New Amsterdam Singers Present New York Premieres 6/3

The New Amsterdam Singers, led by Music Director Clara Longstreth, will perform New York premieres by Ronald Perera and Kirke Mechem on a program of choral music entitled Morning, Evening, Earth and Sky Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 8 p.m. at the Church of the Holy Trinity, 316 East 88th Street. Ronald Perera's Earthsongs, a cycle of six poems by e. e. cummings, was written in 1983 for women's voices, and was recently rearranged by the composer for mixed voices. The New Amsterdam Singers recorded the original version in 1993 and will present the New York City premiere of the new version on this program. Kirke Mechem's Suite for Chorus, written in 2004 for a cappella chorus, will also receive its New York premiere.

The concert will open with songs on the theme of morning and evening. Robert Dennis's Morning Group I (2006) utilizes texts by Jonathan Swift, Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, and William Blake. Robert Baksa's Morning Greeting uses a 17th century poem by Thomas Heywood. The evening theme is found in Carlos Chávez's Three Nocturnes, on poetry of Keats, Shelley, and Byron; Josef Rheinberger's Abendlied (Evening Songs); and a group of songs by Brahms.

Ronald Perera is perhaps best known for his setting of texts by authors as diverse as Dickinson, Joyce, Grass, Cummings, Melville, Updike, and Sappho. His Why I Wake Early was given its New York premiere by the New Amsterdam Singers (NAS) in 2008, and The Golden Door was premiered by the New Amsterdam Singers in 1999 and subsequently recorded by NAS on the CD, Island of Hope. Kirke Mechem's first opera Tartuffe, has had more than 350 performances in six countries since its premiere in 1980. His most ambitious work, John Brown, based on the life of the controversial abolitionist, had its premiere at the Lyric Opera Kansas City in 2008. Mechem, who has lived much of his life in San Francisco, has composed more than 250 works in almost every form. Robert Dennis, a New York City composer, has had many choral commissions and performances as well as music for orchestra performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland and Louisville Orchestras. He has also composed extensively for theatre, film and dance, including three scores for Pilobolus, performed on the PBS series, Dance in America.

New Amsterdam Singers
The New Amsterdam Singers was founded in 1968 by Clara Longstreth. A March 2004 issue of The New Yorker called Ms. Longstreth "one of the more imaginative choral programmers around" and the New Amsterdam Singers "a superb amateur group." 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.

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