MasterVoices Offers 'Songs For A Summer Night' at Waterline Square Park in June

MasterVoices concludes its 2021-22 season celebrating its 80th anniversary on Wednesday, June 8 with Songs for a Summer Night, a free outdoor performance at the new Waterline Square Park on the Upper West Side. The concert features several new arrangements demonstrating how the sounds of summer delight and inspire. Artistic Director Ted Sperling leads the MasterVoices Chorus and the Orchestra of St. Luke's with guests, soprano Shereen Pimentel, who played Maria in the recent Broadway revival of West Side Story, and composer and tenor Tariq Al-Sabir. Drawing from composers from the Renaissance to the present day, the program includes the world premiere of Summers Are Growing Longer, a new work by Mr. Al-Sabir, commissioned by MasterVoices.

Said Mr. Sperling, "It has been thrilling to be with a live audience again this season. What a pleasure it will be to share a beautiful June evening with our community as we close our 80th anniversary season with a program that evokes the sounds, smells and emotions of summer, as imagined by some of our greatest composers, and to hear the contemporary musical ideas of Tariq Al-Sabir inspired by the sounds of summer in New York."

The program opens with Mendelssohn's Scherzo and Song with Choir from his suite of music for "A Midsummer Night's Dream." And what is summer without the song of crickets? The chorus performs the playful Italian frottola El Grillo ("The Cricket"), by Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez. Written very likely for his friend Carlo Grillo, it is an early example of text painting in music, when the music matches the words being sung.

Broadway composers are represented by Stephen Schwartz and Charles Strouse, Frank Loesser and Mr. Sperling's arrangement of Sondheim's Night Music Waltzes from "A Little Night Music." The program also includes three songs by Ricky Ian Gordon: New Moon, set to a poem by Langston Hughes; Joy, written for soprano Harolyn Blackwell; and Summer. Next is Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer 1915, his musical setting of a poem by James Agee of the same title, which served as the preface to Agee's 1948 novel A Death in the Family. This is followed by two songs from Les nuits d'été, a song cycle by Berlioz set to six poems by Théophile Gautier. The evening ends with the world premiere of the new commissioned piece by Mr. Al-Sabir.

With Songs for a Summer Night, MasterVoices is a proud participant in the #FestivalofNY - a city-wide celebration of all the things that make us New Yorkers.

Songs for a Summer Night

Wednesday, June 8, 2022, 7 pm at Waterline Square Park (60th Street and Freedom Place South)

(Rain date: June 9, 7 pm, same location)

MasterVoices

Ted Sperling, Artistic Director and Conductor

Orchestra of St. Luke's

Shereen Pimentel, soprano

Tariq Al-Sabir, tenor

Program to include:

Mendelssohn: Scherzo from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in E major, Op. 21

Mendelssohn: Song with Choir (from "A Midsummer Night's Dream")

des Prez: El Grillo

Schwartz/Strouse: Blame it on the Summer Night (from "Rags")

Loesser: Song of a Summer Night (from "The Most Happy Fella")

Ricky Ian Gordon: Three songs, New Moon, Summer, and Joy

Barber: Knoxville: Summer 1915

Berlioz: Excerpts from Les nuits d'été (Summer Nights), Villanelle and Le spectre de la rose

Sondheim: Night Music Waltz Suite, arr. Ted Sperling

Tariq Al-Sabir: Summers Are Growing Longer (World Premiere Commission)

Tickets: The concert is free, no reservation needed. A limited number of first-come, first-served seats will be available and concertgoers are encouraged to bring blankets or lawn-chairs.