinia in 2010, Mr. Ketter gave a  benefit recital on behalf of the Misericordia Foundation. In addition to teaching voice & piano in the Chicagoland area, as a composer and arranger: he co-wrote a musical stage adaptation of "The Great Gatsby" book, music & lyrics with Paul W. Thompson, and is a featured orchestrator on Canadian-tenor, Riccardo Iannello’s 2015 recording. Mr. Ketter's debut classical recording “Beloved” is available online at iTunes & Amazon. He is also a CALI award-winning dean’s list student at The John Marshall Law School, on Law-Review, and a student-member of the Chicago Bar Association. For more information, go to www.christianketter.com


Stephen Lancaster, baritone

Stephen Lancaster, baritone

Described as “a fine storyteller” (American Record Guide), “varied in tone and alive to feeling” (Fanfare Magazine), baritone Stephen Lancaster engages audiences through diverse repertoire in concert, recital, and opera. Winner and Audience Favorite in the Nico Castel International Master Singer Competition and winner of The American Prize for men in art song and oratorio (2016), he has been featured in venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Chicago Cultural Center, Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall, Centro Cultural de Belém, Petit Palau de la Música Catalana, and Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall.
 
Recent concert credits include the Fauré & Duruflé Requiems at Carnegie Hall with Distinguished Concerts International New York, Carmina Burana with Lisbon Summer Fest, Warren Symphony, and Oakland Symphony Orchestra at the Max M. Fisher Music Center; Rachmaninoff’s The Bells and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast with Holland Symphony; Brahms’ Requiem with Chorosynthesis in Seattle and with the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Chicago, and Duruflé’s Requiem with Macalester College. He has performed multiple roles with Eugene Opera, Apotheosis Opera, Arbor Opera Theater, and Opera Notre Dame, and created the role of Jaques in As You Like It by Roger Steptoe.

A passionate recitalist, Lancaster has performed programs in Paris, Frankfurt, and Gstaad; at Musique dans le Grésivaudan, Festival Musique d’Uzerche, and the Atlantic Music Festival; and for the Brooklyn Art Song Society in New York. He has recorded an album of French art songs with pianist Martin Katz, Le Menu des Mélodies (Centaur Records), and his recital on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series was broadcast live by classical radio station WFMT. Born and raised in Canada, he holds degrees in vocal performance from the University of Notre Dame and the University of Michigan and currently serves as Associate Professor of Practice and head of the graduate voice studio at the University of Notre Dame. www.stephenlancaster.net


John Vishneski, III, clarinet soloist

John Vishneski, III, clarinet soloist

John S. Vishneski III is a Partner at Reed Smith LLP whose practice focuses on insurance coverage litigation. John Graduated from the University of Virginia (College 1985) (Law 1988). He is Principal Clarinet in the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra (CBASO), leader of the CBAs Barristers Big Band and a member of the Fair Use Quintet. John has performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto many times, including with the CBASO and in a private performance for the Governor of Virginia. John loves Mozart clarinet works, and has also performed Mozart's Clarinet Quintet and Kegelstatt Trio.  


Christopher Windle, chorus director candidate

Christopher Windle, chorus director candidate

Christopher Windle is the Concert Choir Conductor and an Instructor with the Department of Music at Benedictine University in Lisle, IL. Additionally, he is an adjunct instructor at Northwestern Universitys Beinen School of Music in Evanston, IL.

Windle serves as the Assistant Choirmaster of the Church of the Atonement in Chicago, IL, where he conducts the Schola, Atonement Choir, and St. Ceclia Choir. Each week, these choirs sing a different choral mass setting, motets, and chant. Additionally, Windle is a Choral Fellow and the Summer Series Director with the Maryland State Boychoir. He has conducted the Tour and Concert Choirs in summer concerts during both national and international tours. He also programs the Summer Series, which includes the Compline Series and Summer Sings. Last summer, he conducted Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem and this summer he will lead the Summer Sing Choir in Mozarts Requiem.

In previous seasons, Windle has conducted and prepared choirs for numerous and diverse organizations. These include Singing City in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Girlchoir, Find Your Instrument! in Philadelphia, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, the Northfield Youth Choirs, Temple University, and Northwestern University's choral and opera departments. Windle served for two years as the Assistant Director of Music Ministry at First Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls, SD. Here, he helped lead a music program of over 200 musicians. He conducted four choirs with singers of ages 10-80, a handbell choir, flute choir, and orchestra. Windle continues to sing professionally in choirs throughout the country.  

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VISIT http://mozartinchicago.bpt.me/ for tickets! 

 

Our annual WINE-TASTING event is February 10th