Our 2022-2023 season features choral music from the 17th to the 21st centuries, the world premiere of a newly commissioned work by the young American composer Dale Trumbore, settings of inspiring poetry, favorites from past seasons, and a collaboration with The Harlem Chamber Players for the second year in a row.
Psalms and Carols: The Sounds of Joy
New Amsterdam Singers returns to two favorites from past seasons: J.S. Bach’s beloved five-voice motet, “Jesu, Meine Freude”, and the uplifting double chorus motet by Heinrich Schütz on Psalm 84, which opens with the line “How lovely is thy dwelling place” and continues later with “The sparrow hath found a house and the swallow a nest”— a phrase that inspired composer Caroline Shaw’s 2017 setting of the same psalm, “and the swallow”. Recent works by acclaimed American composers Abbie Betinis, Rosephanye Powell, and Zanaida Robles add a joyful bow to the season.
Friday, December 9, 2022, at 8PM
Sunday, December 11, 2022, at 4PM
Sunday, December 11, 2022, at 4PM – Online stream
The World of Dreams
New Amsterdam Singers salutes American composers who have chosen great poetry — from Hilaire Belloc to e.e. cummings — with expressive references to dreams. These works span 80 years, from Louise Talma’s charming “Let’s Touch the Sky” from 1952 to Judith Shatin’s 2021 “La Frontera”, a poignant setting of poems by an undocumented teenager at the U.S. southern border, to Dale Trumbore’s “Charting the World”, a newly commissioned piece that will receive its world premiere at this concert. After our first-ever collaboration in May 2022, The Harlem Chamber Players will again join the chorus on this program.
Thursday, March 16, 2023, at 8PM
Sunday, March 19, 2023, at 4PM
I Have Had Singing
Steven Sametz’s classic “I Have Had Singing” is one of several works featuring texts about the powerful act of singing and the lasting joy that it can bring, even in times of adversity. Mark Kilstofte wrote “Everyone’s Voice” on a World War I poem by Siegfried Sassoon in 2022 with the war in Ukraine on his mind. Craig Hella Johnson composed “Song from the Road” in 2018 on a poem by his friend and collaborator Michael Dennis Browne. Also on the program: British composers Benjamin Britten and E.J. Moeran. Sets by Irving Fine and Scott Joplin are among the chorus’s all-time favorites.