'Subway Series', Stravinsky & Harrison Festivals and More Set for Trinity's 2016-17 Season

This season, Trinity Church Wall Street's music program continues to minister to New Yorkers through an unparalleled array of free, ambitious musical offerings. As peerless interpreters of early and new music, Trinity's roster of resident ensembles includes the Grammy-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Trinity Baroque Orchestra, resident contemporary music orchestra NOVUS NY, the semi-professional chorus Downtown Voices, the Trinity Youth Chorus, the Trinity Youth Orchestra, and the Family Choir. As always, the season also includes many performances by and collaborations with preeminent guest artists. The entire music program is under the leadership of Director of Music Julian Wachner.

Advancing its commitment to support music broadly and deeply in New York City, Trinity offers a new "Subway Series" this year, during which talented NYC subway buskers, hand-picked by Wachner, perform the fall Concerts at One series. Other highlights include the annual "Time's Arrow" Festival, celebrating the 250th anniversary of St. Paul's Chapel and featuring a host of world premieres, and "The Handel Project," comprising Wednesday performances of all of his oratorios. A California tour of Handel's Messiah in December culminates with performances at Trinity Church and Alice Tully Hall.

After fall "Bach at One" performances which revisit favorites from Trinity's multi-season survey of all the Baroque master's sacred vocal works, in the spring New York Baroque Incorporated joins forces with Trinity for a new undertaking to present Bach's complete organ works, in programs that will also feature his choral music and sacred and secular works by his contemporaries and progenitors. The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Trinity Baroque Orchestra also present Bach's great Mass in B minor in November, at Trinity and on tour to the Montreal Bach Festival. Other Early Music this season includes performances of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 (including one on the composer's 450th birthday), and isorhythmic motets by Dufay along with Machaut's history-changing Messe de Nostre Dame (the first known example of a complete cyclic mass) at Princeton University.

Contemporary and new music includes a second Stravinsky Festival featuring the Russian composer's complete works drawing on the Western world's philosophical foundations in Greco-Roman mythology and drama; a festival marking Lou Harrison's centennial; and an appearance at New York's Prototype Festival for the New York premiere of Missy Mazzoli's new opera, Breaking the Waves. In the spring Trinity also presents a water-themed Concerts at One "Sunken Cathedral" series, featuring a world premiere by Jessica Meyer, to raise awareness for the United Nations World Water Day and the Trinity Institute National Theological Conference, focusing on making safe and clean drinking water more accessible. Anchoring the entire season are the inspiring liturgical settings offered weekly to the Trinity congregation. As the New York Times observes, "Trinity's music is indispensable and unmissable," representing "the top of musical life in New York."

"Subway Series," "Time's Arrow" festival, The Handel Project

As part of its effort to support music in New York City at all levels, represent under-served artists, and give a voice to the voiceless, this year Trinity recruits talented buskers from the city subways, hand-picked by Julian Wachner, for a "Subway Series" during Concerts at One. This series, in October and November, with three acts per concert, will be devoted to the best of these tenacious musicians, proving that both literally and figuratively, all subway lines lead to Trinity. Each concert featuring subway musicians will be hosted by a member of NOVUS NY, and each act will be professionally filmed for a YouTube video series. As always, each Third Thursday of Concerts at One will feature NOVUS NY. On November 17 the NOVUS NY "Third Thursday" concert features percussionist Andy Akiho, who used to play steel pan in the subways and is now in high demand as a new music composer. He will appear in his own set like the other subway artists, before performances of his works by NOVUS NY. The October "Third Thursday" concert will feature Aaron Copland's Quiet City and Steve Reich's City Life, the latter of which incorporates actual subway sounds, among other city audio samples (Oct 20).

Trinity's annual series of concerts in January has long been a highlight of the musical season. Formerly the "Twelfth Night Festival" and now "Time's Arrow," this festival alludes to Trinity's signature juxtaposition of early and modern music. This season's Time's Arrow program (Jan 2-12) spans three centuries, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the opening of St. Paul's Chapel. Completed on October 30, 1766, St. Paul's Chapel is the oldest surviving church building in Manhattan. Works will range from those foundational to American music to world premieres and commissions from leading American composers.

>From George Crumb's American Songbook, based on traditional American hymns, spirituals and popular tunes, to the world premiere of Zachary Wadsworth's St. Paul's-inspired commission for Downtown Voices, Spire and Shadow, and concert readings of Laura Schwendinger's new opera Artemisia and Wachner's new opera Rev. 23, the Time's Arrow festival spans the entire period from the building of St. Paul's to the present. Other world premieres will include Paola Prestini's contribution to Trinity's long-term commissioning project, "Mass Reimaginings." Designed to enrich both the concert and liturgical choral repertoire with five 21st-century takes on the traditional Mass, Mass Reimaginings was launched during last year's Time's Arrow festival with the premiere of a mass by Daniel Felsenfeld. The remaining commissions will be premiered in the fall of 2017, culminating in a presentation of Bernstein's Mass for the composer's centennial.

After performing Bach's entire monumental output of sacred vocal music over the past five years, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, along with Trinity Baroque Orchestra, turn to performing all the oratorios of Bach's great contemporary George Frideric Handel, the recording of whose Israel in Egypt earned them a 2013 Grammy nomination. "The Handel Project" is a new multi-season initiative and will take place each Wednesday, beginning March 8. The oratorios will be performed one act at a time, beginning with Jephtha, Belshazzar and Solomon. Trinity's new semi-professional chorus Downtown Voices also performs Israel in Egypt for their spring concert this season, led by conductor Stephen Sands. During the holiday season they take "New York's finest annual presentation of Handel's Messiah" (Time Out New York) on tour, first to the State Theater in New Brunswick, New Jersey and then to three California cities, before returning home for performances at Trinity Church (Dec 15 & 18) and in Alice Tully Hall (Dec 19).

Early Music: Bach, Monteverdi, Machaut and Dufay

Last season Trinity completed its long-term presentation of Bach's complete sacred choral music, much of it heard during the Wednesday "Bach at One" concerts. The six motets with which the cycle began (BWV 225-30) will be featured in Bach at One performances throughout the fall, along with selected favorite cantatas. On Sunday, November 20, Trinity presents Bach's superlative Mass in B minor, taking the same piece to Montreal the following week for a performance at the Montreal Bach Festival, of which Wachner was the founding music director and which is in its tenth year.

In anticipation of the 2017 installation of the rescued and renovated Noack Pipe organ (opus 111/1989) at St. Paul's Chapel, the Bach at One series turns its attention to the complete organ works of J. S. Bach - folding these great masterworks into programs featuring Bach's choral music and sacred and secular works by his contemporaries and progenitors. New York Baroque Incorporated joins forces with Trinity in the spring with the first installment of this new undertaking, which will present the manualiter chorale preludes from the Clavier-Übung III, Bach's encyclopedic volume dedicated to Luther's catechetical hymns. Each program is spiritually conceived to investigate the sentiment of the day's featured chorale prelude.

The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra will also give a special performance on May 9, Monteverdi's 450th birthday, of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, a monumental 90-minute masterpiece involving an up to 10-part chorus, seven soloists, and orchestra. The performance will be repeated the following day in Philadelphia.

Julian Wachner leads members of The Choir of Trinity Wall Street in two concerts at Princeton University this fall, featuring music of Machaut and Dufay (Sep 30, Oct 1). Last season's Compline by Candlelight services included the complete catalogue of Dufay's isorhythmic motets, five of which will be performed at Princeton. Venturing into new music territory, the Princeton program also includes evening, morning, day by David Lang, whose composition the national anthems, co-commissioned by Trinity, had its New York premiere during last season's "Time's Arrow" festival.

"Sunken Cathedral" Concerts at One, Stravinsky Festival

As a ministry of the church, part of the mission of the music program at Trinity is to give voice to the voiceless, which in the case of the spring Concerts at One series focusing on water and eco-awareness means those who don't have access to safe and clean drinking water. These "Sunken Cathedral" concerts will both raise awareness for the United Nations World Water Day, which falls on March 22, and amplify the subject of the 2017 Trinity Institute National Theological Conference (March 23), which focuses next year on the need for water justice initiatives in areas of access, droughts, pollution, rising tides, and flooding. Featured in the concerts will be multiple versions and interpretations of Debussy's classic and prescient prelude La Cathédrale engloutie.

The "Sunken Cathedral" concerts also intersect with Trinity's observance of next year's centennial of the birth of composer Lou Harrison, celebrated in collaboration with Rutgers University with a weekend of events in April examining Harrison's music and influence. The March 16 Concert at One features the Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean by Harrison student John Luther Adams, named after a John Cage poem about Harrison and his music which ends "listening to it we become ocean." As Adams says of the work: "If you stop and think about the oceanic dimension of music, there's this implication of immersion. We came from the ocean, and we're going back to the ocean, right? We're made up mostly of water, and life on earth first emerged from the seas. And with the melting of the polar ice caps and the rising sea levels, we may become ocean sooner than we imagine." The final "Sunken Cathedral" concert will feature a water-themed world premiere by Jessica Meyer, and mark the beginning of the Stravinsky Festival.

NOVUS NY continues to present challenging new repertoire in the critically lauded "Third Thursday" series this season, culminating in May with a three-concert Stravinsky Festival (May 18-20). The festival comprises the entire catalogue of Stravinsky's works based upon Roman-Greco mythology, complementing Trinity's 2013 presentation of all of his sacred choral works. The "Third Thursday" concert that launches the festival will feature the ballet Apollo musagète; the next day the orchestra performs Orpheus, Agon and the Rite of Spring. For the third and final concert on May 20, Wachner leads NOVUS NY, the Washington Chorus, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and the Trinity Youth Chorus in the two large-scale choral works Persephone and Oedipus Rex. The latter work will also be previewed on May 14 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, with Wachner leading NOVUS NY, The Washington Chorus, Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, Children's Chorus of Washington, and Washington National Cathedral Boy and Girl Choristers.

New Music and Premieres

The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and NOVUS NY perform in composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek's new opera, Breaking the Waves, at New York's Prototype Festival for three performances in January, marking the opera's New York premiere after the enormous critical success of the world premiere a few days ago at Opera Philadelphia. At the Prototype Festival earlier this year Wachner led NOVUS NY in the fully-staged world premiere production of Angel's Bone by Vavrek and composer Du Yun.

Similarly, after collaborating last season with Paola Prestini and David Lang on a live scoring of the Academy Award-winning film The Great Beauty at new Brooklyn arts hub National Sawdust, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and NOVUS NY, along with Norwegian string orchestra 1B1, return to the same venue next January to participate in VisionIntoArt's annual FERUS festival, a showcase for innovative interdisciplinary new works in progress.

Downtown Voices performs a concert this fall featuring Wachner's composition An October Garden, which explores what has been described as "the inherent joy and drama of the life-cycle." An October Garden had its New York premiere last April with Wachner leading the Washington Master Chorale Chamber Choir and members of NOVUS NY in Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall. Conductor Stephen Sands will lead this performance, which also includes Morten Lauridsen's Mid-Winter Songs with poetry by Robert Graves.

Guest performers, youth choirs and orchestra

Guest performers at Trinity this season include the Helsinki Chamber Choir on October 6 and special guests to be presented at Trinity and St. Paul's throughout the "Time's Arrow" festival. New York Baroque Inc. led by artistic director Wen Yang will also be featured along with The Choir of Trinity Wall Street in Bach at One concerts throughout the spring. Guests for the "Sunken Cathedral" Concerts at One will include Useful Chamber Orchestra, woodwind quintet City of Tomorrow, jazz pianist and composer Chris Pattishall, and the Canadian Brass.

The talented choristers comprising Trinity's Youth Chorus program range in age from 4-18 and hail from all five boroughs of New York City. Under the direction of Trinity's Associate Director of Music Melissa Attebury, the Trinity Youth Chorus, in addition to members of Trinity's outreach choirs, perform a holiday concert at Trinity Church on December 16, and will give a concert in St. Paul's Chapel in February. In partnership with the InterSchool Orchestras of New York and the Florentine Music School, Trinity also hosts a youth orchestra for beginner-to-intermediate instrumentalists, with players from Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and New Jersey. Youth orchestra concerts are on November 10 and December 5.

Each Sunday, The Choirs of Trinity Wall Street lead a wonderfully varied repertoire at services that speak directly to the diversity of New York City. On Sunday evenings at 8pm in St. Paul's Chapel, The Choir offers an intimate Compline by Candlelight featuring chant, improvisation, and newly composed sacred works.

One of the oldest and most vibrant Episcopal parishes, Trinity is located in the heart of Manhattan's Financial District, where it has created a dynamic home for music. Serving as director of Trinity's Music Program - as well as principal conductor of The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, the period-instrument Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and contemporary-music ensemble-in-residence NOVUS NY - Julian Wachner also oversees all liturgical, professional and community music programming at Trinity Church and St. Paul's Chapel. Music at Trinity ranges from large-scale oratorios to chamber music, and from intimate a cappella singing to jazz improvisation. Many concerts at Trinity are professionally filmed and webcast live at www.trinitywallstreet.org/videos. The Rev. Dr. William Lupfer is Rector of Trinity Wall Street and the Rev. Phillip Jackson is Vicar of Trinity Church Wall Street.

Photo Credit: Peter Adamik