Westminster Choir College Presents “A Choral Tapestry” October 28
Two choirs from Westminster Choir College of Rider University will present Westminster’s first concert at the new Princeton High School Performing Arts Center on Saturday, October 28 at 7:30 p.m.
Entitled “A Choral Tapestry,” the concert will feature the Westminster Chapel Choir and Westminster Schola Cantorum performing works for female and male ensembles, as well as mixed voices. The program will include Lauridsen’s O Nata Lux, Handel’s Zadok the Priest, Pärt’s Bogoroditse Devo, Poulenc’s Quatre Petites prières de Saint Francois d’Assise and Stravinsky’s Four Russian Peasant Songs. Conductors James Jordan, Sun Min Lee and Andrew Megill will share the podium.
Founded in 1949, the Westminster Chapel Choir takes its name from Westminster’s rich history of leadership in the field of sacred music. Composed of students in their first year of study at Westminster, the ensemble has evolved over the years, and today its repertoire includes both sacred and secular works. It has performed with such orchestras as the Trenton Symphony Orchestra, the York Symphony, and the Queens Symphony. The ensemble has been heard by millions performing at the televised annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center.
Westminster Schola Cantorum is the core choral experience for students in their second year of undergraduate study at Westminster. The ensemble performs a wide range of repertoire in a variety of genres from the Baroque to the 21st century. The choir also focuses on smaller masterworks, a cappella repertoire, and music from diverse cultural backgrounds.
James Jordan is recognized and praised from many quarters in the musical world as one of the nation’s pre-eminent conductors, writers and innovators in choral music. He has been called a “visionary” by The Choral Journal. His career and publications have been devoted to innovative educational changes in the choral art which have been embraced around the world. One of the country’s most prolific writers on the subjects of the philosophy of music making and choral teaching, he has produced ten major textbooks and several choral series bearing his name as well as contributing to four other textbooks.
Korean-born conductor Sun Min Lee earned a Bachelor of Church Music degree from the Presbyterian College and Theological Seminary in Korea and a Master of Music degree in choral conducting with distinction from Westminster Choir College. She is currently pursuing a doctorate at the Eastman School of Music, where she performed Schubert's Mass in A flat with the Eastman Philharmonic Orchestra and Eastman-Rochester Chorus. In the past two years, she has led concert tours along the East Coast with the Westminster Chapel Choir. She has collaborated with many renowned conductors, including Anton Armstrong, Stephen Paulus, Kathy Romey and Dale Warland. Her collaborating works include preparing the Westminster Symphonic Choir for performances of Mozart's Coronation Mass with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Lorin Maazel.
Andrew Megill is recognized for his passionate artistry and unusually wide-ranging repertoire, extending from early music to newly-composed works. He has prepared choruses for many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, including the American Composers Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies, the American Symphony under Leon Botstein, the Cleveland Orchestra under Pierre Boulez, the Dresden Philharmonic under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and the National Symphony under Zdenek Macal. In addition to serving on Westminster’s faculty he is artistic director of Fuma Sacra, recognized as one of America's leading professional ensembles specializing in Renaissance and Baroque vocal music. He is also music director of the Masterwork Chorus, one of metropolitan New York’s finest volunteer choirs, and chorus master for the operas of the Spoleto Festival USA. He was recently appointed associate conductor/director of choral activities for the Carmel Bach Festival in Carmel, Calif.
Tickets for this performance are $15. They can be purchased by calling the Westminster box office weekdays between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. at 609-921-2663 or at the door. The Princeton High School Performing Arts Center is located on Walnut Lane in Princeton.
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