New Amsterdam Singers Present SONGS FOR THE CHANGING SEASON, 3/13

The New Amsterdam Singers, led by Music Director Clara Longstreth, will present the world premiere of Dateless Calendar by Paul Alan Levi, commissioned by the chorus to honor Mr. Levi's 70th birthday. The concert will take place on Sunday, March 13 at 4 p.m. at The Church of the Holy Trinity, 316 East 88th Street. The program, titled "Songs for the Changing Seasons," features contemporary works, for chorus with chamber ensemble and will also include Kitty Brazelton's O Joy, a New York premiere, and Morten Lauridsen's Mid-Winter Songs. The women of New Amsterdam Singers will present Many-Colored Brooms by Johannes Somary, while the men will sing Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun by Thomas Beveridge. Robert Mobsby will be the bass soloist.

The composers represented are living Americans, and the texts are by British and American poets. Sally Fisher wrote the haiku-like poems of Dateless Calendar and Robert Graves the complex poems of Mid-Winter Songs. Mr. Beveridge used a text by Walt Whitman and Mr. Somary, poems of Emily Dickinson.

Paul Alan Levi has received commissions from The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the New York Chamber Symphony, Chamber Music Northwest, the New York Choral Society, and the Robert DeCormier Singers as well as two other commissions from New Amsterdam Singers Journeys & Secrets and Acts of Love. His compositions have been performed in Carnegie Hall and other major venues in the United States and Europe, as well as on national television. He recently composed a score for "Years in the Making", a documentary about late-life creativity, which won the first-place feature documentary award at the Sky Fest II Film and Script Festival in Asheville, N.C.

Morten Lauridsen was born in 1943 in Colfax, Washington. His vocal compositions, including seven vocal cycles and a series of sacred a cappella motets, are featured regularly in concerts world-wide. O Magnum Mysterium, Contre Qui, Rose and Dirait-on (from Les Chansons des Roses), and O Nata Lux (from Lux Aeterna) have become especially popular works in the choral repertoire.

Thomas Beveridge is the Artistic Director of New Dominion Chorale in Washington D.C. He has been recognized for his multifaceted abilities as singer, oboist, keyboard player, composer, arranger, teacher and conductor. He is a prolific composer and arranger and more than 500 of his compositions and arrangements have been published. As a professional singer he has appeared in solo recital in New York and Washington, and in three concerts of his own songs at the National Gallery of Art.

Johannes Somary was born in 1935 in Zurich, Switzerland. He founded Amor Artis Chorale in 1961, which he has conducted in many Baroque works and where he continues as its Music Director. Known as an organist, conductor, and composer, Somary has established himself in the front ranks of conductors and as a stimulating musical thinker and teacher. His discography contains more than 50 recordings, including four Stereo Review Record-of-the-Year Awards.

Kitty Brazelton was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1951. She is a vocalist, composer, flutist, and lead singer of the art-rock/alternative rock/avant-garde jazz band Dadadah. She received a doctorate in music from Columbia University and currently teaches composition at Bennington College. Her full-length opera, Fireworks, commissioned by American Opera Projects, concerns an extraterrestrial discovering the 4th of July, and incorporates Caribbean rhythmic motifs, R & B, and classic recitative. O Joy, which New Amsterdam Singers will present, was composed as part of the Sixth Annual Essentially Choral Program.

New Amsterdam Singers
The New Amsterdam Singers was founded in 1968 by Clara Longstreth. A recent 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.

New Amsterdam Singers
"Songs for the Changing Seasons"
The Church of the Holy Trinity, 316 East 88th Street
(between 1st and 2nd Avenues)
Friday, March 11, 2011 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 13, 2011 at 4 p.m.

Thomas Beveridge Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
Kitty Brazelton O Joy (New York premiere)
Morten Lauridsen Mid-Winter Songs
Paul Alan Levi Dateless Calendar
(World premiere performance, commissioned by New Amsterdam Singers)
Johannes Somary Many-Colored Brooms

With instrumental ensemble