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Thursday, June 7, 2007 at 8:00 P.M. Church of the Holy Trinity, 316 East 88th Street ------- The best known work on the program is Benjamin Britten's a cappella Hymn to St. Cecilia on a poem by W.H. Auden. One of the least known is In Schrafft's by American composer Richard Wilson, also set to an Auden poem, and scored for chorus, clarinet, marimba, and harpsichord. American composer Frank Lewin sets a Yeats poem in his Light Footfall for chorus, violin, and marimba. British composer Howard Skempton utilizes text by American poet Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, while American Stephen Sametz employs words of English villagers. The subject of music reverberates throughout the program, from a celebration of the patron saint of music, St. Cecelia, to Elizabeth Bishop's poem I Am in Need of Music, to Vaughan Williams's Silence and Music, set to a poem by his second wife Ursula Wood. Also featured is a group of songs about birds, including harmonically pungent English folk song settings by Peter Warlock and Paul Crabtree. A March 2004 issue of The New Yorker called Clara 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. Frank Lewin was born March 27, 1925, in Breslau, Germany. He and his family escaped from Germany in 1939, spent a year in Cuba, and came to the United States in 1940. Lewin studied composition with Felix Deyo at the Baldwin Conservatory (Long Island, New York); with Jack Frederick Kilpatrick and Hans David at Southern Methodist University; with Roy Harris in Logan, Utah; and with Richard Donovan and Paul Hindemith at the Yale University School of Music, where he received his Bachelor of Music degree in 1951. Lewin has composed and edited music for feature, documentary, and television films, including dozens of original scores for The Defenders and The Nurses. He has written incidental music for plays from Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams, and has composed scores for historical outdoor dramas in various parts of the country. Among his concert compositions are two operas, including Burning Bright, based on the novel and play of the same name by John Steinbeck, as well as song cycles, choral music, and instrumental works. Lewin was a professor at the Yale School of Music from 1971 to 1992, teaching composition for film; and at the Columbia University School of the Arts from 1975 to 1989, where he taught the course "Music in Modern Media." He has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, including a Distinguished Artist Award. He is a member of BMI, the American Composers Alliance, and the Composers Guild of New Jersey. Lewin has lived in Princeton, New Jersey, since 1951. Howard Skempton was born in Chester in 1947, and has worked as a composer, accordionist, and music publisher. From 1967 he studied in London with Cornelius Cardew, who helped him discover a musical language of great simplicity. Since then he has produced more than 300 works—many of which are miniatures for solo piano or accordion. Skempton calls these pieces "the central nervous system" of his work. In recent years, Skempton has concentrated increasingly on vocal and choral music. Of the major pieces, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven was written for the Belfast Philharmonic Society and first performed in the Waterfront Hall in 2000; The Voice of the Spirits was written in 1999 for the 750th anniversary of University College, Oxford and premièred in St John's, Smith Square in 1999. The Bridge of Fire, a setting of James Elroy Flecker, was first performed by the BBC Singers in May 2001; and Lamentations, for bass and theorbo, was premièred by Paul Hillier and Nigel North in July of that year. Recent works include pieces for OKEANOS (Gleams and Fragments), New Noise (Random Girl), guitarist Tom Kerstens (Three Pieces), and Ensemble Bash (Slip-Stream). Tendrils for string quartet received its world premiere at the 2004 Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music, performed by the Smith Quartet, and won the prize for Best Chamber-Scale Composition at the Royal Philharmonic Society awards in May 2005, and the chamber prize at the BACS British Composer Awards in December 2005. Richard Wilson was born in Cleveland, where he studied piano with Leonard Shure and cello with Ernst Silberstein. Much of his early musical study, including composition, took place at the Cleveland Music School Settlement. Upon graduation from Harvard he received the Frank Huntington Beebe Award, which afforded him the opportunity to study piano in Munich with Friedrich Wührer and composition in Rome with Robert Moevs, his composition professor at Harvard. Wilson has composed some 90 works, ranging in medium from solo tuba to full orchestra. Among those who have performed his music are Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jan Opalach, Mary Nessinger, Rolf Schulte, Sophie Shao, Blanca Uribe, Ursula Oppens, Fred Sherry, Walter Trampler, Chicago Quartet, Muir Quartet, Delmé Quartet, San Francisco Symphony under Herbert Blomstedt, London Philharmonic, Pro-Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, and the American Symphony all under Leon Botstein. Wilson has received numerous awards, including an Academy Award and the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Creative Arts Award in Music from the City of Cleveland, the Stoeger Award from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a Guggenheim Fellowship under which he composed his opera Æthelred the Unready. He is composer-in-residence with the American Symphony, where he gives pre-concert lectures. A member of the Vassar faculty since 1966, Wilson occupies the Mary Conover Mellon Chair in Music. Tickets are $20, $15 seniors and students and may be purchased by calling New Amsterdam Singers at 212-842-1511, or online at www.NASingers.org. New Amsterdam Singers "Flights of Song" Thursday, June 7, 2007 at 8 P.M. The Church of the Holy Trinity, 316 East 88th Street BENJAMIN BRITTEN Hymn to St. Cecilia DAVID BRUNNER I am in Need of Music New York premiere JOHN BIGGS Birds arr. PAUL CRABTREE Four Folk Songs New York premiere FRANK LEWIN Light Footfall Violin, marimba, and chorus STEPHEN SAMETZ I Have Had Singing HOWARD SKEMPTON The Flight of Song New York premiere PETER WARLOCK Yarmouth Fair RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Silence and Music RICHARD WILSON In Schrafft's Clarinet, marimba, harpsichord, and chorus New York City Permiere Previous News Items
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