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Photos by Andy Tullis / The Bulletin
Director Clyde Thompson leads the 40-voice Central
Oregon Mastersingers during last Sunday’s rehearsal
Local voicesCentral Oregon Mastersingers begins its 7th season
By David Jasper / The Bulletin
Published: October 21. 2011 4:00AM PST
The 40-piece Central Oregon Mastersingers will kick off its
seventh season tonight at First Presbyterian Church in
Bend (see “If you go”) with what director Clyde Thompson
promises will be “a big concert.”
Thompson is referring to Morten Lauridsen’s “Lux
Aeterna” and Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms,”
two pieces that he says are widely considered to be
among the greatest choral works by American composers.
“They are certainly two of the most popular,” he said.
They’re part of a program that also includes choral works
by Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Pavel Tschesnokoff and
others.
All in all, the concert has been a “pretty big undertaking,”
Thompson said last week, adding with a chuckle, “It’s a
little bigger even than I realized when we started off.”
Since its premiere in 1997, “Lux Aeterna” has become oneof the most frequently performed choral works in the
world, according to Thompson.
“Lux Aeterna” means “Eternal Light,” he said, and “you
can hear the image of light pervading the whole 25-minute
piece — the textures that Lauridsen creates for the choir
just seem to shimmer. The music has a sort of translucent
quality. It’s a gorgeous work.”
Lauridsen was awarded the National Medal of Arts in a
White House ceremony in 2007, and according to
Thompson, musicologist and conductor Nick Strimple has
called him “the only American composer in history who
can be called a mystic, (whose) probing, serene work
contains an elusive and indefinable ingredient which
leaves the impression that all the questions have been
answered.”
The inimitable Leonard Bernstein composed “Chichester
Psalms” in 1965 for the annual music festival at England’s
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for this weekend’s concert, featuring popular choral
works by American composers Morten Lauridsen and
Leonard Bernstein.
If you go
What: Central Oregon MastersingersWhen: 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday
Where: First Presbyterian Church, 230 N.E. Ninth St.,
Bend
Cost: $15, available in advance at www.co-
mastersingers.com or 541-385-7229 or through Visit
Bend (541-382-8048)
Contact: 541-385-7229 or www.co-mastersingers.com
Chichester Cathedral. “The infectious rhythms and heart-
catching melodies in this three-movement setting of psalm
texts has made it a perennial favorite with both singers
and audiences, and one of Bernstein’s most beloved
compositions,” Thompson wrote in a press release for the
event.
“His music is so passionate and visceral in every way —
melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic — it makes this piece a
great joy to sing as well as to listen to,” Thompson said.
“We’ll be performing it with two pianos and two
percussionists, and a whole battery of percussion
instruments, so it will be quite exciting. James Knox
(director of the Cascade Chorale) will be singing the
countertenor solo in the piece.”
Thompson said the program will be rounded out by other
classics in the choral repertoire: “Works by Vaughan-
Williams, Tschesnokoff, Randall Thompson, Franz Biebl’s great setting of ‘Ave Maria,’ settings of old American hymns byRobert Shaw and Alice Parker and a spiritual by Moses Hogan.
“It’s just gorgeous, gorgeous choral music,” he said of this weekend’s program. “They’re all really standard pieces in the
repertoire, most of them.”
— Reporter: 541-383-0349, [email protected]
Published Daily in Bend Oregon by Western Communications, Inc. © 2011
www.bendbulletin.com