Great Poetry In Music

DANBURY — Danbury Music Centre will sponsor “Dreamers of Dreams: Great Poetry in Music,” a concert by Danbury Concert Chorus, on Sunday, November 12. The concert will begin at 2:30 pm at St Joseph Church, 370 Main Street. Admission is free, thanks to a donation from Nancy and Alton Eckert.

The 100-voice chorus is under the direction of Richard Price, who has been its music director and conductor since 2002. He resides on Candlewood Isle in New Fairfield and is president and senior producer of Candlewood Digital, a Connecticut based company of classical recording specialists. His work was nominated for two Grammy awards in 2006.

Danbury Concert Chorus will be accompanied by Maxim Vladimiroff, pianist and harpsichordist, and by Sara Cutler, principal harpist in both the New York City Ballet Orchestra and American Symphony Orchestra.

Maxim Vladimiroff will also perform “Galiarda,” by William Byrd on the Bettina Baruch Memorial Harpsichord.  This instrument was recently purchased by Danbury Music Centre with a generous grant from the Bettina Baruch Foundation and with funds from The music center’s Tribute Fund. Mr Vladimiroff, a composer and the accompanist of Danbury Concert Chorus, resides in Brookfield.

The chorus will perform selections that use poetry as the text of the music. “Dreamers of Dreams,” the title of the concert, is from Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy (1844-1881), and was set to music in 2003 by composer Gwyneth Walker.

Other musical selections are by Brahms, Byrd, Thompson, Harris and others, and use poetry written by William Shakespeare, the German romanticists, American and Irish traditional poems, and the 23rd  Psalm attributed to King David.  The concert will also include two settings of 20th Century American poems” Sara Teasdale’s “There Will Be Rest,” set to music by Frank Ticheli, and Jane Kenyon’s “Let Evening Come,” set to music by Brian Hughes.

Much of the music on this program was written in the last decade; nine selections will be sung in Danbury for the first time.

Morton Siegel, a resident of Danbury, will read the poems. He was active in radio broadcasting for 60 years in New York, Connecticut, Maryland and Virginia, and was Danbury’s theater critic for 23 years.

For additional information about this concert or joining the chorus, call Danbury Music Centre at 748-1716.