CONTACTS:

Janelle McCoy, Executive Director
Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia
215.735.9922

Edward McNally, Above The Fold PR
404.281.6419

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia Awarded $123,000 In Grants
to Fund BIG SING // Julia Wolfe in May, 2014

 $77,000 Coming from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Pew Philadelphia Music Project

(PHILADELPHIA) Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia announces three major grant awards totaling $123,000 which will fund its largest ever interactive choral project BIG SING // Julia Wolfe. The largest grant, $77,000, is being awarded from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Pew Philadelphia Music Project. $30,000 will be awarded by The Presser Foundation and Mendelssohn Club will receive $16,000 in commissioning support from Meet The Composer through their program COMMISSIONING MUSIC/USA. The total represents the largest sum ever raised by Mendelssohn Club for a single project or commission in the 139-year history of the organization.

BIG SING//Julia Wolfe is a two-year project including a Wolfe commission, ancillary events, audience engagement, and performances. The 45-minute, multi-movement commission will draw its inspiration from folk music and legends related to the life and times of Pennsylvania mine workers. Wolfe’s work will explore the folk idiom, both the layering of stories that create legend and their associated folk tunes, reconstructed into a new, elevated form. Ms. Wolfe will begin researching and writing her commission in 2013 and the majority of community outreach, marketing, and preparation will be in 2014.

The world premiere will take place in spring 2014 in the historic Rotunda at the University of Pennsylvania, a raw space with unique acoustical and physical qualities that complement the folk stories that will comprise the project’s libretto. Wolfe plans to use the Rotunda’s intrinsic acoustical and structural qualities and the sonic power and tapestry of a symphonic-size chorus as core artistic qualities.

Wolfe has a deep interest in folk legends; thus ancillary events will focus on personal narratives. The songs and stories gathered for BIG SING //Julia Wolfe over the next 18 months will form the foundation for a new classical form performed by a symphonic-size chorus of more than 130 voices along with Bang On a Can All-Stars in a chamber/folk ensemble using classical and folk instruments. Research will include folk stories, text from traditional mining songs, personal stories by chorus members and the community at large, as stories extend into local working communities. Other creative partners involved in the research phase include Hal Real’s LiveConnections/World Cafe Live and First Person Arts.

“BIG SING / Julia Wolfe is among some of our most groundbreaking projects,” said to Mendelssohn Club artistic director Alan Harler. “It certainly matches such groundbreaking productions as battle hymns and our work with composer Pauline Oliveros from several years ago.“ Harler added, “We’ll be working not only with Julia Wolfe, an acclaimed finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, but also with Bang On A Can All-Stars, one of the foremost musical ensembles in contemporary music.”

BIG SING // Julia Wolfe was commissioned through Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, which is made possible by generous support from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund. Additional support was made possible through the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia Alan Harler New Ventures Fund; The Presser Foundation; The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Pew Philadelphia Music Project.

Mendelssohn Club Executive Director Janelle McCoy was elated to share this latest news about such large grant awards for the organization’s most ambitious choral project. “This is wonderful news on every level. Two years in advance, the bulk of funding has been raised, thanks to the generous support of these funders. Now we can focus on expanding the project and possibly recording it.”

This major funding news for BIG SING //Julia Wolfe follows an announcement earlier this month that Mendelssohn Club was receiving a PNC Arts Alive grant of $25,000 to support the chorus’ upcoming BIG SING//Schubert, scheduled for July, 2012.

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

Established in 2005, the center houses seven funding initiatives of the Pew Charitable Trusts dedicated to supporting area artists and arts and heritage organizations. The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage has awarded $858,430 through the Pew Philadelphia Music Project to nine music organizations in the Philadelphia area, including the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia. Since its creation in 1989, PMP has funded 324 project grants totaling more than $15.7 million.

“These projects will engage audiences with music in inventive ways, expanding the conventions of musical production and presentation,” said PMP interim director Bill Adair. “Our 2012 grantees reflect the dynamism and diversity of Philadelphia’s music scene, providing opportunities to experience music from many different genres and parts of the world.”

Meet The Composer

Meet The Composer is a national organization founded in 1974 that has revolutionized the environment for composers in this country. Its mission is to increase opportunities for composers of every style of music by fostering the creation, performance, dissemination, and appreciation of their work. In so doing, Meet The Composer has radically expanded the repertoire of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, creating a legacy for the music of our time—over 1,500 new works have been added since MTC’s first commissioning program was launched in 1988.

“For nearly forty years Meet The Composer has brought electrifying new music and its creators to people across the nation,” says Ed Harsh, Meet The Composer’s President. “The remarkable cast of new works and musicians we have supported through this year’s grantmaking programs will thrill audiences with their variety and energy.”

Meet The Composer’s core programs include Commissioning Music/USA; Cary New Music Performance Fund; Van Lier Fellowships; Music Alive (in partnership with the League of American Orchestras); and MetLife Creative Connections. The impact of these programs is felt in all 50 states and involves approximately 300 composers annually, representing the full spectrum of contemporary American culture and genres such as classical, opera, jazz, folk, ethnic, electronic, and more. Meet The Composer is currently engaged in a number of special projects designed to further its vision—that composers should become an integral part of the cultural life and creative output of their communities, and that their music find broad, new audiences and benefit communities across the country.

The Presser Foundation

The Presser Foundation operates under the will and Deeds of Trust created by its founder, Theodore Presser. It is one of the few foundations in the United States dedicated solely to the support of music and music education.

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia

One of America’s oldest choruses, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia performs choral music to create a shared transcendent experience among its singers and audiences. Through the excellence of its adventurous performances, Mendelssohn Club advances the development of choral music as an art form. For information about Mendelssohn Club’s concerts and programs, or to order tickets for the 2011-2012 season, visit www.mcchorus.org. You can also find Mendelssohn Club on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mcchorus.

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Background: BIG SING / Julia Wolfe

As Mendelssohn Club has often mixed genres in past collaborations (i.e. dance, film), it will look to Wolfe’s commission to blur musical idiom and engage personal stories into her commission. Wolfe’s work will explore layering of legends and associated melodies, which will inspire a new classical fusion. The commission will support Mendelssohn Club’s continuing exploration of staging, textures of sound, site-specific work and how all elements can build a new hybrid of choral art.

Mendelssohn Club will collaborate with local Philadelphia organizations, such as LiveConnections (World Café Live) and First Person Arts, to explore personal stories that connect traditions. Other audience engagement opportunities will include a folk sing-in in the BIG SING format during the concert. Prior to the performances, the audience will be given context, chorus member blogs and musical material via social media portals.

Wolfe’s approach with her commission Steel Hammer, driven by Appalachian legends and music, culled over 200 John Henry ballads. As a Pennsylvania native, Wolfe’s interest lies in the Wilkes-Barre mining conflicts. Wolfe will explore variations of community struggles, fragmenting and weaving contradictory accounts to tell the “story” of the story, and the diverse paths these stories traveled. Research will include folk stories, text from traditional mining songs, personal stories by chorus members and the community at large, as stories extend into local working communities.

As in Steel Hammer, Wolfe demonstrates her genius for using acoustic instruments (folk and classical) to create layers of sound. In this work, she shows the canvas that three voices accompanied by Bang On A Can All-Stars can produce. A commission employing similar tactics married with the sheer power and possibility of a large symphonic chorus is truly ground breaking; it defies genre and engages rock, pop, classical, and folk audiences. Bang On A Can All-Stars (Musical America’s 2005 Ensemble of the Year) will play classical and folk instruments, specifically blurring lines between classical and other genres.

Through the collaborations inherent in this project, there are opportunities to reach beyond traditional audiences to a more diverse constituency. Mendelssohn Club will explore the folk “sing in” experience at the beginning of the performance, teaching the audience the stories and/or folk tunes that are the basis for Wolfe’s commission. Some of the ancillary events, such as the First Person Arts “story slam” are especially unique and completely new. First Person Arts transforms real life into memoir art to foster appreciation for a unique and shared experience. Mendelssohn Club will use First Person Arts’ story slam format to encourage others to share recollections related to labor. “Slams” will provide contextual material for the work, but also opportunities to connect to Mendelssohn Club.

To enhance educational outreach, LiveConnections will use its innovative music education programs, also held at World Café Live, to connect cultures and spark a viceral interest in music. Prior to attending an educational LiveConnections “Bridge Session,” teaching artists will work with teachers to create curricula specific to each project– such as personal narrative development. Students will have the opportunity for their stories to be a part of the performance, whether by informing the libretto or constructing a similar small work that is included in the concert.

# # #

(Philadelphia) Sunday, April 29 will mark the world premiere of Tse Go La, the new cantata by Philadelphia-based composer Andrea Clearfield commissioned by Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Girlchoir, a member choir of Commonwealth Youthchoirs.

The 30-minute multi-movement work for Mendelssohn Club and the Pennsylvania Girlchoir will be performed by almost 200 singers along with winds, strings, percussion and electronics and will feature Tibetan melodies from Lo Monthang, Nepal. Tse Go La is being presented together with the Gabriel Fauré Requiem. Both works will feature The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Girlchoir. The concert location is the historic Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. A panel discussion about the Tibetan cultural influences in the Tse Go La cantata will take place at FYE music store at 100 St. Broad St. at 1:30 pm on April 29 prior to the concert.

Listen to composer Andrea Clearfield talk about her experiences in Nepal and how she incorporated Tibetan chants and instruments into her new composition, Tse Go La.

Inspired by the traditions of Tibetan chant and dance, this premiere performance of Tse Go La represents the first-ever collaboration between Mendelssohn Club and community organizations such as The Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia and the Tibetan Association of Philadelphia. At the outset of the program, Losang Rinpoche and Tibetan monks living in Philadelphia will perform traditional folk dance movements and will lead the audience in learning a specific Tibetan mantra.

“We are genuinely excited to be performing the world premiere of this particular work by Andrea Clearfield on the same program with the Fauré Requiem,” says Mendelssohn Club Artistic Director Alan Harler. “Both works explore the cycle of life in ways that are gently beautiful and also very powerful. The music and text of Tse Go La and the Requiem are rooted in completely different ritual traditions, and each composer weaves their own subtle yet very distinctive sonic tapestry.” Harler added, “The mastery of choral/instrumental color in each work is extremely moving. These are works that evoke emotions of transcendence that are timeless and universal.”

Tse Go La (At the threshold of this life) is a 30-minute cantata for double chorus, chamber orchestra and electronics. The cantata’s six movements explore themes of rites of passage and the cycle of life from birth to death and rebirth. It incorporates Tibetan melodies that Andrea Clearfield has been documenting in the remote, restricted Himalayan region of Lo Monthang, Nepal. With encouragement and support from the Lo Monthang community, Clearfield and anthropologist Katey Blumenthal together recorded over 100 folk songs, previously undocumented. Much of this music has not been heard outside of this remote region of Nepal.

As a musician whose choral works have been performed all over the world, Dr. Clearfield is excited to imagine this particular work sung by almost 200 adult and youth voices. “There are very powerful and achingly beautiful sounds that only a very large chorus the size of Mendelssohn Club can create,” says Clearfield. “I tried to really stretch myself artistically to take advantage of the amazing range and subtlety of these two choruses singing together along with a special mix of Tibetan instruments and recorded sounds. At certain times, the Girlchoir will seem to float above the sound of the adult singers. I will be as eager as anyone in the audience to experience this music sung be these voices for the first time.”

Clearfield added, “Commissions like this one inspire me to explore places, sounds, and spaces that I might never have imagined, musical and otherwise. Composing music can transport one to the far reaches of one’s imagination, but I had no way of knowing how much my life would change as a result of a collaborative commission in 2008 that lead me to the top of the world to gather research, and again in 2010 to record the ‘Loba’ melodies of Lo Monthang”.

Andrea Clearfield’s commission was made possible through: the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia Alan Harler New Ventures Fund; a gift of the Pennsylvania Girlchoir class of 2010, and from Emilie Carr, in memory of Mildred Owen; and is supported in part by grants from the American Composers Forum, Philadelphia Chapter, the Archie W. and Grace Berry Foundation, and the George G. and Elizabeth G. Smith Foundation, Inc. The participation of the Tibetan Association of Philadelphia and the Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia, and the panel discussion were supported [in part] through a Community Partners grant awarded to Andrea Clearfield by the American Composers Forum, Philadelphia Chapter.

Details:
RITUALS: East/West
4 pm, Sunday, April 29
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse
1904 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Tse Go La by Andrea Clearfield and Requiem by Gabriel Fauré
Performed with The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Girlchoir.
Tickets: http://www.mcchorus.org/wp/archives/217

One of America’s oldest choruses, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia performs choral music to create a shared transcendent experience among its singers and audiences. Through the excellence of its adventurous performances, Mendelssohn Club advances the development of choral music as an art form.

Founded in the fall of 2004, Pennsylvania Girlchoir has grown to over 160 girls from five counties in southeastern Pennsylvania, as well as from New Jersey and Delaware. As a member of the Commonwealth Youthchoir organization, Pennsylvania Girlchoir shares its mission: to offer excellent choral music education and performance opportunities to singers from diverse economic and racial-ethnic backgrounds, while nurturing leadership skills, building character and encouraging self-discipline.

METAMORPHOSIS, the new CD featuring Mendelssohn Club, will be available for sale at all upcoming concerts. The CD features original works by contemporary American composers, Andrea Clearfield, Jennifer Higdon and James Primosch, all based in Philadelphia. All three works were commissioned by Mendelssohn Club and premiered in concert over the past five years. The CD will be available online in March.

For information about Mendelssohn Club’s concerts, programs, or CDs, or to order tickets for the 2012 season, visit www.mcchorus.org. You can also find Mendelssohn Club on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mcchorus and on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MCChorus

# # #

Andrea Clearfield (b. 1960)

Philadelphia native Andrea Clearfield is an award-winning American composer of music for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, dance, and multimedia collaborations and has composed ten cantatas for voices and orchestra. Her work has earned critical acclaim from music critics throughout the U.S. Clearfield has been praised for her “graceful tracery and lively, rhythmically vital writing.” (The New York Times), her “compositional wizardry” and “mastery with large choral and instrumental forces” (Philadelphia Inquirer), and her “fluid and glistening orchestration” (Los Angeles Times). Clearfield’s works are performed widely in the U.S. and abroad. Her commissions include works for The Philadelphia Orchestra, Carol Wincenc, The Debussy Trio, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Turtle Creek Chorale, Orchestra 2001, Network for New Music and Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia.

In 2010, Andrea Clearfield was the recipient of a Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome from the American Composers Forum. Recently, she has been awarded fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, as well as a Fundacion Valparaiso residency in Spain and a Lucas Artist Residency at Montalvo, California. Last October, Clearfield was invited to be a guest composer at the XI International Conservatory Week Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. She has also received fellowships at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others.

Andrea Clearfield has received grants and awards from numerous organizations including ASCAP, the NEA, American Music Center, American Composers Forum, International Alliance for Women in Music, Independence Foundation and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Since 1986, Clearfield has served on the composition faculty at The University of the Arts.

Area audiences also know Andrea Clearfield as the host and founder of the Philadelphia Salon concert series. Now celebrating its 25th year, the series features contemporary, classical, jazz, electronic, dance, and world music. In 2008, her Salon series won the “Best of Philadelphia” award from Philadelphia magazine.

Tse Go La (At the threshold of this life)
Tse Go La is a cantata for double chorus, electronics and chamber orchestra. It incorporates Tibetan melodies that Clearfield has been documenting in the remote, restricted Himalayan region of Lo Monthang, Nepal. The contata’s six movements explore themes of rites of passage and the cycle of life from birth to death and rebirth. With the blessings of the Nepalese people she visited, Clearfield recorded over 100 folk songs and sacred ritual chants, and studied the culture’s ritualistic dance, chant and melody and their uses in Buddhist tradition. Most of the music Clearfield recorded has never been heard outside of this remote region of Nepal.

The 30-minute multi-movement work for Mendelssohn Club and the Pennsylvania Girlchoir will be performed by almost 200 singers along with winds, strings, percussion and electronics and will employ Tibetan melodies from Lo Monthang, Nepal. Two of the texts were written by distinguished anthropologist and Dartmouth faculty Dr. Sienna Craig, who trekked through Nepal with Clearfield in 2008. The other texts are from traditional songs in Loba, a Tibetan dialect.

After Clearfield had visited Nepal twice, she composed Lung-Ta, a commission for the Network for New Music. Mendelssohn Club and the Pennsylvania Girlchoir approached Clearfield in 2010 to create a new work based on the some of the same research.

Listen to composer Andrea Clearfield talk about her experiences in Nepal and how she incorporated Tibetan chants and instruments into her new composition, Tse Go La.

 Gabriel Fauré (1845 – 1924)
As one of the foremost composers of his generation, Gabriel Fauré influenced many 20th-century composers. His harmonic and melodic innovations affected the teaching of harmony for later generations. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, Faure’s last works, written when increasing deafness had struck him, are often elusive and withdrawn in character, or are turbulent and passionate. His best known include his Pavane and Requiem, his nocturnes for piano, and the songs Après un rêve and Clair de lune.

His music linked the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. In a centenary tribute, the musicologist Leslie Orrey wrote in The Musical Times: “‘More profound than Saint-Saëns, more varied than Lalo, more spontaneous than d’Indy, more classic than Debussy, Gabriel Fauré is the master par excellence of French music, the perfect mirror of our musical genius.”

The Requiem, Op. 48,  This choral–orchestral setting of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead is the best known of his large works. The most famous movement is the soprano aria Pie Jesu. Camille Saint-Saëns said of it, “Just as Mozart’s is the only Ave verum Corpus, this is the only Pie Jesu.” The Requiem was not composed to the memory of a specific person but, in Fauré’s words, “for the pleasure of it.” It has been described as “a lullaby of death” because of its predominantly gentle tone.

In 1887–88, Fauré composed the first version of the work, which he called “un petit Requiem” with five movements and it was first performed January 16, 1888 under the composer’s direction in La Madeleine in Paris. In 1889, Fauré added the “Hostias” portion of the Offertory and in 1890 he expanded the Offertory and added the 1877 “Libera Me”. This second version, known today as the chamber orchestra version, was premièred January 21, 1893, again at the Madeleine with Fauré conducting. In 1899–1900, the score was reworked for full orchestra.

Fauré is quoted as saying, “Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.” The composer added, “It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.”

The Requiem consists of seven movements, lasting approximately thirty-five minutes:

1. Introït et Kyrie (D minor)
2. Offertoire (B minor)
3. Sanctus (E flat major)
4. Pie Jesu (B flat major)
5. Agnus Dei et Lux Aeterna (F major)
6. Libera me (D minor)
7. In Paradisum (D major)

All the text is in Latin, except for the Kyrie, which is Koine Greek.

# # #

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia
PO Box 59522
Philadelphia, PA 19102
215.735.9922
www.mcchorus.org

(Philadelphia) The public is invited to attend a free panel discussion on the creative evolution of Tse Go La, the new cantata for 200 voices, instruments and electronics that will have its world premiere on Sunday, April 29 at 4 pm at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Rittenhouse Square. The panel discussion will take place at 1:30 pm prior to the concert later that afternoon. There is no charge to attend the panel at FYE record store, located at 100 S. Broad St., four blocks east of the concert venue. The panel will be moderated by composer and music critic Mr. Kile Smith. Smith can be heard on WRTI-FM radio as the host of Now is the Time and the co-host of Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection. For further details, visit www.mcchorus.org

The participation of the Tibetan Association of Philadelphia and the Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia, and the panel discussion were supported [in part] through a Community Partners grant awarded to Andrea Clearfield by the American Composers Forum, Philadelphia Chapter.

WHAT: “Tse Go La (At the Threshold of This Life): a musical exploration of Tibetan folk melodies and Buddhist ideas about live and death.”

WHEN: 1:30 – 3 pm, April 29, 2012*

*The world premiere of Tse Go La will be performed as part of the RITUALS: East/West concert at 4 pm, Sunday, April 29 at The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse

WHERE: FYE Music
100 S Broad St., Philadelphia, PA 19110
(215) 568-8001.

WHO: Panel Participants

• Andrea Clearfield, composer
• Dr. Sienna Craig, anthropology faculty at Dartmouth College,specialist in the Tibetan medicine of Upper Mustang, Nepal
• Alan Harler, Artistic Director, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia
• Tsering Jurme, President, Philadelphia Tibetan Association
• Barbara Montgomery, vocalist, former president, Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center (Philadelphia)
• Venerable Losang Sampten, Spiritual Director, Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center (Philadelphia), former aide to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

Moderator

Mr. Kile Smith, composer, music critic, WRTI-FM radio host
Kile hosts Now is the Time and co-hosts Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection on Philadelphia’s WRTI-FM, and is a regular contributor to the Broad Street Review. For 18 years he was Curator of the Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music.

DETAILS: www.mcchorus.org

Andrea Clearfield’s commission was made possible through: the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia Alan Harler New Ventures Fund; a gift of the Pennsylvania Girlchoir class of 2010, and from Emilie Carr, in memory of Mildred Owen; and is supported in part by grants from the American Composers Forum, Philadelphia Chapter, the Archie W. and Grace Berry Foundation, and the George G. and Elizabeth G. Smith Foundation, Inc.

RITUALS: East/West
4 pm, Sunday, April 29
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse
1904 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Tse Go La by Andrea Clearfield and Requiem by Gabriel Fauré
Performed with The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Girlchoir.
Tickets: http://www.mcchorus.org/wp/archives/217

One of America’s oldest choruses, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia performs choral music to create a shared transcendent experience among its singers and audiences. Through the excellence of its adventurous performances, Mendelssohn Club advances the development of choral music as an art form.

Founded in the fall of 2004, Pennsylvania Girlchoir has grown to over 160 girls from five counties in southeastern Pennsylvania, as well as from New Jersey and Delaware. As a member of the Commonwealth Youthchoir organization, Pennsylvania Girlchoir shares its mission: to offer excellent choral music education and performance opportunities to singers from diverse economic and racial-ethnic backgrounds, while nurturing leadership skills, building character and encouraging self-discipline.

METAMORPHOSIS, the new CD featuring Mendelssohn Club, will be available for sale at all upcoming concerts. The CD features original works by contemporary American composers, Andrea Clearfield, Jennifer Higdon and James Primosch, all based in Philadelphia. All three works were commissioned by Mendelssohn Club and premiered in concert over the past five years. The CD will be available online in March.

For information about Mendelssohn Club’s concerts, programs, or CDs, or to order tickets for the 2012 season, visit www.mcchorus.org. You can also find Mendelssohn Club on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mcchorus and on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MCChorus

$25,000 Award Will Support the Summer 2012 BIG SING//Schubert

PHILADELPHIA – Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia was among twenty-five arts organizations that were awarded grants of a combined $1 million by the PNC Foundation through PNC Arts Alive. The PNC Arts Alive grant of $25,000 to Mendelssohn Club supports the chorus’ upcoming BIG SING//Schubert, an ongoing community series where the chorus and the audience sit together while the chorus performs with the audience. This year’s

BIG SING performance will feature culturally diverse guest choruses who will teach the Mendelssohn Club and their audiences some of their repertoire. Audience members describe BIG SING as “cinematic surround sound” through which they can feel the music’s vibrations, hear the music around and sing with the chorus. The 2012 BIG SING performance is scheduled for July 25 at the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia.

Speaking on behalf of Mendelssohn Club, Executive Director Janelle McCoy praised the support from PNC. “This generous gift will help underwrite BIG SING, our innovative series crafted for audiences to experience the music from the inside out. We remove the traditional barrier between performers and listeners and have the chorus and audience sit together while we both perform a choral masterwork together. BIG SING was our most popular engagement initiative last year. This year, Mendelssohn Club is joining forces with a Korean and an African Episcopal chorus as a way to help build a cultural bridge through music.”

Thanks to the support of PNC Arts Alive grant, Mendelssohn Club will continue the BIG SING series this summer and add a cross-cultural component to deepen engagement and community diversity. This year, Mendelssohn Club will sing Schubert’s Mass In G with Philadelphia Master Chorale, made up of Korean American singers and the St. Thomas Chancel Choir, one of the city’s preeminent African Episcopal choirs. Each group will rehearse with Mendelssohn Club and will also perform with the audience. In turn, the guest choruses will teach Mendelssohn Club some of their repertoire and perform it with the community.

“Art should be accessible to everyone,” said Bill Mills, PNC regional president for Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey. “We know that a vibrant arts scene improves our region by creating jobs, boosting tourism and generating millions in revenue. But accessibility to the arts can also make a profound difference in the lives of individuals—especially underserved youth and their families. The arts develop creativity, innovation, and collaboration—skills for the workforce of tomorrow.”

According to past grantees PNC Arts Alive has definitely increased access to the arts. Last year, PNC studied the projects in the first year of the Arts Alive portfolio and found that 73% of the projects successfully lowered barriers to participation in the arts among individuals with limited access.

PNC Arts Alive Background

The first $1 million in PNC Arts Alive grants was awarded to 23 groups in July 2009. The second $1 million went to 27 groups in May 2010 and the third $1 million to 26 groups in May 2011. This year 21 arts groups are receiving PNC funding, along with four service partners. (A full description of the grantees is below). For more information visit www.pncartsalive.com.

PNC Arts Alive is a five-year, $5 million initiative from the PNC Foundation, which receives its principal funding from The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE: PNC). The goal of PNC Arts Alive is to help area residents gain access to the arts and to help arts organizations expand and engage audiences.

The fourth year of PNC Arts Alive grants represent a wide range of disciplines, audiences and participatory experiences from arts groups large and small, city and suburban. New to the Arts Alive portfolio are pop-up theater and music performances, novel audience engagement ideas, and information regarding free arts and cultural happenings in the region. Family arts programming and neighborhood-based initiatives are a common thread again in this year’s portfolio. To date, PNC Arts Alive has awarded more than 100 grants totaling $4 million to more than 50 arts organizations in the Greater Philadelphia/Southern New Jersey region.

The PNC Foundation, which receives its principal funding from The PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE: PNC), actively supports organizations that provide services for the benefit of communities in which it has a significant presence. The foundation focuses its philanthropic mission on early childhood education and community and economic development, which includes the arts and culture. Through Grow Up Great, its signature cause that began in 2004, PNC has created a $350 million, multi-year initiative to help prepare children from birth to age 5 for success in school and life.

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia

One of America’s oldest choruses, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia performs choral music to create a shared transcendent experience among its singers and audiences. Through the excellence of its adventurous performances, Mendelssohn Club advances the development of choral music as an art form. For information about Mendelssohn Club’s concerts and programs, or to order tickets for the 2011-2012 season, visit www.mcchorus.org. You can also find Mendelssohn Club on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mcchorus.

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia announces $15,000 in project support from George G. and Elizabeth G. Smith Foundation to help produce a major performance and public outreach program in the spring of 2012. “RITUALS: East/West” is a collaboration with composer Andrea Clearfield, The Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia and The Tibetan Association of Philadelphia. It will be performed at The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse.

In the weeks leading up to the April 2012 concert, both choruses will be immersed outreach sessions that explore Tibetan language, folk music and dance, all of which directly inspired this Clearfield commission. This new work was co-commissioned by Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Girlchoir, a member choir of Commonwealth Youthchoirs.  The concert will also include the Fauré Requiem with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia performing for both works.

Speaking on behalf of Mendelssohn Club, Executive Director Janelle McCoy announced the support from The Smith Foundation. “This generous gift will help underwrite a significant portion of the orchestra costs for this ambitious and multi-faceted program.” McCoy added, “Both works employ a richness of sound and color from the orchestra and the Clearfield composition includes a variety of instruments indigenous to Tibet.”

The commissioned portion of this project stems from composer Andrea Clearfield’s research in Tibet where she studied the culture’s ritualistic dance, chant and melody and their uses in Buddhist tradition. Clearfield believes “Composing music can transport one to the far reaches of one’s imagination. Commissions like this one inspire me to explore places, sounds, and spaces that I might never have imagined, musical and otherwise.”

One of America’s oldest choruses, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia performs choral music to create a shared transcendent experience among its singers and audiences. Through the excellence of its adventurous performances, Mendelssohn Club advances the development of choral music as an art form. For information about Mendelssohn Club’s concerts and programs, or to order tickets for the 2011-2012 season, visit www.mcchorus.org. You can also find Mendelssohn Club on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mcchorus.

Rossen Milanov left his post as associate conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The personable conductor was always game for Fab Phils seasonal concerts – He was maestro Dracula for Halloween, he donned Santa hats for Christmas and liked to engage with audience talks. He showed the most muscle directing the orchestra’s summer series at the Mann Center in Philly and Vale Valley Music Festival in Colorado, often specializing in Russian and Eastern European repertoire. Last spring, his swan song was sharing the Verizon Hall stage with the Pennsylvania Ballet in production new production of Stravinsky’s Pulchinella, choreographed by Jorma Elo.

Milanov is now musical director of Symphony in C (formerly the Haddonfield Symphony), one of the few professional training orchestras in the United States. Milanov teamed up winningly with soloists from the Academy of Vocal Arts and the mighty Mendelssohn Club for “Unfinished Masterpieces”, pairing Schubert and Mozart works, both works ripe for interpretive muscle.

First stop Gordon Theater at Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts, then to the larger Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square, which is rather perfect for the setting of Schubert’s 8th Symphony and Mozart’s Requiem. Based on this program alone, it is clear that Milanov has command and synergy with this youthful orchestra, showing in ways that may have been underappreciated by Philadelphia Orchestra audiences during his tenure there.

The Schubert’s two movements do make you feel unsatisfied because they are so involving as played by Symphony in C that you want more. From the initial approach of the strings in the Allegro there is such clarity and tempered drive. The woodwinds and brass are particularly vibrant. Most impressive are the striations of the low strings and dramatic orchestral thrust of Schubert. Among the standout lead players- Alexander Bedenko’s sublime clarinet line, as well as by 1st violin Stefani Collins.

The Philadelphia Orchestra had deserved triumphal evening last year conducting the Mozart Requiem with incoming star conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. But Milanov delivers a more cohesive, indeed, less theatrical, performance. And he conjured it in shimmering details, with chorale, soloists and orchestra with equalized Mozartian power. And with a scaled down orchestra facing off the 100 plus Mendelssohns, it was moving from every angle.

Alexandra Maximova, Margaret Mezzacappa, Zach Borichevsky and Scott Conner have all emerged as AVA stars in the last two years and their work here is just as solid. The silkiness of the solo and chorale overlays are superb. This venue can work against soloists, it has warm acoustics, but can have an echo effect, not an issue with these singers, who were vocally in the moment throughout.

Mendelssohn Club director Alan Harler just keeps adding artistic muscle to this chorus with distinction. There were so many moments that the chorale just went right through you, not just with sonic power of the “Offertorium” and “Sanctus”, but the sustained precision of the baroque Latin liturgical. The pulse of the Symphony in C players, razor sharp in the arrests and in the defining modulations of the choral pickups – underlining Milanov’s clarity through the accents and tempo, build the power from within.

Lewis Whittington

Original post at http://concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8169.

Felyx M (Chamber Singers of the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia), Network for New Music, and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society (Independence Seaport Museum, Feb. 26) This joint concert will be devoted to pieces by Philadelphia composers Cynthia Folio, Jan Krzywicki, Donald St. Pierre, Jennifer Higdon, and James Primosch, and a new work by Thomas Whitman. (215-569-8080, www.pcmsconcerts.org)

Complete Listing at http://articles.philly.com/2012-01-29/news/30676126_1_classical-music-pierrot-lunaire-new-music/4

 

Written by
DAVE ALLEN

For the Courier-Post
1/29/12

An artist’s final works often generate extra scrutiny: What message did he try to leave before departing this life?

These creations are typically left incomplete as well, leaving scholars to try to piece together what the artist might have intended.

Two of these mysterious, closely examined works highlight Symphony in C’s upcoming performances, which also reflect a new step in the Camden-based professional training orchestra’s efforts to become a more complete musical organization.

For many seasons, dating back to its days as the Haddonfield Symphony, the Symphony’s concerts have been one-and-done affairs: a week of a rehearsal followed by a single concert.

Thanks to a first-ever collaboration with the Center City-based Mendelssohn Club chorus, the Symphony will be able to reprise this Saturday’s program, featuring Mozart’s Requiem and Schubert’s Eighth Symphony, as part of the chorus’ season in Philadelphia.

The chorus gets an orchestra to accompany it, the Symphony’s musicians gain the experience of backing up a chorus and both organizations get to introduce themselves to new audiences.

“It’s the best of both worlds,” says Symphony President Krishna Thiagarajan.

This venture also moves the Symphony closer to an expanded season, more like those of larger professional orchestras, with programs repeated multiple times.

“The Symphony is looking to have all of its regular subscription concerts performed more than once,” Thiagarajan says. “To play it only once can seem like a waste.”

With these concerts, the young Symphony has found a partner with deep musical roots. The Mendelssohn Club traces its history back to an eight-voice men’s chorus established in 1874.

The current incarnation has approximately 150 singers, with a professional “core” of about a dozen paid singers. The rest of the group, like Mark Pinzur of Cherry Hill, is made of talented amateurs.

One of the longest-tenured singers, Pinzur has sung in the group for 41 years, so he can recall the chorus performing few concerts in South Jersey during the 1980s, including Handel’s “Messiah” at Cherry Hill East High School and a handful of others in Haddonfield and Moorestown.

“We sang in places where you’d think classical music lovers would be concentrated,” he says. But chorus members are mainly based in Philadelphia and its western suburbs, and with the difficulty of transporting so many singers east of the Delaware, the South Jersey performances were phased out.

Under current musical director Alan Harler, the chorus has remained a source of large-scale choral masterworks but also has been an active commissioner of new works.

“It forces you to continue to grow continuously as a musician,” Pinzur says.

Harler also has prepared choruses for Symphony in C music director Milanov many times, mainly for Christmastime performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Many veteran singers have done quite a few performances of Mozart’s Requiem, which is, most famously, the piece Mozart was working on at the time of his death and was sensationalized in the movie “Amadeus.”

Pinzur estimates this will be his fifth or sixth time singing it.

Don Gilchrist of Glassboro, another of the approximately 15 singers from South Jersey in the chorus, has five performances under his belt.

“I could sing it forever and never get tired of it,” he says.

Harler has even more experience, having conducted it 10 times and prepared a chorus for other conductors an additional four or five times.

“One never gets tired of preparing masterworks. They energize and nourish you,” Harler says, comparing the score to a good book that you can read again and again.

Mozart’s music is foundational for musicians of all kinds: vocalists, pianists and string and woodwind players. “It’s something you always go back to and measure how much better you are,” Milanov says.

At the time of his death in 1791, he had finished only about a third of the piece, including some sections that were only sketched or outlined.

Mozart’s assistant Franz Sussmayr completed the work so that it could be performed, but scholars have spent centuries correcting his errors and restoring a more Mozart-like style to the sections that were filled in after his death.

Though Harler and Milanov agree that the version completed by Franz Beyer in the 1970s comes closest, the piece retains its mystery.

“We’re never going to know what Mozart intended for the Requiem,” Milanov says.

http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012301290005

For tickets, http://www.mcchorus.org/wp/archives/225.

Did you know that Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia provides Braille programs free of charge for the visually impaired?  When purchasing your ticket, simply request one in the notes field of your ticket purchase.

A few years after joining Mendelssohn Club, I started thinking about how great it would be if we could provide our program booklets in Braille for the blind and visually impaired audience members who were coming to our concerts, and, with MC’ s blessing, I began producing a Braille edition of our printed programs.

Braille readers do not get just a redacted subset of what the sighted audience members get; on the contrary they receive everything in the print booklet–except the paid advertising, which is highly graphical. For example, the Braille edition of our recent “Northern Lights & Mystical Masterpieces” program booklet ran to 105 pages.

The steps to transform the printed text into Braille for embossing are all done on a PC, using software called the Duxbury Braille Translator, or DBT, a program which can translate print text into the Braille codes for many countries–in this case, into the English Braille code for the United States.

About two weeks before each concert, I contact Michael Moore, program notes editor for Mendelssohn Club.  He begins to send sections of the program booklet as they are finalized, each in its own Microsoft Word document file, along with a list of their order in the program booklet. Most sections arrive about a week before the performance. This starts a period of sustained work for me to get the Braille program prepared and embossed on time.

For each program section in turn, I first load its Microsoft Word document file into DBT, where it appears in the Duxbury print editor, along with HTML-like style tags which DBT supplies as its best guess at how it thinks the final Braille document should be formatted on the page.

Next, using my screen reading software, the computer reads the entire file aloud, and I correct any style tags or add “codes” to improve the formatting, and also add “codes” to tell DBT when situations arise requiring different Braille translation rules–for example, for any text in a foreign language (like the name of a work, or the text for a piece), or for e-mail and Web addresses. Some print formatting, like the name of a work on the left and the composer’s name on the right, doesn’t work at all in Braille, as there is a character limit per line, and must be completely rearranged. All of this takes considerable time, but ensures a professional-looking product.

After all program sections have been reviewed and edited, I assemble a final DBT “print file” from all of the sections which Michael supplied, along with sections from the previous concert’s program which have not changed (e.g., Artistic Director Alan Harler’s bio, or Mendelssohn Club’s history).

John Luttenberger, Braille Program Editor

Pressing CONTROL-T translates the file into Braille, and shows the Braille and its formatting on the screen. I now do a brief spot check of key locations in the “Braille file” to see that my formatting changes did what I expected and fix any that didn’t.

The final additions to the “Braille file” include the generation of a Table of Contents and of page cross-references for the text of each work (to aid in navigating through this large book), a required page reminding the reader of symbols in the book which are recent additions to the Braille code, and any needed Transcriber’s Note(s).

It’s now the day before the concert, and the final step is to use DBT to copy the final “Braille file” to a Braille embosser, making the number of copies which have been requested.

To fulfill the need while avoiding waste, Mendelssohn Club asks Braille reading concertgoers to request their Braille programs in advance–which they usually do when purchasing their tickets through our new ticketing system. We then produce the number of Braille programs requested, plus one or two extra for walk-ins.

Producing these Braille programs for our concerts is a labor of love for me, and I’m extremely proud that Mendelssohn Club is one of the very few but increasing number of performing arts organizations that are enhancing the experience of blind and visually-impaired audience members in this way.

 By John Luttenberger, Mendelssohn Club Tenor 1 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACTS:

Janelle McCoy, Executive Director
Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia
215.735.9922
Edward McNally, Above The Fold PR
404.281.6419

January 4, 2012

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and Symphony In C
Performing Unfinished Masterpieces on Sunday, February 12

Mozart Requiem and Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished”
to be Performed at The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse

(Philadelphia) February offers music lovers a rare opportunity to experience two celebrated masterpieces performed on the same program, performed by two of the region’s outstanding performing arts organizations. On Sunday, February 12, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia joins forces with Camden’s acclaimed Symphony in C in a joint program led by Maestro Rossen Milanov.  The program includes Mozart’s Requiem and Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished.” The location is the historic Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square.

The Requiem will feature four vocalists from the Philadelphia-based Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA); Alexandra Makisimova, soprano, Margaret Mezzacappa, mezzo soprano, Zach Borichevsky, tenor and Scott Conner, bass. AVA is considered among the world’s premier institutions for training young artists as international opera soloists.

Unfinished Masterpieces
The Mozart Requiem, Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished”
7:30 pm, Sunday, February 12, 2012
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse
1904 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103
Tickets available at www.mcchorus.org

The Church of Holy Trinity is an appropriate setting to experience Mozart’s famous “funeral mass.” The Requiem paints vivid scenes from the journey of the human soul to the eternal light. The sections of the Requiem moves from the last sigh of the dying in Introitus to the anxiety of burning in the flames in Confutatis, from the helpless attempts to rise from the ashes in Lacrimosa and on to the final farewell sighs of a released soul in Lux Aeterna.

“The Mozart Requiem is one of the great choral works in the classic repertoire,” remarked Mendelssohn Club Artistic Director Alan Harler. “With over 150 voices, Mendelssohn Club has the scale and quality to deliver all the artistic riches of this sublime Requiem at every level. As a chorus, we’re genuinely excited to be performing on the same stage with Maestro Milanov and Symphony in
C. I’ve no doubt that the audience at Holy Trinity is in for a very moving musical evening.”

Symphony in C Music Director Rossen Milanov was also delighted about the chance to perform the Requiem with one of America’s most accomplished choruses. “I am looking forward to the collaboration with the enthusiastic and superb singers of  Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia in one of the most iconic pieces in the repertoire-Mozart’s Requiem. It is exciting that the paths of our organizations are crossing, allowing us to foster a meaningful relationship in the interest of our musical community.”

Krishna Thiagarajan, the President of Symphony in C, sees the concert as a milestone for both organizations. “I am extremely happy that Symphony in C and Mendelssohn Club are finally crossing the Delaware and sharing a stage together this season. This joint production of the Mozart Requiem and the Schubert Unfinished Symphony highlights the strengths of all involved.” Thiagarajan added, “By including soloists from the Academy of Vocal Arts, this project represents a unique collaboration of three highly respected arts organizations working together to bring music to the communities of Camden and Philadelphia.”

Background on the “Unfinished Masterpieces” Program

Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor (K. 626) is one of the most enigmatic pieces of music ever composed. There are several myths and controversies surrounding it, especially around how much of the piece was composed by Mozart in the weeks and days before his death in 1791 just weeks before his 36th birthday. The Requiem as we know it was completed the next year by Mozart’s assistant, the composer Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who later delivered the work to Count von Walsegg in 1793. The Count had anonymously commissioned the piece for a requiem Mass to commemorate the anniversary of his wife’s death. In the popular play and film Amadeus, the mysterious masked messenger with the commission is actually the court composer Antonio Salieri who intends to claim authorship for himself. For over two centuries, the Requiem has been performed at funeral and memorial services for major historical figures including Franz Joseph Haydn, Frederick Chopin and John F. Kennedy, among others.

Franz Schubert’s 23-minute masterwork, the Symphony No. 8 in B minor, is commonly known as the “Unfinished Symphony” and is considered one of the pivotal works at the dawn of the Romantic era of symphonic music. Schubert composed the first two movements of the symphony in 1822 at age 25. He would go on to compose two additional symphonic works, but never completed a third movement to this symphony.

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One of America’s oldest choruses, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia performs choral music to create a shared transcendent experience among its singers and audiences. Through the excellence of its adventurous performances, Mendelssohn Club advances the development of choral music as an art form.

Symphony in C is the only professional training orchestra in the Mid-Atlantic that provides musical performance training and career development services for musicians pursuing a career as an orchestral musician. The Symphony’s presence in the City of Camden affirms its commitment to participate in the cultural and economic redevelopment of Camden through the numerous
performances and educational outreach programs it continues to provide throughout the city.

METAMORPHOSIS, the new CD featuring Mendelssohn Club, will be available for sale at all upcoming concerts. The CD features original works by contemporary American composers, Andrea Clearfield, Jennifer Higdon and James Primosch, all based in Philadelphia. All three works were commissioned by Mendelssohn Club and premiered in concert over the past five years. The CD will be available online in March.

For information about Mendelssohn Club’s concerts, programs, or CDs, or to order tickets for the  201 1-2012 season, visit www.mcchorus.org. You can also find Mendelssohn Club on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/mcchorus and on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MCChorus

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Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia Winter/Spring 2012 Season

Unfinished Masterpieces
7:30 pm, Sunday, February 12, 2012
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse
1904 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Unfinished Masterpieces – The Mozart Requiem and Schubert Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished” A rare opportunity to hear two celebrated masterpieces performed on the same program. Mendelssohn Club joins forces with Camden’s acclaimed Symphony in C in a joint program led by Maestro Rossen Milanov.

Philadelphia Voices: FELYX_M
7:30 pm, Sunday, February 26, 2012
Independence Seaport Museum
211 S. Christopher Columbus Blvd., Philadelphia, PA 19106

Philadelphia Voices: FELYX_M – Cynthia Folio’s Music Box, Jan Krzywicki’s Lute Music and a world premiere of a Thomas Whitman Commission. Featuring Mendelssohn Club Chamber Singers with Network for New Music and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Part of the Concerts for Community Series. Tickets available through the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Tickets available through www.pcmsconcerts.org

RITUALS: East/West
4 pm, Sunday, April 29, 2012
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse
1904 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

RITUALS: East/West – The world premiere of a new commission by Philadelphia-based composer Andrea Clearfield inspired by the traditions of Tibetan chant and dance. This program is a unique collaboration with The Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia. Presented together with Fauré Requiem. Also featuring The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Girlchoir.

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Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia
PO Box 59522
Philadelphia, PA 19102
www.mcchorus.org
215.735.9922

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