Hartt & New Haven Chorale Present GRANT US PEACE 4/30, 5/2

The Hartt Symphony Orchestra, Hartt Choruses, and New Haven Chorale join together to present GRANT US PEACE. Dramatic readings will link musical metaphors for life's potential, the tragedy of war, and the universal longing for peace. Two concerts will take place. The first concert is Thursday April 30, 2009, at 7.30 PM at the Belding Theater, The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, Hartford. For tickets, call 860.987.5900. The second concert is on Saturday, May 2, 2009, 7.30 PM, in Woolsey Hall, New Haven. For tickets to the New Haven concert, please call 203.776.SONG (7664), or visit Books and Company in Hamden, Foundry Music in New Haven, or R J Julia in Madison.

Dr. Edward Bolkovac - Director of Hartt's Vocal Studies Division, Choral Department Chair, and Primrose Fuller Professor of Choral Music - guest conducts this dynamic and moving evening of word and song. A prelude on life's joys by Hartt Alumnus and Chorale Composer-in-Residence Colin Britt will open the evening. Selections from Holst's The Planets will evoke the fullness of life and the horror of war. Karol Szymanowski's poignant Stabat Mater will represent war's cost through a mother's mourning. Finally, Ralph Vaughan Williams' powerful Dona Nobis Pacem, a setting of Walt Whitman's sweeping anti-war poetry, will culminate this pilgrimage. Discover hope and joy through this moving presentation!

About Dr. Edward Bolkovac: Bolkovac took up the position of Primrose Fuller Professor of Choral Music at The Hartt School in fall 1999 and leadership of its Vocal Studies Division in 2001. Formerly he was senior lecturer in music and director of choral activities at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He became known throughout Australia for his performances of Baroque oratorios, artistic leadership of the Brisbane Early Music Festival, and his many international workshops. His performances in Australia received consistently favorable reviews in the local and national press. Prior to his years in Australia he was artistic director of the California Bach Society, one of the San Francisco area's premiere performance organizations. He also was director of the internationally recognized Kodály Music Education Program at Holy Names College in Oakland, California, where he directed the college choral ensembles and the chamber orchestra. While at Holy Names College, Bolkovac traveled extensively in the U.S. and abroad as a guest conductor and teacher of choral conducting and musicianship.

Since his arrival at The Hartt School, the choral department has been revitalized, giving a wide array of choral performances, including major works such Argento's I Love and I Hate, Te Deum and Benvenuto Cellini Overture by Berlioz, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, Britten's Flower Songs, Brahms' Schicksalslied and Nanie, Copland's Appalachian Spring and Tenderland (Rivera concert version), Durufle's Requiem, Haydn's Creation, Verdi's Requiem, Mozart's Requiem and Coronation Mass, and A Sea Symphony by Vaughan Williams. He has led choral concert tours of Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Hungary. He has traveled extensively to Australia, England, New Zealand, Taiwan and the Philippines to conduct and teach. Dr. Bolkovac also is artistic director of the New Haven Chorale. He studied conducting in Hungary and completed his doctorate at Stanford University.

The Hartt School is the comprehensive performing arts conservatory of the University of Hartford that offers innovative degree programs in music, dance and theatre. With more than 400 concerts, recitals, plays, master classes, dance performances and musical theatre productions a year, performance is central to Hartt's curriculum. For more information on The Hartt School, visit www.hartford.edu/hartt.

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