Department of Music

• Friday, April 3rd, 2009
• Old Cabell Hall
• 8:00pm
• Free

The UVa Chamber Singers present their Spring 2009 Concert on Friday April 3rd, at 8:00 pm in Old Cabell Hall Auditorium. Free of charge to the public, the concert will feature music from the Italian Baroque.

During the Baroque period, Italy became the center for musical innovation and stylistic influence. With the introduction of basso continuo and the expansion of the concertato medium, Italian composers departed from older church music traditions based on strict counterpoint, infusing their music with greater vitality, dramatic contrasts, and heightened text expression. The concert will display this stylistic development through the performance of Italian Baroque masterpieces, including Exsultate Justi by Ludovico da Viadana, Beatus Vir by Claudio Monteverdi, and Magnificat by Antonio Vivaldi. The program will also include Romantic choral works by Johannes Brahms and Camille Saint-Saëns and 20th century works by Hugo Distler. Matthew Harris, and Nils Lindberg. Led by UVa visiting faculty conductor Dirk Johnson, the concert will feature soloists from the Chamber Singers performing vocal works from the Romantic period, accompanied by David Norfrey.

Founded in the spring of 2005, the UVa Chamber Singers are a select subset of the University Singers, and perform a wide variety of music for chamber choir ranging from early music to contemporary compositions. Recent performances have included the Palestrina Missa Brevis, Bach’s Cantata 150, Schubert’s Mass in G, Brahms’ Neue Liebeslieder Waltzes, Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia, standards by Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern, and new music by Meredith Monk and Eric Whitacre.

The concert is offered free of charge to the public.