Kathleen Turner to Appear with New York Choral Society at Carnegie Hall, Today

By: Apr. 25, 2013
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Award-winning stage and screen star Kathleen Turner will introduce Ralph Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony at Carnegie Hall tonight, April 25 with a reading of the moving and evocative text written by the American poet Walt Whitman.

"We are thrilled to have Kathleen Turner join us in this performance," said David Hayes, music director of the NYCS. "With her extraordinary talent and exquisite sense of drama, Kathleen's reading of Walt Whitman's majestic text will set the stage perfectly for Vaughan Williams's choral masterpiece. We are honored to share the stage at Carnegie Hall with Kathleen Turner and delighted to offer our audience this unique and memorable experience."

The NYCS will begin its concert with a performance of Beethoven's exquisite tone poem, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, a setting of two poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In striving to evoke the contrasting moods of those poems, Beethoven wrote some of his most descriptive and evocative music. The magnificence of the work lies not only in Beethoven's extraordinary ability to paint vivid pictures-of still winds, rippling waves, stirring swells, and massive gusts-but also in his understanding of the power of transformation, expressed masterfully in this work.

The Beethoven work will be followed by A Sea Symphony, Ralph Vaughan Wiliiams's first large-scale work for chorus and orchestra and one of the composer's most powerful and beloved compositions. Prior to the musical performance of this expansive choral symphony by NYCS, Kathleen Turner will read a selection of the Whitman poetry on which the Symphony is based.

A truly monumental work, A Sea Symphony encompasses a vast range of emotion and musical experience, from the exultant full-chorus opening to the buoyant articulation of turbulent wind and waves, to the haunting nocturne and the lyrical, visionary finale. Inspired by the power and majesty of the ocean, Vaughan Williams presents the sea as a symbol of mankind's shared sense of life and purpose, and expresses ocean travel as a metaphor for the universal journey of self-discovery.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
David Hayes, Music Director and Conductor

David Hayes is a conductor with an unusually broad range of repertory, spanning the symphonic, oratorio/choral, and operatic genres. His role as music director of the New York Choral Society complements his existing roles as music director of The Philadelphia Singers; music director of the Mannes Orchestra; and staff conductor of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra.

For the past ten years, Maestro Hayes served as a member of the conducting staff of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also served as a cover conductor for the New York Philharmonic, as well as for Sir André Previn on the Curtis Symphony Orchestra's 1999 European tour with the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter.

Recent guest conducting engagements have included leading Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore for Opera Memphis, Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, and the East Coast premiere performances of Tan Dun's Tea: A Mirror of Soul for the Opera Company of Philadelphia, as well as conducting the finals of the Fulbright Piano Competition with the Artosphere Festival Orchestra.

Past seasons have included concerts with such significant ensembles as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra 2001, Curtis Opera Theatre, European Center for Opera and Vocal Art, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Washington Chorus, Louisiana Philharmonic, Berkshire Choral Festival, and the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.

Trained as a violinist and violist, Maestro Hayes received his Bachelor of Music in musicology from the University of Hartford and a Diploma in Orchestral Conducting from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Otto-Werner Mueller. He also studied with Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School. He served on the Board of Directors of Chorus America from 2000 to 2009.

Jennifer Forni, soprano

Praised for her "warm, gleaming lyric soprano" voice (Washington Post), Jennifer Forni is an American soprano on the rise. Ms. Forni made her Metropolitan Opera debut in February 2013 in the Met's new production of Wagner's Parsifal, which will be broadcast in HD in movie theaters around the world in March 2013.

Ms. Forni joined the New York City Opera in 2011. She recently appeared as Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen with the Springfield Regional Opera. The Springfield News-Leader said of that performance: "Forni drew sustained applause from the large opening night crowd with her vibrant, full-throated duet with Jose....The ovation that greeted her curtain call was rightly deserved." Other operatic engagements include appearances as a member of both the Portland Opera Studio and the prestigious Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program, as well as the Opera Theater of St. Louis and the Maryland Opera Studio. Concert engagements include performances of Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Mahler's Symphony No. 2, Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony, and Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs.

Ms. Forni attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park, where she was selected by Marilyn Horn to represent the university in The Song Continues . . . master class series at Carnegie Hall.

Jordan Shanahan, Baritone

Brian Kellow, in the March 2013 issue of Opera News, says: "Jordan Shanahan has a natural gift: He instinctively knows how to let the music breathe...yet his warm lyric baritone always has a delicate edge that stays with you." A recent graduate of the Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Mr. Shanahan, a native of Hawaii, has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in Philip Glass' Satyagraha, John Adams's Dr. Atomic, and in this season's production of Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet.

Other opera engagements include appearances at the Santa Fe Opera, Netherlands Opera, Opera Cleveland, Orlando Opera, Opera Memphis, and Teatro di San Carlo Napoli. The Orlando Sentinel said of Mr.Shanahan's performance in Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, "Jordan Shanahan's powerful baritone and equally strong acting skills bring haunting life to the condemned anti-hero.... It's a truly memorable performance."

On the concert stage, Mr. Shanahan has appeared with Musica Angelica, the National Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition, he has enjoyed success as a recitalist in the United States and Europe.

Mr. Shanahan is a graduate of the University of Hawaii, where he studied trombone and composition. He earned his Master's degree from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Kathleen Turner, Special Guest Appearance

Kathleen Turner is well known for her many starring film roles, including Body Heat (Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year), The Man With Two Brains, Crimes of Passion, Romancing the Stone (Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy), The Jewel of the Nile, The War of the Roses (Golden Globe nomination), Prizzi's Honor (Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy), Peggy Sue Got Married (Academy Award and Golden Globe nomination), Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Serial Mom, and The Virgin Suicides, among many others.

Ms. Turner also has won critical acclaim for her outstanding stage performances on and off Broadway, where she starred in The Killing of Sister George, Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, High, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Exonerated, The Graduate, Tallulah, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, among others. Her theater directing credits include Crimes of the Heart for New York City's Roundabout Theater Company and The Killing of Sister George at the Long Wharf Theater.

Kathleen Turner is active in a number of human rights causes. She serves as Chair of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Board of Advocates and appears frequently on their behalf. She is an advocate and a board member for the People for the American Way, an organization that works to protect the heart of democracy and the soul of the nation. She is also is an advocate and board member of Citymeals-on- Wheels, and an advocate and supporter of Childhelp USA and Amnesty International.

The New York Choral Society (NYCS), founded in 1958, has become known by audiences and critics for the quality of its performances and the diversity of its repertoire, which encompasses well-known choral masterworks as well as many compositions rarely heard in concert halls. The 180-voice symphonic chorus has been widely recognized for its outstanding performances at prestigious music venues around the world.

For more than half a century, NYCS has enriched the cultural life of New York City by performing a rich variety of choral music from classic to contemporary pieces, including newly commissioned works, to some 10,000 people per year; and by fostering interest and participation in choral music through education and community outreach, especially to children. Since 1984, the singers of the NYCS have also served as "ambassadors of music" abroad, with many concert tours to Italy, Austria, China, France, Israel, Mexico, Croatia, Greece, and the Czech Republic. In June and July of last year, the NYCS gave three concerts in Sicily, performing to enthusiastic audiences at the Piazza del Duomo in Cefalù, the Basilica in Montalbano, and the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania.

Tickets are $30-$80. To purchase tickets, call CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800. Tickets may also be purchased at www.nychoral.org or www.carnegiehall.org, or at the Carnegie Hall box office at 57th Street & 7th Avenue.

PROGRAM

APRIL 25, 2013, 8:00 p.m.
Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage

Beethoven's Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony
New York Choral Society
David Hayes, Music Director and Conductor

With orchestra
Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Ludwig van Beethoven

A Sea Symphony Ralph Vaughan Williams Soloists: Jennifer Forni, Soprano; Jordan Shanahan, Baritone

Kathleen Turner will introduce Ralph Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony with a reading of the moving and evocative text written by the American poet Walt Whitman.



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