Our 82nd Season

Details

Music – The Universal Language

Renewal 

Music of the Americas

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Saint John Brebeuf Church, Niles, Illinois

 

Music for Social Change – Africa, America, and the Singing Revolution of Estonia

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Regina Dominican High School, Wilmette, Illinois

 

Requiem – Britain and France

Sunday, June 3, 2018

Requiem (Bob Chilcott) and Requiem (Gabriel Fauré)

Saint John Brebeuf Church, Niles, Illinois

 

Our 82nd Season: 2017-2018

The theme of our 82nd season, “Music – The Universal Language,” explored how music allows us to communicate across linguistic and cultural boundaries. By engaging with music from four continents; taking inspiration from the massive singing demonstrations which helped return independence to the Baltic States; and through two uplifting interpretations of the Requiem, we are reminded of how music reaches deep into our common human experience.

Our November concert, “Music of the Americas,” presented a wide variety of music that is influenced by the composers’ roots in their respective countries. We were joined by mezzo-soprano Christianne Rushton and cellist Francisco L. Malespin. From the sun-soaked summers in Brazil celebrated in the lively Alma Llanera and Verano Porteno, to the pristine winters of Canada, evoked in Sarah Quartel’s Snow Angel, musicians and audience alike enjoyed the diverse compositional standpoints expressed in this glorious music.

The second concert in NSCS’s 82nd season, “Music for Social Change: Africa, America, and the Singing Revolution of Estonia,” celebrated the power of music as a vehicle for expressing that which cannot be expressed any other way: the forbidden music of one’s own homeland, sung by crowds defying an empire; music to promote healthy actions in the face of an epidemic; music that energizes and amplifies the causes of civil rights, human rights, and the environment. For this concert we collaborated with Mollie Stone, educator, conductor, and expert on Black South African Music, along with special guests The Chicago Children’s Choir Hyde Park Presto Ensemble.

Our final concert of the season offered two settings of the Requiem, one by 19th-century French composer Gabriel Fauré, and the other by contemporary British composer Bob Chilcott.  Both works feature peaceful, contemplative settings of the ancient text of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead. The concert with full orchestra and chorus featured past Donald Chen Young Artist Awardwinners Kateri Gormley, soprano; Ryan Townsend Strand, tenor; and Kyle Sackett, baritone. With these two related, yet distinctive pieces, we closed our 82nd season by pointing towards light, hope, and peace.