Westminster Symphonic Choir and Festival Orchestra Will Perform Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis March 27 to Honor Joseph Flummerfelt

The 150-voice Westminster Symphonic Choir and Festival Orchestra, conducted by Joseph Flummerfelt, will perform Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis Saturday, March 27, 2004 at the Patriots Theater in the Trenton War Memorial.  The performance will celebrate the career of Maestro Flummerfelt, who will step down as artistic director and principal conductor at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in June 2004.
      Soloists for the performance will be Sally Wolf, soprano; Laura Brooks Rice, mezzo-soprano; Scott McCoy, tenor; and David Arnold, baritone.
      Tickets for this performance are $60, $50, $35, and $20 and may be purchased at the War Memorial box office, by calling 609-984-8400 or on the Web at www.tickets.com.  For Rider University faculty, staff and students, tickets may also be purchased, in person only, at the Westminster box office between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.  Please be prepared to show your Rider ID.  Special patron packages that include a pre-concert dinner, preferred seating and a post-performance reception are available through Westminster Choir College of Rider University.  For more information, call Westminster at 609-921-3200.
      Recognized by critics and musicians alike as “one of the world’s greatest choral conductors,” Joseph Flummerfelt was recently honored by Musical America when he was selected as its Conductor of the Year.  His musical artistry has been acclaimed in many of the world’s finest concert halls for over 30 years.  His rich and varied career has included collaborations with such eminent conductors as Abbado, Bernstein, Boulez, Dohnanyi, Giulini, Leinsdorf, Macal, Masur, Mehta, Muti, Ozawa, Penderecki, Sawallisch, Shaw and Steinberg.  
      Maestro Flummerfelt is one of three artistic directors for the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in Charleston, S.C. (since 1977), and for 23 years he was the Maestro del coro for the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy.  He is also the founder and conductor of The New York Choral Artists and was for five years the music director of Singing City in Philadelphia.
       The Westminster Symphonic Choir is composed of juniors and seniors and half of the graduate students at Westminster.  It performs and records regularly with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors.  Its 2003-2004 season includes several performances with the New York Philharmonic, as well as the Cleveland Orchestra.
       Sally Wolf has sung her brilliant dramatic coloratura and lyric repertoire throughout Europe and North America.  An interpreter of Mozart’s Queen of the Night, she has sung the role 192 times in most of the world’s prestigious opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Salzburg Festival, and La Fenice in Venice.  Her orchestral performances have included Mozart’s Requiem with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the New York Chamber Orchestra, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet with the New Jersey Symphony, and appearances at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York.
       Laura Brooks Rice has won acclaim on the opera and concert stage for her rich, warm voice, musicality, charm and sensitive acting ability.  In a diverse repertoire, including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, Elgar’s Sea Pictures, Brahm’s Alto Rhapsody and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Rice has appeared from coast to coast in the United States in concerts and recitals.  In recent seasons she has appeared with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra on several occasions in works including Handel’s Messiah, which she has also performed with numerous other orchestras nationwide, including the New Jersey Symphony, Bethlehem Bach Festival, Boulder Bach Festival and the Mostly Mozart Festival.
     Rice has performed at the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera and at the Spoleto Festival in Italy.  In January 1999, with her accompanist J.J. Penna, Rice recorded her widely-performed recital “Madwomen in the Attic,” a program of all American music and American women poets.  A CD of romantic German and French repertoire was released in spring 2000.
      Scott McCoy made his Carnegie Hall debut singing Stravinsky's Pulcinella in 1990, followed in the same year by his Chicago Orchestra Hall debut singing Messiah—just two of the over 60 concert works in his repertoire.  He has appeared as guest soloist with the New Jersey Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Honolulu, Colorado, Albany, Savannah and Battle Creek Symphonies, the Illinois, Wisconsin and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestras, and the Manhattan Philharmonic.
       On stage, McCoy has performed with such companies as the Théatre Lyrique d’Europe, Western Plains Opera, Iowa Opera Theatre, Opera Roanoke and the Atlanta Repertory Opera. He has also appeared as guest soloist with the Bach Aria Festival and the Flagstaff and Aspen Music Festivals.  An active recitalist, he is heard on college campuses around the country, specializing in the song cycles of Schubert and Schumann.
      McCoy has won first place in two district Metropolitan Opera Auditions, the Singer's Showcase Auditions, the Salzburg Mozarteum Competition, and has been a national finalist in both the Liederkranz Foundation Competition and the Oratorio Society of New York Solo Competition.
      David Arnold made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera as Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor and has been acclaimed for his performance of symphonic music performing the Bach Passions with such conductors as Helmuth Rilling and Richard Westenburg.  For six seasons, Seiji Ozawa chose him as soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, including a recording of Gurrelieder.  He has also performed major works with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston and St. Louis.
      Performing abroad, he has appeared with the Spoleto Festival in Italy, has toured Austria and Yugoslavia in concert and has also performed with the Holland Festival in Amsterdam, with the L’Opera de Montreal and at the Bath Opera Company (England).  He has won the New York City Opera Gold debut award and has appeared at the White House at a State Dinner honoring Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.  He was also the baritone soloist in a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on the David Letterman television show’s Millennium Eve broadcast.

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