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| Kapa'au
- 19 April 2008 -
7pm Kalahikiola Church Hall at the Bond Estate (map - pdf) Waimea/Kamuela - 20 April 2008 - 5pm Davies Memorial Chapel - HPA Upper Campus (map - pdf) The Four Elements - I: Water Flyer (pdf) The Waimea Consort is back
in concert with the first program in a cycle devoted to the Four
Elements that will extend over the next eighteen months.
The 12-member vocal ensemble will perform under the direction of Dr Christian Veillet, who is also the Director of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. This first concert, entitled “The Four Elements Cycle: Water”, will feature a cappella vocal music related one way or another to some form of water, from rain to rivers, from ocean to tears, spread over centuries and bringing texts from all over Europe and the US. Our musical journey will start at a fountain where poor Damon is complaining about Daphne’s disdain in a song by the Flemish composer Waelrant. We will then visit the banks of the rivers of Babylon with the Psalm 137 in two renderings, one in French by poet Clement Marot and composer Goudimel, and the other in Latin by Roland de Lassus. With the Italian composer Palestrina, we will hear the last words of a young shepherd dying of grief on the banks of the Tiber. Marenzio will bring a more joyful mood with another Italian madrigal celebrating the joy of love on the banks of an unnamed, but welcoming, river. Monteverdi will close our visit to XVIth century Italy with a five-part masterpiece describing the breathtaking beauty of dawn over the sea. After water
flowing in rivers,
tears will flow in a sad, but very moving, English madrigal on eyes
weeping by
John Bennet. Two German composers, Schütz and Schein, will bring
us to the
XVIIth century with more tears, though this time ending in joyful way
as “those
who sow in tears will reap in joy.” Next
stop will be England to hear the torrents in summer, thanks to
Elgar, and sleet, hail and swelling billows on the lee shore in a
stunning piece
by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The concert will end with a contemporary
piece on
the noise of waters by American composer Jonathan Adams and a modern
arrangement of an old English ballad. A couple of watery surprises will
also be
added to the program! This concert will be one more opportunity to discover the many facets of a cappella music through the diversity of musical styles and the wide range of emotions that can be carried by only a few voices singing in harmony. |
| 2006 |
| Waimea/Kamuela
-Wednesday,
20 December 2006 - 7pm Davies Memorial Chapel - HPA Upper Campus A (mostly) 16th Century Christmas The 12-singer a cappella
vocal ensemble, under the direction of Dr Christian Veillet, is back
for a Christmas Concert in Waimea on December 20. The program will feature mostly 16th Century
a cappella Christmas choral music. This is the end of the Renaissance
period, with already some glimpses to what became the Baroque era. The
core of the program will feature composers all born between 1500 and
1565, who will make us travel all over Europe (Venice, Munich, Seville,
Rome, Amsterdam and London) with a trip abroad to Mexico! To celebrate
the Christmas season, the Consort will perform four- to
eight-part compositions by well known composers such as Byrd and
Palestrina and also less known, though very talented, like Sweelink or
Eccard. |
|
Hilo - Friday, 15 September 2006 - 7pm First United Protestant Church - 1350 Waianuenue Avenue Waimea/Kamuela -Sunday, 17 September 2006 - 5pm Davies Memorial Chapel - HPA Upper Campus Sounds of Noise The 12-singer a cappella vocal ensemble, under the direction of Dr Christian Veillet, is back in concert on September 15 in Hilo and September 17 in Waimea. “Sounds of Noise” will actually be all about noise, featuring songs about noise or noises morphed into songs. Don’t be fooled though: Through the talent of composers or poets, noises are transformed from cacophony to harmony, to the delight of our ears! The concert will start with
pieces by Janequin, one of the most famous XVIth Century French
chansons
composers. The noises of the battlefield, cannons, swords, drums,
fifes, become
amazing sounds and intricate harmonies in La
Guerre, describing the Battle of Marignano in 1515. In Les
Cris de Paris, the master of imitating music leads the audience
into a walk in the streets of With Paschal de l’Estocart, who
composed the music for the Psalms for the Huguenots in the XVIth
Century, we
hear our first song about noise: an intense composition on Psalm 2, Pourquoy font bruit. From the tumult of
nations, we move to the murmur of the waves and the soft song of birds
in one
of Monteverdi’s most achieved madrigals, Ecco
mormorar l’onde, a 5-part piece on a poem by Torquato Tasso with an interesting double entendre on the
name of the lady the poet
was in love with. Back to the noises of war
with an 8-part composition by Banchieri entitled La
Battaglia, a XVIIth Century Italian rendering of yet another
battlefield, followed by two little catches by Purcell and a
performance
through voices without words of the Aria from the third Suite by J.S.
Bach. The program will end with
poems on noise by Emily Dickinson and James Joyce on music by Scriabine
or J.
Adams, and two songs composed by Poulenc on the sound of dancing clogs
and
weaver’s shuttles. With a few more songs to be
discovered at the time of the concert, this program, made of amazing
music most
likely never heard live on our As usual, this
concert is
free and donations are welcome to help the Consort, a 501c3
organization,
organize free concerts around the |
|
18 February 2006 - 5pm - First United Protestant Church, Hilo 19 February 2006 - 4pm - Davies Memorial Chapel, HPA Upper Campus, Waimea ______________________ From Dunstable and Purcell to Barber and Tavener A program of a cappella music from England and the USA In keeping with
its tradition of bringing rarely
heard a cappella vocal music to the The program will open with a piece by John Dunstable, considered as the most significant English composer of the early Fifteenth Century. His compositions mark the transition from medieval to modern sonorities and the contrast of his “Descendi in ortum meum” with Thomas Tallis’ “O Nata Lux”, written one century later, is indeed striking. Coming next will be Tallis’s student William Byrd, a contemporary of Shakespeare said to be the greatest English composer, with a beautiful setting of “Miserere mei, Deus”. Moving to a third generation of master-student relationship, Thomas Tomkins, one of Byrd’s pupils, will be next with “When David heard”, a very expressive and moving 5-part song depicting the mourning of David for his son. Tomkins, though composing in the first decades of the Seventeenth Century, was still a Renaissance composer, not influenced at all by the emergence of the Baroque style that Henri Purcell prominently personified in the English music a few decades later. If Purcell is famous for his instrumental and theatre music, especially “Dido and Aenea”, one of the finest operas of the 17th century, he is less known for his a cappella compositions of sacred anthems. The Consort will perform two of them: “Lord, how long will Thou be angry?” a 5-part song using excerpts from Psalm 79, and “Hear my prayer, O Lord”, offering three minutes of exquisite 8-part harmonization on a single verse (the first) of Psalm 102. It is time to
move in time and space, more
precisely to The concert was
a real success, the best performance so far. Audience was sparse in
Hilo (difficult to build an audiance far from our base) and was the
largest we ever got in Waimea. |