Music as medicine for weary ears:
Da Camera concert features first Young Composer Commission:
“Our Flawed Garden” by J.L. Marlor
“Lovely and Lyrical, Music to Soothe and Inspire,” a concert by Da Camera Singers featuring Morton Lauridsen’s “Midwinter Songs,” settings of poems by Robert Graves with Marianne Lockwood on piano, and the world premiere of “Our Flawed Garden,” a setting by Jessica Marlor of a poem by Sylvia Plath, will be held Saturday, January 28, 7:30 PM at Wesley United Methodist Church, 98 North Maple St, Hadley, and again on Sunday, January 29, 3 PM, at the Rhodes Arts Center, Northfield Mount Hermon School, Gill, MA.
Also on the program is music by Brahms, Bruckner, Gjeilo, Vaughan Williams, and Forrest . All the music was selected deliberately to serve as an antidote and a relief from the cacophony of contemporary politics.
Marlor, a graduate of Smith College, former student of Da Camera’s director Sheila Heffernon, a former singer with Da Camera and currently working at LoftOpera in Brooklyn, N.Y., is the recipient of the chorus’ first Young Composer Commission.
Da Camera has been commissioning new work from established Valley composers for seven years.
Another young musician, Spencer Hattendorf, saxophonist, a graduate from Northfield Mount Hermon School and Wesleyan University, and currently a member of The Rooks, a New York city based band that has released several successful, will be soloist in the Marlor.
Ron Perera, Professor Emeritus at Smith College, and a prize-winning composer who composed suite of poems by Robert Frost on an earlier commission from Da Camera, has been mentoring Ms. Marlor through her composition process.
This concert is supported with grants from the Pelham, Hadley, Northfield, Amherst, Deerfield, Conway and Gill cultural councils.
For further information, call 584-1948 or visit the website at www.dacamerasingers.org
