Artistic Director Martín Benvenuto, composer and mentor Libby Larsen, and YIY composer Joshua Fishbein review Fishbein’s score for Unseen Secrets

The finishing touches are being put on the last WomenSing performance of the season as we prepare to premiere two new pieces, the latest in the Youth Inspiring Youth (YIY) program. As part of their on-going YIY mentoring, reknowned composer Libby Larsen recently visited WomenSing for a day-long workshop with composers Elizabeth Lim and Joshua Fishbein.

Both of our young composers will be speaking to the audience before the concerts begin, so please join us for the pre-concert discussions to hear about their music and their YIY experience. Youth Inspiring Youth compositions are based on the highly inspired children’s poetry from the River of Words project.

Along with the premieres of Unseen Secrets and Elizabeth Lim’s Sisyphean, this month’s concert, “Songs From a New World” will feature music from the Americas including:

~ two pieces by featured composer Stephen Paulus, acclaimed as “…a bright, fluent inventor with a ready lyric gift.” (The New Yorker)

~ a selection from Old American Songs by iconic American composer Aaron Copland

~ a merengue from the Dominican Republic, featuring piano, güira and tambora.

We look forward to seeing you for our final event of the season!

This award affirms our contribution to the choral literature for women’s voices through our Youth Inspiring Youth project.

Highlights will include a collaboration with the Men of WomenSing, Libby Larsen as our season featured composer, and a possible tour of Washington, D.C, taking our Youth Inspiring Youth works to the Library of Congress.

WomenSing is holding auditions on Tuesday June 8, 2010 and by appointment for experienced singers. Altos are particularly encouraged to audition, but all voice parts are welcome. Take a look at our Audition page for more information.

Der 23.Psalm, a major landmark of the treble repertoire by Franz Schubert, dates from 1820. Set to a German text which was translated from the Hebrew by Moses Mendelssohn, philosopher, scholar and grandfather of the composer, Der 23.Psalm is known for its wonderfully expressiven melody.

Together with Kodály, Lajos Bárdos laid the foundations of 20th-century Hungarian choral music. Cantemus, written in 1977 to words by the composer himself, draws on both Renaissance polyphony and Hungarian folk music, creating a lively tribute to the simple yet profound joy of singing.

Sakura Sakura is a traditional Japanese folk song depicting spring, the season of cherry blossom. The innovative and harmonically rich arrangement by Dwight Okamura was written for the San Francisco Girls Chorus.

Sombra del Mar was commissioned by WomenSing in 2009 as part of its Youth Inspiring Youth project. Poet Alejandro Yañez from Merced, was a finalist in the 2008 River of Words competition. Jack Henry’s setting evokes the heartfelt mood of the poem.

Listen to this beautiful reading by Aiden Gillen of James Joyce’s poem, She Weeps Over Rahoon. Set to music by American composer Eric Whitacre, this is a ponderous but warm piece that conveys an extreme depth of feeling.

We continue in 2010 with our featured composer program, introducing Stephen Paulus. Based in Minnesota, Paulus has been hailed as “…a bright, fluent inventor with a ready lyric gift.” (The New Yorker) In Day Break, Paulus provides an anonymous poem from a tribe in northern Australia with rugged yet lyrical melodic lines underlined with energetic rhythms provided by piano and percussion.

This is just a portion of the music you will hear when you join us this weekend at “Shadows and Reflections.”

(excerpt from “Reflections”)

Inspired by this poem, WomenSing is planning a spring concert filled with music illuminating familiar and unfamiliar places and emotions.

Since the season of the cherry blossom is here, we’ll celebrate with the traditional Japanese folk song, Sakura, Sakura, arranged by Dwight Okamura, currently the music director for the hit show “Wicked.” This song was composed during the Edo period for children learning to play the koto. Today, it is often sung in international settings as a song representative of Japan.

I’m especially pleased to announce that two dancers from the award-winning Michiya Hanayagi Japanese Dance Studio will be joining WomenSing at this performance.

For  pictures of these beautiful dancers, visit their page on Flicker.

In contrast to Sakura, Sakura is the piece The Shadow of Your Smile from the movie “The Sandpiper.” Greg Gilpin’s arrangement gives it a gentle bossa nova groove that is perfect for choral singing. The Shadow of Your Smile was honored in 1965 with the Academy Award the “Best Original Song composed for a Motion Picture.”

New opportunity to support WomenSing
WomenSing is excited to add another opportunity for your ticket purchases. Our new “Ticket Plus” program offers you the ability to purchase a premium $25 ticket and make a $25 tax-deductible donation to WomenSing at the same time. We are always grateful for the many ways you contribute to our financial health, and hope that you will support this new program.

Please email info@womensing.org for more information about the Ticket Plus program.

Year two composers, Lim and Fishbein, will soon submit their final drafts for review by WomenSing’s Artistic Leadership team, including the nationally recognized composer Libby Larsen.

Preview of the poetry

Unseen Secrets, the poem by 7-year Quinn Whitlow, is set by composer Joshua Fishbein, with a naive tone but a subtle and clever harmonic architecture. Sisyphean, a poem by Skyler Pham, is based on the myth of Sisyphus, the effort that never concludes, but must incessantly and infinitely renew itself. Elizabeth Lim paints bold strokes and illuminates this complex poem brilliantly.

Year three submissions now being accepted
As WomenSing begins the YIY’s third year, composers are encouraged to explore this exceptional creative opportunity to create new choral music and be mentored by renowned composer Libby Larsen. One winner will be commissioned to write a treble choral work for WomenSing and Acalanes School District High School’s women’s choruses. The other winner will write a treble choral work exclusively for WomenSing. Both pieces will be premiered in the spring of 2011, and will be based on the highly inspired children’s poetry from the River of Words project.

All participants take part in a series of events, including public workshops and discussions, culminating in the commissioned works being premiered in concert by WomenSing.

Auditions will be held on Tuesday, January 5, 2010 (and by appointment for more experienced singers), for WomenSing, the East Bay’s premiere women’s ensemble! Sing with us for the remainder of our 2009/10 season, For Love of Place. High sopranos and low altos are particularly encouraged to audition, but all voice parts are welcome. For more information, please read through the Audition portion of our web site, contact us by email at audition@womensing.org, or call our voice mail (925) 974-9169.

Scholarships are available for qualified singers.

Best wishes for a very happy and healthy New Year!  We look forward to seeing you in 2010.

About the 2009-2010 Season

This season, we are celebrating a greater intimacy with the natural world, and our love of place. Our next performance at St Mary’s College, Shadows and Reflections, will illuminate Eric Whitacre’s She Weeps Over Rahoon double choir sonorities, and works by Schubert, Paulus, and Okamura. Then in June, our spring performances will bring along the excitement of premiering two works from our Youth Inspiring Youth project in a concert entitled Songs from the New World, showcasing repertoire from the Americas.

Saturday, December 5, 3 pm
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
2300 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94704

Wednesday, December 9, 8 pm
St. Mary’s Chapel
1928 Saint Mary’s Road
Moraga, CA 94556

Get your tickets today!

Leading off the evening is an audience favorite, A Ceremony of Carols (op.28), Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece for treble chorus, solo voices and harp. A Ceremony of Carols consists of eleven movements.

Britten wrote his Ceremony on board the Swedish cargo ship MS Axel Johnson in   March, 1942, when he was returning to Great Britain after 3 years in America. It was apparently a hazardous trip, during which the ship was left alone to cross an Atlantic Ocean filled with Nazi u-boats. The full piece was first performed on December 4, 1943 at Norwich Castle, and included a harp interlude added by Britten just days before.

The texts come from a collection of poems Britten found while stopping at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on his journey back to Britain. Two of the poems, This Little Babe and In Freezing Winter Night, were written by Robert Southwell, a Roman Catholic cleric and martyr sentenced to death under Queen Elizabeth I. It is thought Southwell wrote much of his poetry while imprisoned, awaiting death for treason.

I’m thrilled that Dan Levitan, noted Bay Area harpist, will be joining WomenSing in bringing you this special event. Dan has played with WomenSing before, when we toured and we’re looking forward to renewed collaboration.

We’ll see you in December!

Martín Benvenuto

For more information about Benjamin Britten and A Ceremony of Carols, visit any of the following sites:

• Benjamin Britten – A Timeline (Britten-Pears Foundation)
• Biography of Benjamin Britten (classical.net)
• About Benjamin Britten (Wikipedia)
• About Robert Southwell (luminarium.org)