Musica Sacra Opens Season with Baroque Gems 10/23

On Saturday, October 23, 2010, at 8:00 PM, Musica Sacra opens its 46th season with a program featuring three great Baroque masters. The concert opens with Vanitas Vanitatum (Vanity of Vanities) by the revered Italian Baroque composer, Giacomo Carissimi. Carissimi's contributions to the early Baroque included development of the recitative and chamber cantata, and introducing the dramatic oratorio, a form that was adopted with great success by composers such as Handel, Bach and Mendelssohn. Vanitas Vanitatum, inspired by the Book of Ecclesiastes, is a philosophical contemplation of human existence and the vanity of things for five voices, chorus and continuo.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier. a pupil of Carissimi, added a French touch to the Italian oratorio genre his teacher introduced. In his oratorio Filius Prodigus, Charpentier employs an opening instrumental prelude, adds instruments to the choral sections and makes use of extensive word painting in the recitatives. Filius Prodigus, a parable on the virtues of forgiveness, tells the story of The Prodigal Son who squanders his riches and returns home to the open arms of his father and jealousy of his brother.

The concert ends with one of the most beloved choral works by the foremost composer of the Baroque era, Johann Sebastian Bach's Jesu, meine Freude (Jesus, My Joy). Bach brought together the prevailing compositional techniques of the 17th and 18th centuries creating a synthesis of aria, harmony and polyphony unmatched by any other. The text of the motet alternates between the Lutheran hymn ‘Jesu, meine Freude' written by Johann Franck and Biblical verse, while the music creates a mirror effect centered around movement six, a five part fugue, with movements one and eleven, two and ten, three and nine, four and eight, and five and seven all containing similar musical material or format.

2010-2011 Musica Sacra Concert Season

Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 8:00 PM
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center
Broadway at 65th Street

GIACOMO CARISSIMI: Vanitas Vanitatum (Vanity of Vanities)
MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER: Filius Prodigus (The Prodigal Son)
JOHANN Sebastian Bach: Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227 (Jesus, My Joy)

Musica Sacra Chorus and Chamber Orchestra
Kent Tritle, Conductor

Kathryn Lewek and Jamet Pittman, Sopranos
Kirsten Sollek, Mezzo-Soprano
Ryland Angel, Countertenor
Joseph Mikolaj and Steven Fox, Tenors
Steven Hrycelak and Damian Savarino, Basses

Tickets: $25 (Rear Balcony) through $110 (Preferred Orchestra)
Order online at www.MusicaSacraNY.com or call 212-330-7684.
Season subscriptions are available at a discount of up to 20%.

Founded in 1964 by conductor Richard Westenburg, Musica Sacra is dedicated to presenting the highest caliber performances of great choral masterworks, as well as educating audiences in the different eras and styles of classical music to deepen the appreciation of the choral arts. In addition to its acknowledged affinity for Baroque music, Musica Sacra performs in all genres, from the earliest of Gregorian chant to commissioned works and premieres by leading contemporary composers such as Benjamin Britten, Dave Brubeck, Alessandro Cadario, Robert Convery, David Diamond, Aram Khatchaturian, and Ned Rorem.

The 2010-2011 Musica Sacra concert season includes the annual performances of Handel's Messiah (December 21 and 22, 2010 at Carnegie Hall); Handel's Israel in Egypt (February 23, 2011 at Carnegie Hall); and a program of five premieres by established and emerging composers (May 13, 2011 at Alice Tully Hall) that will be recorded for commercial release in Fall 2011. Highlights of previous seasons include performances of Mozart's Mass in C Minor, Bach's St. John Passion, Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel and Arvo Pärt's Stabat Mater for WNYC's ‘New Sounds Live' at the World Financial Center; and Edgard Varèse's Etude pour Espace with the International Contemporary Ensemble and So Percussion as part of the 2010 Lincoln Center Festival.

Musica Sacra has recorded on the RCA, BMG, and Deutsche Grammophon labels, including the first all-digital recording of Messiah released in 1982 by RCA/BMG and reissued on "High Performance," BMG's audiophile label.

Kent Tritle is one of America's leading choral conductors. Called "the brightest star in New York's choral music world," he was appointed Music Director of Musica Sacra in February 2008, succeeding founder Richard Westenburg, who had designated Mr. Tritle as his successor. In addition, he is founder and Music Director of Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, the acclaimed concert series at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York; Music Director of the Oratorio Society of New York; Director of Choral Activities at the Manhattan School of Music; and a member of the graduate faculty of The Juilliard School. An acclaimed organ virtuoso, he is the organist of the New York Philharmonic and the American Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Tritle marks his fourth season in 2010-2011 as Music Director of Musica Sacra, the longest continuously performing professional chorus in New York City. Recent concerts by the ensemble, New York's premier professional chorus performing sacred music in concert halls, include Mozart's Mass in C Minor at Carnegie Hall; Bach cantatas at Alice Tully Hall; a program of works by Arvo Pärt and Morton Feldman for a WNYC New Sounds Live concert; and Bach's Mass in B Minor and St. John Passion.

Highlights of Mr. Tritle's season include performances of Handel's Jephtha (St. Ignatius Loyola) and Israel in Egypt (Musica Sacra); Mendelssohn's Elijah (Oratorio Society of New York); premieres of works by Viktor Kalabis and Juraj Filas (St. Ignatius Loyola); performance and recording of new works by Daniel Brewbaker, Christopher Theofanidis, Behzad Ranjbaran, and more (Musica Sacra); Strauss's Deutsche Motette and Beethoven's Christ on the Mount of Olives (St. Ignatius Loyola); Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Manhattan School of Music; and the annual performances of Handel's Messiah with Musica Sacra and with the Oratorio Society of New York.

For more information please visit www.kenttritle.com.

Tenor Joseph Mikolaj recently graduated from the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music with his Masters of Music in Vocal Performance, concentrating in Early Music, Oratorio and Chamber Ensemble, studying with tenor James Taylor. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of St. Thomas (Houston), graduating summa cum laude and studying under Dr. Brady Knapp.

Recent engagements at Yale include soloist in Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium, a concert of Elizabethan lute songs, Bach's B Minor Mass, Beethoven's Mass in C, and Haydn's Paukenmesse, among others. He also recently performed as soloist in Mozart's Requiem with Mount Holyoke College, Handel's Alexander's Feast with the New Haven Chorale, and Honegger's King David with The Farmington Valley Chorale. Other orchestral appearances include Handel's Messiah with the Woodlands Symphony Orchestra, Johann Ernst Eberlin's Requiem and Mass in a minor with the University of St. Thomas, and Benjamin Britten's Abraham and Isaac in concert. In the summer of 2009 he appearred as a guest artist at the Oregon Bach Festival under the baton of Helmuth Rilling.

During the spring of 2010, Mr. Mikolaj won first place in the New York Oratorio Society's Lyndon Woodside Solo Competition, and received a Young Talent award from the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music's Lotte Lenya Competition.

Mr. Mikolaj also appears frequently on stage. He recently played Nanki-poo in The Mikado with the Janiac Opera Company of Brevard Music Center. Other roles include Frederick in Pirates of Penzance, The Defendant in Trial by Jury, Bill in A Hand of Bridge, Goro in Madame Butterfly, Little Bat in Susannah, and Basilio in Le Nozze di Figaro.