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The Dessoff Choirs’ 2011–2012 Season
For the most up-to-date information on Refracted Bach, please visit our new site here.
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Mark your calendar as Dessoff turns 87 with a year of choral music as varied as the seasons.
Dessoff’s Midwinter Festival
Refracted Bach
This season, The Dessoff Choirs inaugurates its Midwinter Festival, a series of concerts and events that frame choral masterworks in a larger cultural and historical context.
Tu 1/31/2012 • WHY BACH MATTERS Lecture by George B. Stauffer
Fr 2/3 • STILE ANTICO Dessoff Choirs @ Church of St. Paul the Apostle
Tu 2/7 • Robin Holloway’s GILDED GOLDBERGS @ Weill Recital Hall
Sa 2/11 SING-IN: Cantatas Reflected in the B Minor Mass @ Imm. Lutheran
Sa, 3/3 • B MINOR MASS Dessoff & Arcadia Players @ St. Mary the Virgin
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May: Lux Æterna—Music for Choir and Organ
The concert season wraps up at The Church of the Epiphany on May 12 with music for choir and organ. On the program, Benjamin Britten’s festival cantata Rejoice in the Lamb, anthems by Purcell and Howells, and more.
A pairing of great subtlety, richness, and power, this combination of Dessoff voices and the “king of instruments” is sure to surprise and delight.
November: On Tour with Ray Davies
In November, Dessoff backed Ray Davies in a four-city East Coast tour featuring choral versions of The Kinks’ greatest hits. David Temple directed the choir’s performances in Montclair, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.New Year’s Eve Concert for Peace
A Child of Our Time
On December 31, Dessoff joined George Mathew and the Ubuntu-Shruti Orchestra at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, performing Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time in the annual New Year’s Eve Concert for Peace that Leonard Bernstein founded over a quarter century ago.
More information here.
Dessoff Midwinter Festival: Refracted Bach
For the most up-to-date information on Refracted Bach, please visit our new site here.
Click for tickets and discount ticket packages
January-March 2012
Johann Sebastian Bach is the great prism of European music history. A keen student of musical traditions and styles, Bach studied all the major trends in western music that preceded him. He synthesized various aspects of those genres, forging his own distinct musical language from the raw material of a tradition that he venerated. Even if we are not familiar with the models he studied, we encounter through Bach the many facets of the European Baroque: the sober counterpoint of the North Germans, the florid ornamentation of the French, the brilliant virtuosity and melodic invention of the Italians. But going further back, we also encounter in Bach’s music the stolid chorales of Martin Luther’s Reformation, the strict polyphony of the Italian Renaissance and even the ethereal beauty of Roman plainchant—music from the dawn of the common era. Johann Sebastian Bach was the keeper of the flame, a natural encyclopedist whose ability to synthesize all forms of western music ensured that his legacy would be forever entwined with his heritage.
In the same way that all earlier musical styles were refracted by Bach’s compositional prism—reinterpreted, renewed and reinvigorated—so too has Bach’s music been refracted by the prism of each successive generation of composers. J.S. Bach has remained the touchstone of western music for two and a half centuries, the authority figure that composers would either seek to please or defiantly reject. From the time of Bach’s own sons until today, musicians have grappled with Bach’s legacy. Many have been drawn to his mastery of counterpoint; others have been attracted to his depth of musical expression, his ability to convey a wide range of emotions, his peerless melodies, and the sheer joy of his music. By exploring Bach’s legacy through the music of the past 260 years, we are experiencing at once Bach’s reflected genius and the musical Zeitgeist of every generation.
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The Dessoff Choirs is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.