The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: The Madison Choral Project will sing and celebrate young people’s “Hope for the Future” at its concerts this Saturday night and Sunday afternoon

December 13, 2018
Leave a Comment

IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.

By Jacob Stockinger

Christmas is for the children, goes the old saying — and in more than one way such as gift-giving. The birth of Jesus represents the birth of hope and salvation in Christianity.

Other holiday traditions can claim the same — the extra light theme of Hanukkah in Judaism and the harvest theme of the African celebration of Kwanzaa, for example — and of course the New Year will soon be here with its promise of hope and change.

Now the critically acclaimed and professional Madison Choral Project (below top, in a photo by Ilana Natasha) and its founder, artistic director and conductor Albert Pinsonneault – who used to teach at Edgewood College and now works at Northwestern University near Chicago while living in Madison – has taken that saying to a new level and given it new meaning.

You can hear the results for yourself this Saturday night, Dec. 15, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday afternoon, Dec, 16, at 3 p.m. in Madison, and at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday night, Dec. 18, in Milwaukee.

The Madison performances are at Christ Presbyterian Church, 944 East Gorham Street. The Milwaukee performance is at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 812 Jackson St.

Tickets are $24 in advance online; $28 at the door. Students with ID are $10. Preferred seating is $40.

The theme of the sixth holiday concert by MCP is “Hope in the Future,” which is relevant at any time but seems particularly so this year. So it includes specially commissioned writings by young people, middle school and high school students from grades 6 through 12. Their work will be read by Noah Ovshinsky (below), the news director at Wisconsin Public Radio.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, so The Ear wants instead to direct you to a fine story about the MCP concert by reporter Gayle Worland for The Wisconsin State Journal.

There you will find out much more about the identities of the young writers, with a couple of examples of their work, and the inspiration or background of the theme that Pinsonneault (below) came up with.

Here is a link:

https://madison.com/wsj/entertainment/music/madison-choral-project-offers-young-vision-of-hope/article_9aff921e-2446-51d7-9c8c-5195e41f4b32.html

Unfortunately, what you will not find in that story or at the MCP’s home web page is the music program. No composers or specific works are mentioned.

But judging from past performances, you can count on outstanding repertoire of both classics and new music.

For more information about the MCP and its past concerts as well as it personnel and singers, go to: http://themcp.org

Here is a sample of the outstanding work by the Madison Choral Project:


Posted in Classical music
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,232 other subscribers

    Blog Stats

    • 2,496,807 hits