Our Tenth Anniversary Season

Concerts in the Village (CITV) has announced the seven choral, orchestral and chamber music programs which continue its 2019-2020 10th Anniversary Season, from October 12, 2019 to April 26, 2020.

The season began in grand form on July 20th. At the invitation of PS21 in Chatham, CITV’s specially created Chatham Festival Chorus (44 singers drawn from five area choruses), its resident Broad Street Orchestra, and five distinguished soloists performed the monumental Mass in B Minor of J. S. Bach, as the Annual Paul Grunberg Memorial Bach Concert. A full theater responded with great enthusiasm to what may well prove a precedent-setting summer concert – and further extension of CITV’s presence in the region.

CITV Artistic Director David Smith comments, “to have begun our 10th season with the Mass in B Minor was thrilling for performers and listeners alike. This is a work whose performing demands and complexity can be daunting. All rose splendidly to the occasion. To experience the new PS21 Theater in Chatham, the only such venue between SPAC and Tanglewood, was of course special, and this was the largest such program offered there to-date.”

The seven concerts following Bach call upon all three of CITV’s established ensembles: the Broad Street Chorale, the Broad Street Orchestra, and the Broad Street Chamber Players, in addition to guest artists. This season will also be the second to celebrate our special relationship with the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program, with three concerts underwritten by the CITV Emerging Singers Fund. In its first year this initiative, one of few such in the United States, met all of its objectives, to the benefit of both superb talents in the challenging early years of their careers and CITV listeners. For the Anniversary Season we will continue to develop our Bard relationship.”

(PAST) October 12 (Saturday), 4:00pm, Van Buren Hall, Kinderhook. The Broad Street Chamber Players will offer A Brilliant Journey – Classical to Romantic, featuring late 18^th and early 19th c. music for strings and winds. Included will be Mozart’s Flute/Oboe Quartet, K. 285, Beethoven’s String Trio in C Minor, op. 9/3, and Hummel’s Clarinet Quartet in E-flat. Performing will be CITV Concertmaster Elizabeth Silver, violist Ronald Carbone, and Broad Street Orchestra principals cellist Erica Pickhardt, oboist Karen Hosmer, and clarinetist Paul Green. Van Buren Hall, “rediscovered” for music by CITV Artistic Director David Smith about four years ago, has proven acoustically ideal for smaller and mid-size chamber and orchestral music programs.

(PAST) November 10 (Sunday), 3:00pm, Kinderhook Reformed Church, Kinderhook. CITV will present three well-known works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, one of 20th c. Britain’s most important and popular composers: the moving Serenade to Music (1938), The Lark Ascending (1914-1921) for violin and orchestra, with Concertmaster Elizabeth Silver as soloist, and the dramatic oratorio Dona nobis pacem (1936) setting text primarily by Walt Whitman. With the oratorio we will honor the 200th birthday of Whitman. The Broad Street Chorale and the Broad Street Orchestra will be featured, along with soloists Caroline Dunigan and Jon Morrell. Ms. Dunigan has appeared in CITV concerts on three past occasions, to enthusiastic acclaim. Jon Morrell, resident in Chatham but performing internationally, has often appeared on CITV programs, including Schubert’s Winterreise in collaboration with CITV Artistic Director David Smith.

(PAST) November 24 (Sunday), 3:00pm, Van Buren Hall, Kinderhook. Talented singers from the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program join the Broad Street Orchestra in what was during his lifetime Handel’s most frequently performed work, the dramatic pastoral entertainment Acis and Galatea. This popular work was the only opera by Handel never to have left the repertory. This promises to be a very charming and theatrical experience.

February 16 (Sunday), 2020, 3:00pm, at a location to be confirmed. The strings of the Broad Street Orchestra, joined by English hornist Nathaniel Fossner, clarinetist Paul Green and harpist Kathryn Sloat will explore mid-20th c. American music by Samuel Barber, Elliot Carter, Aaron Copland, Irving Fine, Walter Piston and others. Included will be Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, Piston’s Fantasy for English Horn and Harp, and Fine’s Serious Song, Lament. Says David Smith, “Many now neglected treasures created during this important period in American music are long overdue for our attention. I am confident that listeners will be both stimulated and moved.”

March, 2020, at a date, time and location to be confirmed. Members of the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program, joined by the Broad Street Chamber Players, offer music for voices and instrument.

April 5 (Sunday), 2020, 3:00pm, Kinderhook Reformed Church, Kinderhook. The Broad Street Chorale, the Broad Street Orchestra and soloists will present one of the most important and well-known works of Haydn, his dramatic oratorio The Creation (in English). With near Beethovenian intensity this masterpiece depicts the formation of the world as accounted in Genesis, including the creation of man and early experiences of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Says David Smith, “In many respects this musical odyssey marks both the conclusion of the Classical Period and the beginning of the Romantic Period. It does so in exceptional detail, and with remarkably colorful vocal and instrumental writing. The Creation is truly operatic in its scope and will certainly be memorable for all our listeners.”

April 26 (Sunday), 2020, 3:00pm, Kinderhook Reformed Church, Kinderhook. Members of the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program and the Broad Street Orchestra present excerpts from the operas of Mozart. This promises to be an exceptionally spirited afternoon, laced with charm and emotional intensity in a way only Mozart can provide.

Says CITV Artistic Director David Smith, “The eight concerts of our 2019-2020 10 Anniversary Season say much about our uncompromising programming principles, our performing strengths, and our institutional history. The body of talent we gather to accomplish this, nearly all of it regionally resident, has made much possible. The last concert of this 10th Anniversary Season will be our 45 performance. All involved are grateful for the generosity and loyalty of CITV’s growing audiences.”

CITV concerts are made possible with public funds from the Decentralization Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, administered in Columbia, Greene and Schoharie Counties by the Greene County Council on the Arts through the Community Arts Grants Fund. Generous funding has also been received from the Hudson River Bank and Trust Company Foundation, T. Backer Fund, Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation, Stewart’s Shops, and The Price Chopper Golub Foundation, as well as from many individual and business supporters. Kinderhook Reformed Church is especially acknowledged for its many in-kind donations.