Legacy: New Recording Features Joseph Flummerfelt’s Final Campus Concert

A milestone in Westminster Choir College’s history – the Westminster Choir’s final home concert with Joseph Flummerfelt – will be available as a CD on July 31, 2012.  Titled Legacy, the recording features works selected by Maestro Flummerfelt that best represent the essence of that historic performance on April 18, 2004, in Bristol Chapel on the Westminster Choir College campus.

The recording will be available for purchase from Amazon , hbdirect.com and other CD stores beginning Tuesday, July 31.  Amazon is accepting pre-orders now.  The CD includes some of the works most closely identified with the man hailed by Leonard Bernstein as "the world's greatest choral conductor": Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music, two Brahms Quartets and Flummerfelt’s arrangement of Danny Boy.    

Great music has the power to bring to both those who perform and those who listen a connection that helps restore some balance in their lives,” he wrote in the concert program.  “Seeking this balance has been the central motivating impulse during my years with the Westminster Choir. Hopefully, this evening’s concert may bear witness to this.”

As the artistic director and principal conductor at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Joseph Flummerfelt inspired countless young musicians to combine musical discipline with expressive spontaneity. Upon his retirement in 2004 from the choral leadership of Westminster Choir College, a position he held for 33 years, he became conductor laureate of the Choir. His choirs may be heard on more than 45 recordings, including collaborations with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony and the National Symphony; he has also directed the Westminster Choir in several recordings of their own.

Joseph Flummerfelt is one of three artistic directors for the Spoleto Festival USA, and was for many years Maestro del coro for the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. He is also the chorus master for the New York Philharmonic; music director of the New York Choral Artists, which he founded in 1979; and for five years he was the music director of Singing City in Philadelphia. His many honors include the Prix du Président de la République of L’Académie du Disque Français and two Grammy nominations. He has also received four honorary doctorates.

The recording also includes accompanist Nancianne Parrella, one of America’s preeminent choral accompanists. For several years she served as accompanist and assistant director of the Westminster Choir and accompanist for the Westminster Symphonic Choir.  She is also the associate organist of the Church of St Ignatius Loyola in New York.  Soloists are Marisa Maupin, soprano; Jenna Lebherz, mezzo-soprano and Anthony Beck, baritone.

Legacy is also available for download from iTunes and other download sites.

Legacy Track Listing

1. Rachmaninoff: Bogoróditse Devo
2. Rachmaninoff: Shestopsálmiye
    

Three Settings of the Lord’s Prayer

1. Maxwell Davies: The Lord’s Prayer
2. Duruflé: Notre Pére 
3. Stravinsky: Pater Noster

Poulenc: Un Soir de Neige

1. De grandes cuillers de neige    
2. La bonne neige
3. Bois Meutri
4. La nuit le froid la solitude
    

Martin: Agnus Dei from Mass

Brahms: Two Quartets 
Abendlied
Sehnsucht

Barber: Agnus Dei

Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music

Custer: Innisfree

Parker/Shaw (arr): Annie Laurie

Churchill (arr): Black Is The Color of My True Love’s Hair

Flummerfelt (arr): Danny Boy