SJSU Choraliers in Concert

Presented by The Santa Cruz Chorale

Sunday, March 20 at 4 p.m. • Holy Cross Church, 123 High Street, Santa Cruz
Dr. Jeffrey Benson, Director

The Santa Cruz Chorale is thrilled to host the SJSU Choraliers, known for their exquisite blend and masterful musicianship.

The SJSU Choraliers will present an exceptional afternoon of music featuring selections from Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir, as well as music from the Renaissance and modern times. Although composed in 1922, the Frank Martin Mass was not released for publication or performance until 1963. To quote the British composer and lecturer Phillip A. Cooke from 2010, “A work of such searing beauty and luminescence should surely have not sat in a drawer gathering dust whilst the world was crying out for more sacred masterpieces to rival Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater.”

In addition to Frank Martin’s Mass the Choraliers will treat the audience to a wide variety of pieces. From “As Vesta was from Latmos Hill Descending” by the famous 16th century madrigalist, Thomas Weelkes, to “Ave maris stella,” the contemporary masterpiece by Trond Kverno and “Tykus Tykus” by the award-winning Lithuanian composer, Vaclovas Augustinas, the Choraliers will demonstrate their musical agility and range. Two works, by young composers Greg Jasperse and Jake Runestad, use unusual vocal sounds and rhythms to create unexpected auditory landscapes.

As is the tradition when hosting a guest choir, both the Choraliers and the Santa Cruz Chorale will join voices under Dr. Benson’s baton for works by Jacob Gallus and James Erb.

The San José State University Choraliers have been considered one of America’s preeminent chamber choirs for the past 40 years. Currently under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey Benson, the Choraliers have most recently performed with The Rolling Stones, Josh Groban, Dionne Warwick, Andrea Bocelli, the Los Angeles Festival Orchestra and the Skywalker Orchestra, and give four major concerts a year in the San José area. They will be touring throughout California and Europe in 2016, singing in Dublin and Limerick, Ireland.

The Choraliers have produced seven critically acclaimed compact discs entitled Together, Gaudete, Vidu, Virtuosi, Encore, and their two most recent, Experience and A Choraliers Christmas.

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The Santa Cruz Chorale, a community based non-profit organization founded in 1983, performs a wide-ranging repertoire including works from the 14th century through music of the 21st century. Although several members of the Chorale are professional musicians and some direct musical groups of their own, all volunteer their time, and most are amateurs in the original sense of that word: people who seriously pursue an art for the love of it.

Christian Grube, Artistic Director and Conductor of the Santa Cruz Chorale, is emeritus professor of choral conducting at the Berlin University of Arts. You can find out more about Director Christian Grube at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Grube.

Tickets: General $25, Seniors $20, Students $5 http://santacruzchorale.org/ or (831) 427-8023