New Amsterdam Singers Present WITH A LILY IN YOUR HAND, 5/26

The New Amsterdam Singers, led by Music Director Clara Longstreth, will present a program of American works from 1978 to 2009 written in the Romantic style, and entitled With a Lily in Your Hand-the title of a recent piece by Eric Whitacre, which the chorus will perform. Works by Dominick Argento, Morten Lauridsen, and Fenno Heath will also be featured along with a group of inventive arrangements of folk melodies by composers Chen Yi, Abbie Betinis, Mark Kilstofte, and others. The concert will take place Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 8:00 pm at The Church of the Holy Trinity, 316 East 88th Street, between First and Second Avenues.

The newest piece on the program is Mark Kilstofte's To Music (2009) on a text by Rainer Maria Rilke, a complex a cappella work for eight-part chorus receiving its New York Premiere in this concert. Also receiving its New York Premiere is Kilstofte's Missa L'Homme on the Range. This clever work combines the famous L'Homme Armé tune from the Renaissance with a cantus firmus based on the American folk song, Home on the Range. Despite the punning title, the piece is a seriously composed short mass in authentic Renaissance style.

Dominick Argento has set a poem by the 19th-century British poet Matthew Arnold which he titled Dover Beach Revisited to distinguish this newer (2005) choral work from the poem's earlier setting by Samuel Barber for solo voice. Other text sources included in the program are the familiar poem, Fern Hill, by Dylan Thomas, and an Italian Renaissance poem. Abbie Betinis based her elaborate folk arrangement, Long Time Trav'ling on two popular hymns from the Early American shape-note singing tradition. Chinese-American composer Chen Yi works with an American folk tune, American Mack Wilberg uses a Scottish tune, and Derek Healey a Canadian folk tune.

This concert is included in the Sing New York! Festival (www.SingNewYork.org), a project of the New York Choral Consortium.

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. Last summer 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.