Current Season
Brahms Requiem
Sunday, November 6, 2022
HOLY SPIRIT CATHOLIC CHURCH
3345 LEXINGTON ROAD
3:00 PM | $25 | 90 MIN
GUEST CONDUCTOR: JOHN H. DICKSON
We are thrilled to be able to present one of the greatest choral orchestral masterworks of all time, the Brahms Requiem. Out of his own sorrows Brahms created this remarkable expression of both the pain of loss and the comfort which can be found. He chose his own texts rather than using the traditional church movements. It is a sacred, if non-liturgical, expression of the profound emotions experienced by those who mourn in any language.
It will be accompanied by Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music, also an ageless masterpiece, a tender and much loved work.
PRE-CONCERT LECTURE
Presented by John Hale:
Faure, Lauridsen and Corigliano
Sunday, March 12, 2023
HOLY SPIRIT CATHOLIC CHURCH
3345 LEXINGTON ROAD
3:00 PM | $25 | 90 MIN
A pre-concert lecture by John Hale
will be posted on this website approximately one week prior to the concert.
We will hear three profound works in a variety of styles. Faure's Requiem, the best-known of his major works, gives us beautiful melodies and leaves us with a sense of eternal rest and consolation. Lux Aeterna by Morton Lauridsen has been considered a "probing, serene work containing an elusive and indefinable ingredient which leaves the impression that all the questions have been answered." John Corigliano, an American who has won an Oscar, Grammys and a Pulitzer for his compositions, set the Dylan Thomas poem of the same name to music It explores poetic themes around Eden, childhood innocence and the transition to adulthood.
GUEST CONDUCTOR: JOHN H. DICKSON
John Dickson is Professor Emeritus and former Director of Choral Studies at Louisiana State University. Recently retired after forty-four years of collegiate teaching, he continues his conducting through workshops, festivals, and as the founding artistic director of Coro Vocati, one of Atlanta’s most accomplished professional chamber choirs.
As a conducting pedagogue, he has presented masterclasses before the Association of British Choral Directors, the American Choral Directors Association, the Royal Northern Music Conservatory (Manchester), and the Russian State Music Conservatories of St. Petersburg and Moscow. He has conducted festivals and workshops in England, Wales, Scotland, Finland, France, Italy, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Canada, and throughout the U. S. For three decades his choirs have been featured at conventions of the ACDA, ABCD, Texas Music Educators Association, and the National Collegiate Choral Organization.
Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge University, Dr. Dickson sang with Sir David Willcocks and The Bach Choir; a second post-doctoral fellowship allowed him to serve as David Hill’s assistant conductor. He is the Founding Director of the Oxbridge C. S. Lewis Choral Institute.
Americana
Sunday, May 21, 2023
HARVEY BROWNE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
311 BROWNS LANE
3:00 PM | $25 | 90 MIN
This afternoon we will explore America's musical heritage across its landscape, its history and its diversity. The performance will range from Randall Thompson's Testament of Freedom, with its texts from Thomas Jefferson's writings, to such American classics as Copland's Promise of Living and Barber's Adagio for Strings. You will be moved by the arrangements of iconic gospel and folk songs prepared by a diverse group of composers, including Alice Parker, Shawn Kirchner and Moses Hogan, which will round out this picture of America.