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2023-24 Season |
Bridges: Expanding the Canon is a series of concerts designed to reimagine the canon of choral music: guest conductors of color will lead singers from the Minnesota Chorale and Border CrosSing in works by composers whose music has historically been underrepresented on the concert stage.
Bridges: Expanding the Canon 1 will explore familiar and new choral octavos from North and South America, Asia and Europe. The program will feature a new work by Venezuelan composer Alberto Grau written this year for the 90th birthday of German conductor Helmuth Rilling – a setting of Psalm 26, which will be led by Kathy Saltzman Romey and recorded by the Chorale and other international choirs as a gift to Helmuth Rilling and Alberto Grau.
Bridges: Expanding the Canon 2 will be led by acclaimed conductor, speaker and educator, Dr. Anthony Trecek-King. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Anthony Trecek-King has earned an international reputation as a choral conductor, scholar, pedagogue, and media personality. He is passionate about cultivating artistically excellent ensembles that explore socially relevant issues through emotionally immersive programs, challenging both artists and audiences to feel and think deeply. Expanding the Canon 2 will continue our presentation of thought-provoking repertoire as led by Dr. Tracek-King in collaboration with the Twin Cities professional ensemble Border CrosSing.
Bridges: Expanding the Canon 1 will explore familiar and new choral octavos from North and South America, Asia and Europe. The program will feature a new work by Venezuelan composer Alberto Grau written this year for the 90th birthday of German conductor Helmuth Rilling – a setting of Psalm 26, which will be led by Kathy Saltzman Romey and recorded by the Chorale and other international choirs as a gift to Helmuth Rilling and Alberto Grau.
Bridges: Expanding the Canon 2 will be led by acclaimed conductor, speaker and educator, Dr. Anthony Trecek-King. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Anthony Trecek-King has earned an international reputation as a choral conductor, scholar, pedagogue, and media personality. He is passionate about cultivating artistically excellent ensembles that explore socially relevant issues through emotionally immersive programs, challenging both artists and audiences to feel and think deeply. Expanding the Canon 2 will continue our presentation of thought-provoking repertoire as led by Dr. Tracek-King in collaboration with the Twin Cities professional ensemble Border CrosSing.
Alberto Grau is arguably one of the most influential contemporary Venezuelan choral composers and conductors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His books on choral conducting and composition, The making of a conductor and The making of the composer, are references for young conductors and musicians. In 1967 he founded the Schola Cantorum de Caracas and won first prize in the Guido D’Arezzo International Competition in 1974 in Italy. Since then, he has been invited to many important conferences and festivals with his ensembles and as a guest conductor. More than thirty recordings provide evidence of his fine musicianship and extensive knowledge of international and Latin American choral repertoire. He is the Founding Director of both the Orfeón Universitario Simón Bolívar and the Coral Ave Fenix, and a member of the Board of Directors of El Sistema (Foundation for Children and Youth Orchestras and Choirs of Venezuela). He is an adviser and resident composer in the Pequeños Cantores Program at the Schola Cantorum de Venezuela Foundation and at the CAF/Latinamerican Bank of Development Program of Social Action for Music. His choral output includes several languages including French, English, and Spanish, and features a balance of sacred and secular works.
In 1970, Helmuth Rilling was one of the founders of the Oregon Bach Festival. His tenure as artistic director, conductor, and teacher at the Festival has had a major impact on the international choral scene. Students attending his conducting master class have come from more than 30 countries, and from major universities and communities throughout the United States and Canada.
Born in 1933 in Stuttgart, Germany Rilling studied at the State Music Academy of Stuttgart and at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome. His focus was on conducting, choral music, and the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach. After studying with Leonard Bernstein in New York in 1967, he became professor of choral conducting at the State Music Academy in Frankfurt, a post he held until 1985. Rilling founded the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart (IBA) in 1981. Together with teachers and ensembles of that institution, he has conducted Bach academies in such cities as Buenos Aires, Caracas, Cracow, Moscow, Santiago de Compostela (Spain), and Tokyo. Rilling believes that music has the power to cross political and ethnic boundaries. He was the first German conductor after World War II to conduct the Israeli Philharmonic in that country, and he was invited to conduct musical portions of Germany's official reunification ceremonies. In 1994, the IBA received the UNESCO Music Prize, and the following year, Rilling received the Theodor Heuss Prize for advancing reconciliation and international understanding. Rilling is a guest conductor with major orchestras in Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, Canada, and the United States. The winner of a Grammy award for the Oregon Bach Festival's world premiere recording of Krzysztof Penderecki's Credo, he has been a champion of contemporary music, commissioning such composers as Osvaldo Golijov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Wolfgang Rihm, and Tan Dun. To commemorate the end of World War II, he commissioned a Requiem of Reconciliation, set to music by fourteen composers from countries that were involved in that war, and conducted an international ensemble in its world premier. Helmuth Rilling is one of the most accomplished conductors and interpreters of Johann Sebastian Bach's music. The benchmark of his career has been intensely personal interpretations of Bach's 200 cantatas and major choral works. Under the Hänssler label, he directed the recording of the complete works of Bach on 172 CDs, released in 2000 in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Bach's death. The "Edition Bachakademie" won the 2000 Cannes Classical Award as Bach Collection of the Year. Rilling has an honorary doctorate from the University of Oregon, where he holds the position Visiting Distinguished Professor of Music. Rilling retired from the OBF as Artistic Director at the end of his 44th season, in 2013. 
In May 1995, Conductor Kathy Saltzman Romey was named the Minnesota Chorale's fifth artistic director, after serving as associate artistic director of the Minnesota Chorale from 1990 to 1994 and as acting director during the 1994-95 season. She has prepared the Chorale for performances with both the Minnesota Orchestra and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra under the baton of such conductors as Edo de Waart, Eduardo Mata, Roger Norrington, Christopher Hogwood, Hugh Wolff, John Harbison, Helmuth Rilling, Bobby McFerrin, Eiji Oue, and Robert Shaw. She also developed and coordinates Bridges, the Chorale's nationally recognized community engagement program.
Romey graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from the University of Oregon. She continued her studies in Frankfurt, Germany under internationally known Bach scholar and conductor Helmuth Rilling, receiving an artistic degree in choral conducting from the Frankfurt State Conservatory of Music in 1984. During her five years in Germany, she assisted Dr. Rilling at the Memorial Church in Stuttgart, was a member of Rilling's professional choir, the Gaechinger Kantorei, and worked on the staff of the International Bach Academy. Romey has been a staff member of the Oregon Bach Festival since 1984 and is principal chorus master of the 54-voice professional Festival Choir, which she prepares for annual Festival concerts, commissions, and recording projects. American and world premiere performances presented at the Oregon Bach Festival include major choral works by Tan Dun, Arvo Pärt, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sven David Sandström, and Mozart reconstructions by Robert Levin. Romey has assisted with ten recordings, including the Oregon Bach Festival’s 2001 Grammy Award–winning CD of Penderecki’s Credo under the direction of Helmuth Rilling, and the 2008 Grammy-nominated CD of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony conducted by Osmo Vänskä with the Minnesota Orchestra and Minnesota Chorale. From 1992 - 2023, Romey was a member of the faculty at the University of Minnesota, where she served as director of choral activities and oversaw the graduate program in choral conducting and conducted choirs. From 1985-1992, she was director of choral activities at Macalester College, conducting the Macalester Concert Choir and the Macalester Festival Chorale. She is active regionally and nationally as a guest conductor and clinician at music conferences and festivals. 
Shekela Wanyama builds community through crafting meaningful and innovative choral experiences. A freelance conductor-educator, Shekela serves on the faculty of Hamline University and the music staff at Unity Church Unitarian. Recent engagements have included guest conductor of Singers in Accord and assistant conductor for the Minnesota Chorale and Vocalpoint. Shekela taught middle and high school choir for over ten years and has performed with choirs in the United States and Germany. She holds a DMA in conducting from the University of Minnesota, an MM in choral conducting from Temple University, a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Minnesota, and is a proud graduate of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Paolo Debuque is a Filipino/Chinese-American conductor and choral artist dedicated to the vision of a world made better through shared music-making. The founding Artistic Director of a Path to Peace, a community music project for gun violence prevention in Minneapolis, MN and of //meridian vocal ensemble in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Paolo has held artistic positions with the Detroit Children’s Choir, Dakota Valley Symphony Chorus, and the Summer Singers, and regularly performs with professional ensembles throughout the Twin Cities and beyond. He has led classes and clinics at Luther College, Augsburg College, and Swarthmore College. Paolo holds an MM from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Jerry Blackstone. Further conducting study includes Norfolk Chamber Choir Workshop, Wintergreen Music Festival, Berkshire Choral International, and more
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2023-24 Bridges
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