July 30, 1997
Dear Friends,
As the month of July comes to a steamy close, I’m reminded that it’s time to write to you about our exciting plans for the 1997-98 season of The Concert Singers of Cary. It’s hard to believe that we are entering our seventh season of concerts. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were a brand new chorus with scarce resources and no history or name recognition. Thanks to the dedicated work of an extremely talented board of directors, we are about to enter a new phase in our short history as we continue to improve artistically and grow and mature as an organization. We had a marvellous two day retreat in June that included the incoming and out going members of the board which affirmed our work and set new goals and artistic challenge as we approach our most ambitious season ever. Some of the news is as follows;
Fall Season - we will again join The North Carolina Symphony for their annual Holiday Pops Concerts at Memorial Auditorium with three performances over Thanks giving weekend. We will also be joined by The Raleigh Ringers in what I believe will be our best pops program of Christmas music to date. We will sing some traditional Christmas carols (yes, Rutter arrangements will appear) as well as some Renaissance selections involving us singing antiphonally from the rear of the auditorium. To spice things up, we will sing the suites of music from the two Home Alone movies as well as a grand finale of carols involving choir orchestra and handbells. We will follow this event with our own Christmas concert on Saturday, December 6 at First Baptist Church of Cary where we will sing Benjamin Britten’s St. Nicolas for chorus and string orchestra, telling the story of the real St. Nicolas (as opposed to the commercial one) who was considered to be the patron Saint of children, seamen and travellers. Pending final funding approval, 25 of our singers will again join The Opera Company of North Carolina in an encore presentation of Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors at Memorial Auditorium during the week after Christmas. The Pops concerts and Christmas concert are linked as one project. The Amahl project will be scheduled separately.
Winter Season - we are waiting to receive approval to return to St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church to perform a program there on Saturday, March 14 at 8:00 p.m. called Mass Appeal. This program will include two mass settings...Beethoven’s Mass in C and Franz Schubert’s Mass in G performed with an orchestra of 30 in a gloriously appropriate setting. In addition to their common texts, these works are both representative of the composers in the earlier part of their careers.
Spring Season - we have changed gears a bit from our original spring plans and will perform a program called The Songs of Brahms featuring Gesang der Parzen (Song of the Fates), Nänie (Song of Lamentation), Schicksaslied (Song of Destiny) and Alto Rhapsody. All four works will be sung in German and feature an orchestra of 33.
Recording - we are looking into producing our second CD recording which will be built around Folk Songs sometime in the month of June. You will be contacted as further information becomes available about your availability before the project is finalized. Joy to the World was a tremendous success and we are looking forward to the next of what we hope will be several recording projects in the coming years.
Auditions - we have scheduled auditions for Monday, August 18, Monday, August 25, Thursday, August 28, and Thursday September 4 at The Page-Walker Arts and History Center. We will hear singers between 6:30 and 9:30. Please invite friends or acquaintances who are good candidates for the chorus to audition. Joy Cox will be contacting any current members who need to reaudition.
My deepest thanks goes to Tom Bedick who has rotated to past president status for the outstanding work that he did in leading the group over the past year. I also welcome Brian Wong as our current president and ask that each and every one of you find something that you can contribute to The Concert Singers over and above your status as a singing member. There are numerous committees and task forces that need extra help to achieve their goals. Tell Brian what skill or time commitment that you have to offer and I’m certain that there is a place that you can help.
I hope that you have all had a summer of rest and relaxation that will bring you back to us renewed and reinvigorated. I am in my second week of training for my new faculty position at Cary Academy and am excited about the opportunities and challenges that are ahead. The Concert Singers are going to be a beneficiary of the establishment of Cary Academy in that we are finally going to have an appropriate performance hall available to us for our concerts. The schools new Fine Arts Center is under construction and will be available for the 1998-99 concert season. The auditorium will seat 500 with a 40 foot wide stage and arch. It will also include an orchestra pit. The new symphony orchestra hall being planned for The North Carolina Symphony next to Memorial Auditorium will be designed for orchestral performances and have a built in seating area for chorus behind the stage. It will be acoustically superior since it is not an all purpose hall and seat 1700. This hall could be used by us on occasion (every other year?) for large scale programs that we could not accommodate now due to a lack of an appropriate and affordable venue. The completion of these new halls will enable us to further develop our season ticket base and move towards assigned seating and consistent concert attendance.
These are exciting times for our group. We hope to see each and every one of you return this year to help us have our best year ever. Have a great summer and we’ll see you in September!
Sincerely,
Larry
Updated 15 July 2003 |