[nfbmi-talk] {Disarmed} Fw: Ann Arbor Cantata Singers 2012

[Mary Ann Robinson]

Way to go, Terri!
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From: "trising" <trising at sbcglobal.net>
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Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 3:21 PM
Subject: [nfbmi-talk] {Disarmed} Fw: Ann Arbor Cantata Singers 2012



----- Original Message ----- 
From: trising
To: trising
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 12:23 PM
Subject: Ann Arbor Cantata Singers 2012


Ann Arbor Cantata Singers 2012
Feel the love
by James Leonard

posted 5/18/2012

While it was well attended-seventy-some folks gathered in St. Paul's 
Lutheran Church on Liberty on a sunny February ­afternoon-the Ann Arbor 
Cantata Singers' concert called Serenades and Nocturnes still seemed very 
intimate. Partly it was the program: all love songs, nine for chorus, six 
for soloists. Partly it was the audience, made up mostly of friends, family, 
and lovers. Partly it was the size of the chorus: two tenors, six basses, 
and seven each of sopranos and altos. Mostly it was the Cantata Singers 
themselves. Whether trained or untrained, each clearly loved singing, loved 
the repertoire, loved each other, and loved the audience there to hear them.

One could feel the love in the warm harmonies of the Brahms choral songs 
that opened each half of the concert, in the blend of the passionate women 
and the doughty men as they embraced Brahms' romantic melodies. True, the 
tenors did sound a tad thin in exposed passages, but there were only two of 
them and they had to hold up their end against unfair odds. And true, the 
group's performances of madrigals by Arcadelt, Gibbons, and Wilbye did 
sometimes go a bit off pitch toward the ends of longer sections. But their 
performances of the Elgar songs that ended the first half were as beautiful 
as their Brahms and perhaps even more heartfelt.

And one could certainly feel the love in the solo songs. Bass Rob Northrup 
sang Fred Coots's "You Go to My Head" with such sincerity that one suspects 
he was singing for soprano Quincy Northup. Soprano Alicia Verdier-Hammonds 
gave her all to Douglas Moore's "Willow Song," and the program notes that 
she "is loving the opportunity to sing with her girlfriend, Maggie." But it 
was bass Tom Lloyd, a U-M pediatrics professor with four kids, who impressed 
most as a soloist when he turned in an ardent, impeccable, and quite droll 
version of Schubert's amusing "An die Leier."

What impressed most in the whole concert was the

...continued below...

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final number: Vaughan Williams' ecstatic "Serenade to Music" featured a 
performance to match the music. These melodies are more lush and the 
harmonies more sensuous than even those in the Brahms, and under conductor 
Warren Puffer Jones's expert direction, the Cantata Singers delivered a 
deeply moving performance, particularly the clarion solo work from soprano 
Terri Wilcox, who, the program notes, enjoys riding roller coasters with her 
husband.

The Cantata Singers' next concert will be a season-closing lollapalooza, 
Haydn's The Creation, which they'll perform three times in May: at the First 
United Methodist Church in Brighton on the 18th, at Christ Church Cranbrook 
on the 19th, and back in Ann Arbor on the 20th at the First Congregational 
Church.

If the February concert was the Singers' idea of love, I'd like to hear 
their notion of creation.
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