2012 - 2013 Season Notes

The Minnesota Chorale’s 40th anniversary season is a feast for the ears: an unprecedented outpouring of great music and great singing.

We begin operatically, with a concert performance (July 28) of Giuseppe Verdi’s riveting “Rigoletto”—a milestone in Verdi’s development, and his favorite among his own works. The all-male chorus in this opera constitutes a vivid character—as the men of the Chorale will happily demonstrate.

This year’s Bridges community-engagement program, “A Gift of Song,” is a journey to a place that many of us fear to go. A partnership with Allina Home and Community Services, the program uses music to enrich the lives of elders with memory loss or impairment. Specially trained Chorale members will sing a carefully selected repertoire in four Twin Cities memory-care units weekly for six consecutive weeks; a final performance for families and friends will be presented at each location. A concluding concert for the entire community, affirming hope in the face of loss, will give the project a public face (Nov. 11).

From Bridges, we move on to the holidays and our annual Sing-Along “Messiah” at St. Olaf Catholic Church, piloted, as always, by Chorale Artistic Director Kathy Saltzman Romey (Dec. 2).

The singing-along continues in January with the Chorale’s first Mozart Requiem Sing-Along, a collaboration with the St. Paul Civic Symphony and conductor Jeffrey Stirling (Jan. 27, Mozart's 257th birthday). This is followed (March 8) by a new edition of the Chorale’s much-acclaimed Men in Music program, which encourages and facilitates choral singing by high school men, this year from Wayzata and Minneapolis South high schools.

Next comes the Chorale’s first all-Bach program in many years, which combines Cantata No. 140 (“Wachet auf”) with two double-choir motets (“Singet dem Herrn” and “Der Geist hilft”). The concert will be presented twice, at Nativity Church in St. Paul and Wayzata Community Church, two favorite venues for Twin Cities choral music fans. Kathy Saltzman Romey conducts (April 6 and 7).

Finally, our 40th-anniversary season finale brings together the Chorale and the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra (MSO), a valued partner, for a memorable choral-orchestral program opening with Dvorak’s “Te Deum” (written in 1892 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus reaching the Americas) and closing, fittingly, with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Kathy Saltzman Romey and MSO Music Director Bill Schrickel share the podium (May 19).

And as soon as we catch our collective breath, it’s on to season 41!

 
The Minnesota Chorale, named principal chorus of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2004, has just begun its fifth decade, and its 18th 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.