New Amsterdam Singers Present A CHILD IN WINTER 12/9, 12/11

The New Amsterdam Singers, led by Clara Longstreth, opens its 44th season with a program entitled A Child in Winter, featuring David Lang's 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Little Match Girl Passion, the New York Premiere of Steven Sametz's Niño de Rosas, and works by Abbie Betinis, Morten Lauridsen, Vytautas Miškinis, and J.S. Bach's motet, Jesu, meine Freude. The concerts will take place Friday, December 9 at 8 pm and Sunday, December 11 at 4 pm. at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 122 East 88th Street (at Lexington Avenue).

David Lang's 2007 The Little Match Girl Passion sets Hans Christian Andersen's sad tale of a waif freezing to death on New Year's Eve in the format of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, juxtaposing Andersen's narrative with texts of the crowd and character responses in the Bach. The libretto is by Lang, after texts by Anderson, H.P. Paull (the first translator of the story into English, in 1872), Picander (the librettist of Bach), and the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. In the work, scored for chamber chorus and percussion, Lang hoped to tell a passion story that was universal in the theme of suffering through the Little Match Girl rather than Jesus. The Little Match Girl Passion was co-commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation and the Perth Theater and Concert Hall; it received its world premiere in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in 2007, and won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for music composition. The original version was for soloists; a choral version was added later.

Steven Sametz's 2010 work, Niño de Rosas, from a 17th-century Ecuadorian poem, is part of a trilogy commissioned by the American Choral Directors Association. It describes a young gypsy girl who tells the fortune of the infant Jesus.

Abbie Betinis's work, Dormi Jesu, was inspired by her experience as a chorister singing in European cathedrals with the St. Olaf Choir. This is the fourth consecutive year that New Amsterdam Singers has programmed a work by the Minnesota-based, prize-winning composer.

New Amsterdam Singers
The New Amsterdam Singers was founded in 1968 by Clara Longstreth. In a recent review, The New York Times wrote that "the choir's performances have always been spirited and finely polished," noting that "the group's real charm, though, is its passion for contemporary American music," and that "having built relationships with choral composers around the country, Ms. Longstreth has made a point of building smart thematic programs around their work." The chorus has performed with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein; American Russian Youth Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and at Tanglewood's Ozawa Hall under Leon Botstein; Concordia Orchestra and Anonymous Four in Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light with Marin Alsop at Avery Fisher Hall; and with the Limón Dance Company in Kodály's Missa Brevis. In the summer of 2010 the chorus sang concerts in Cuba, and, in December, at a Holiday Open House at the White House.

For further information call 212-568-5948 or go online at www.nasingers.org.

New Amsterdam Singers
A Child in Winter
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 8 pm
Sunday, December 11, 2011 at 4 pm
Immanuel Lutheran Church, 122 East 88th Street
(at Lexington Avenue)

J. S. Bach Jesu, meine Freude
Abbie Betinis Dormi, Jesu
David Lang The Little Match Girl Passion
Morten Lauridsen O magnum mysterium
Vytautas Miškinis Cantate Domino
Steven Sametz Niño de Rosas (New York City premiere)