2010-2011 Season Notes

Two great Mozart operas and the pick of his liturgical music. Beloved sacred works of Handel and Brahms. Holiday standards and new collaborations. And to ice the cake, Carl Orff’s salty, sensuous Carmina Burana. Those are just some of the highlights of the Minnesota Chorale’s bountiful 2010-11 season—our 39th!

Launching the festivities—and crowning the Minnesota Orchestra’s 2010 Sommerfest—is a semi-staged performance of Puccini’s deliciously melodramatic Tosca, led by Andrew Litton (July 24). Then comes the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s season opener, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, also semi-staged, with a largely Italian cast under Roberto Abbado’s baton (September 10 and 12). The New Year brings two more Mozart programs with the Minnesota Orchestra: liturgical works (including the mesmerizing “Ave verum corpus”) conducted by Chorale artistic director Kathy Saltzman Romey (January 15), and a semi-staged Magic Flute, led by Osmo Vänskä (January 20-23).

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. November means Bridges, the Chorale’s community-engagement program, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. This year, in collaboration with the MacPhail Center for Music, Bridges (directed, as always, by Kathy Romey) turns its attention to older Minnesotans, presenting the debut of Voices of Experience, a newly organized choir that will sing a specially chosen repertory side-by-side with the Chorale and the Minneapolis Youth Chorus (November 19 and 21). Voices of Experience has been conceived as an enduring component of the Twin Cities musical landscape; initial auditions will be held this summer.

December overflows with seasonal treats. The feast starts with the Chorale’s yearly Messiah Sing-Along, shepherded by Kathy Romey (December 5). Concert performances of Handel’s incomparable oratorio with the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä begin just three days later (December 8-11). Next comes Jingle Bell Doc, the indefatigable Doc Severinsen’s always-distinctive take on holiday favorites (December 16 and 19). And throughout the month, the Chorale’s Holiday Heralds—carolers extraordinaire—will bring cheer to parades, care facilities, shopping malls and other venues across the metropolitan area.

New this season is a Keyboard Concert, with the Chorale, which ordinarily appears with orchestras, accompanied instead by piano. And what better way to inaugurate this Chorale tradition-to-be than with Brahms’s sublime German Requiem, in the composer’s own arrangement for two pianos. Sung in the intimate acoustics of Hamline University’s Sundin Hall, this performance promises to be one of the summits of the season (March 26).

Educational programs and partnerships loom satisfyingly large in 2010-11. In March, the Chorale’s unique Men in Music program, which throws a lifeline to high school boys who are interested in singing but lack social support for that interest, will offer its annual concert, with local students performing side-by-side with the men of the adult Chorale. In May—building on the success of our recent collaboration with the Minnesota Youth Symphonies—the Chorale will sing for the first time with the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies and conductor Amir Kats. The program, devoted to selections from Bizet's Carmen, will give some of this area’s best young instrumentalists a rare opportunity to make music with a top-rank professional chorus (May 1). The Chorale’s free InChoir series, which enables participants to get inside choral masterworks by singing alongside Chorale members at a working rehearsal, will offer sessions on the Brahms Requiem (March 14) and the operatic repertoire (April 11), together with December’s sing-along Messiah. And the Chorale’s Minneapolis Youth Chorus—our flagship educational initiative, guided by founding conductor Pat Arasim and associate conductor Walter Tambor—will be busier than ever in this, its fourth season.

It takes some doing to mount a finale worthy of such an eventful season. But the Chorale and the Minnesota Orchestra have just the ticket: Carmina Burana, Carl Orff’s kaleidoscopic masterpiece, led by Osmo Vänskä (June 9-12). In short, it’s a season not to be missed!

 
The Minnesota Chorale, named principal chorus of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2004, has sung with the Orchestra for more than three decades. Now entering its 39th season—and its 16th under the leadership of Kathy Saltzman Romey—the Chorale is Minnesota's preeminent symphonic chorus and ranks among the top professional choruses in the United States.