Cantata Singers Sets 2014-15 Season

Cantata Singers has announced its 51st concert season.

"Our 2014-2015 season celebrates the continually rewarding exploration of the vast repertoire that comprises the choral canon," said Music Director David Hoose. "Next year's programming features both music that will be quite familiar to Boston audiences, as well as that which is relatively unknown. I hope the tapestry that emerges will inspire surprising revelations about all of the music we will perform next season."

Cantata Singers' 51st season will commence on Saturday, November 8th at 8:00pm at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall with a program featuring the World Premiere of Elena Ruehr's Eve paired with two cantatas by J.S. Bach - his cantata BWV 77, "Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben" (You shall love God, your Lord) and cantata BWV 195(a), "Dem Gerechten muß das Licht" (The light shall ever rise again for the righteous). The season opener builds on Cantata Singers' tradition of presenting new works for choir and ensemble alongside Classical and Baroque repertoire.

Cantata Singers has commissioned acclaimed Boston-based composer Elena Ruehr to create Eve, a new work for choir and orchestra that uses text from Genesis 3, the Fall. Eve will be Cantata Singers' 14th commission and the first from a female composer.

In January of 2015, Cantata Singers will give its first performance-in the original Church Slavonic-of Sergei Rachmaninoff's beloved and evocative All-Night Vigil, or commonly known as the Vespers. The concert will be presented twice, first at St. Paul's Church in Cambridge, and then at Houghton Memorial Chapel in partnership with the Concert Series at Wellesley College. Cantata Singers' performance of the All-Night Vigil will follow acclaimed recent performances by the ensemble of music by Rachmaninoff's contemporaries, including Stravinsky's Les Noces and Schnittke's Concerto for Choir.

On Friday, March 20, 2015, at 8pm, Cantata Singers returns to New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall to present a program featuring Beethoven's Elegischer Gesang (Elegiac Song), Haydn's Symphony No. 86 in D major, and Mozart's stunning Mass in C minor. Said Music Director David Hoose, "Music by these three composers can often distract from each other when they are on the same program. In this case, the pieces actually reinforce each other and point to allegiances among these works."

The season will close with a special concert at Jordan Hall the afternoon of Sunday, March 10th, 2015, Mother's Day weekend. Bach's glorious Magnificat in D will be paired with Baroque Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka's profoundly spiritual Te Deum, ZVW 146. "Both pieces are brilliant in their color and energy," said Hoose. "It's hard to find a piece as vital as Bach's Magnificat, yet Zelenka's Te Deum may be right there."

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