The Head-Royce School Presents Its Winter Concert
featuring
Carmina Burana
by Carl Orff
Regents Theater, Holy Names University,
3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland, CA
Robert Wells Choral Director Ric Zappa Instrumental Director
Counterpoint
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, 1st Mov*t.......................................J.
S. Bach (1685-1750)
Concerto Grosso in A Minor, Op. 3 No. 8, 1st Mov't......Antonio
Vivaldi (1678-1741)
Christina Hsu and Ramya Parameswaran, Violins
Cantabile
Messe Brève........................................................................Léo
Delibes (1836-1891)
Daniel Walden Violin I Ramya Parameswaran Violin II
Yaeir Heber Viola Sara Lempert Cello
I Kyrie
II Gloria
III Sanctus
IV Agnus Dei
Sidney Matthews and Madeleine Nelson, Soloists
Colla Voce
Liebeslieder Walzer,
Op. 52 (selections)..................Johannes
Brahms (1833-1897)
Kim Rankin and Renée
Witon Piano four hands
Nr. 1 Rede, Madchen, allzu liebes (Speak, dearest maiden)
Nr. 2 Am Gesteine rauscht die flut (Upon the rocks the high tide
breaks)
Nr. 3 O die Frauen (Oh women)
Nr. 4 Wie des Abends schöne Röte (Like the evening’s
beautiful sunset)
Nr. 5 Die grüne Hopfenranke (The green hop-vine)
Nr. 7 Wohl schön bewandt war es (How very pleasant it used
to be)
Alysha Bedig/Lauren Skinner Alto Soloist
Nr. 8 Wenn so lind dein Auge mir (When your eyes so gently)
Nr. 9 Am Donaustrande (On the Danube*s bank)
Nr. 10 O wie sanft die Quelle sich (Oh how gently the stream)
Nr. 11 Nein, es ist nicht auszukommen (No, it is impossible to get
along)
Nr. 13 Vögelein durchrauscht die Luft (A little bird rushes
through the air)
Nr. 17 Nicht wandle, mein Licht (Don*t wander, my light)
Justin Louie Tenor Soloist
Nr. 18 Es bebet das Gesträuche (The bushes tremble)
|
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune,
Empress of the World)
1. O Fortuna (O Fortune)
2. Fortuna plango vulnera (I bemoan the wounds of Fortune)
Part I Primo vere (Spring)
3. Veris leta Facies (The merry face of spring)
4. Omnia sol temperat (The sun warms everything)
5. Ecce gratum (Behold, the pleasant spring) Uf dem anger (On
the Green)
6. Tanz (Dance)
7. Floret silva (The noble woods are burgeoning)
8. Chramer, gip die varwe mir (Shopkeeper, give me colour)
9. Reie (Round dance) Swaz hie gat umbe (Those who go round and
round) Chume, chum geselle min (Come, come, my love) Swaz hie
gat umbe (Those who go round and round)
10. Were diu werlt alle min (If all the world were mine)
Part II In Taberna (In the Tavern)
11. Estuans interius (Burning inside)
12. Olim lacus colueram (Once I lived on lakes)
13. Ego sum abbas (I am the abbot)
14. In taberna quando sumus (When we are in the tavern)
Part III Cour d*amours (The Court of Love)
15. Amor volat undique (Cupid flies everywhere)
16. Dies, nox et omnia (Day, night and everything)
17. Stetit puella (A girl stood)
18. Circa mea pectora (In my heart)
19. Si puer cum puellula (If a boy with a girl)
20. Veni, veni, venias (Come, come, O come)
21. In trutina (In the balance)
22. Tempus et iocundum (This is the joyful time)
23. Dulcissime (Sweetest one) Blanziflor et Helena (Blanchefluer
and Helen)
24. Ave formosissima (Hail, most beautiful one)
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, Empress
of the World)
25. O Fortuna (O, Fortune)
PROFILES
Lara
Bruckmann
Lara has sung and acted on many Bay Area stages, including the Plush
Room, Palace of Fine Arts, New
Conservatory Theatre Center, The Legion of Honor, Scottish Rite Temple,
EXIT, ODC, Venue Nine, New Langton Arts, Jazz House, and Ruby Skye.
Her many acting and musical theater credits include Man of La Mancha,
Into the Woods, They're Playing Our Song, The Lights, Don't Dress
for Dinner, and Bye Bye Birdie. Lara has performed with the Pforzheimer
Opera, at the Colorado Lyric Theatre Festival, and has placed in competitions
hosted by West Bay Opera, East Bay Opera League, and NATS. Lara is
member of Volti, a 20-voice chamber choir that performs exclusively
20th-Century and new music. Last September, Lara premiered her original
one-act cabaret style play "divagation: an internal cabaret"
at the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Lara is now spending much of
her energy developing a new show with the saucy cabarettrio Gilkulture.
Lara teaches private voice lessons, directs elementary and middle
school choirs for the Oakland Youth Chorus. She is also founder and
director emeritus of Arts First Oakland. Lara holds degrees from Rice
University and The New England Conservatory.
John
Minagro
A versatile John Minágro is frequently seen in many genre of
vocal music including Opera, Oratorio, Concert and Musical Theater.
Theater credits include the major roles in Applause, Li'l Abner, The
Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Guido in Nine, and Man of La Mancha. A NATS First
Place division winner, he has performed the title roles in Gianni
Schicchi, Aleko, Ruslan and Ludmila, and Noyes Fludde. John has performed
chorus or solo work in locations from Lincoln Center in New York,
to the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle, and locally at the Concord Pavilion.
He was the laced and coifed figure Don Attilio in the San Francisco
tour of The Phantom of the Opera, which played for five- years at
the Curran Theater from December 1993 to 1998. He has also been the
guest soloist with the San Francisco Symphony at their Summer Broadway
Pops Concert.
Sarah
Noll
Sarah Noll is in her sixth year as the lower school music teacher
at Head-Royce. She is also the director of Da Capo, the lower school
choir of fourth and fifth graders. After majoring in piano in college,
she began to work as a musician for dancers. Sarah is trained in dance
and mime. She began teaching movement and music to children in New
York City and discovered the Orff-Schuwerk approach to teaching music.
She has performed with an adult Orff performance group, Xephyr, for
the last ten years and has participated in the summer course of the
Orff institute in Salzburg, Austria. Sarah taught the movement component
of the Orff training course at Mills College in 2003 and has presented
Orff workshops for California Association of Independent Schools and
at Orff conferences.
Kim
Rankin
Kim Rankin received her training in piano and conducting at Duke University
and U. C. Berkeley. She has been active in the Bay Area for several
years as a choral conductor, accompanist, singer, and musical theater
director. She is currently the Director of Music Ministry at the First
Unitarian Church of Oakland.
Robert
Wells
Mr. Wells received his vocal performance training from the New England
Conservatory and a conducting degree from San Jose State University.
Mr. Wells currently conducts five Head-Royce choirs and is in his
twelfth year as the vocal music director. The Head-Royce Chorus, Colla
Voce and Cantabile all received gold awards at the Anaheim Heritage
Festival in May, 1999, and all three ensembles participated in the
Heritage Festival of Gold in Salt Lake City in May, 2000. The Chorus
and Colla Voce each received unanimous superior ratings at the California
Music Educator*s Association Choral Festival in San Jose May, 2003.
In addition to his choral music responsibilities, Mr. Wells is the
ninth grade dean of students at Head-Royce School.
Renée
Witon
Renée Witon is the primary accompanist at Head-Royce and maintains
a private piano studio at her home in Oakland. Renée also teaches
music theory for the San Francisco Girls Chorus and is the Assistant
Music Director at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland. She has recorded
and produced her own CD of classical piano music, available at CDBaby.com.
Renée enjoys co-hosting a weekly radio classical music program
on 90.3 KUSF, Classics Without Walls.
Ric
Zappa
Ric is in his tenth year as instrumental director at the Head-Royce
School. He received his BA from Hunter College and MA in Composition
from Mills College. He studied composition with Louie Martin, Myron
Fink, and Louise Talma; contempory composition with Larry Polansky;
and jazz composition with Anthony Braxton. Ric is founder and former
director of the Oakland Civic Orchestra, former conductor and artistic
director of the Diablo Valley College Orchestra, and former faculty
member of the San Francisco Girl*s Chorus. His works are published
by Seesaw Music Corporation.
PROGRAM NOTES
Johann Sebastian Bach's
Third Brandenburg Concerto in G Major is scored for three groups of
violins, three groups of violas and three cellos; the tuttis are written
in three parts, each of these subdividing into three in the first
movement; the form of the first movement is tripartite, and its principal
musical figure consists of three notes supported by quavers moving
in thirds. The work has often been described as a fanatical obsession
with numbers or a reflection on the Trinity. However, it seems likely
that the first movement of the concerto was conceived as an all-embracing
musical portrayal of the speculative series of three octaves which,
to the music theorists and philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, represented the nine orders of Angels in the Empyrean Heaven,
the nine Spheres of the Ethereal Heaven and the nine regions of the
Elemental World.
The Concerto Grosso, No. 8,
from Antonio Vivaldi's Estro Armonico, op. 3, which
appeared in 1715, earned the distinction - together with Nos. 3, 9,
10, 11, and 12 - of being arranged or transcribed by Johann Sebastian
Bach. Bach adapted it for organ. The task, moreover, was accomplished
with unusual faithfulness to the original, without disturbing the
number of bars or transposition into a different key. The concerto
in one of the noblest of Vivaldi*s works: the first movement being
of a stormy composure in the tutti passages; of a sober, thematic
seriousness in the solo portions, and of a compactness in structure.
Léo Delibes was a famous
Romantic french composer best known for his operas, specifically his
comic operas (Opéra-Comique). Lakmé, his triumphant
masterpiece for which he is best known, premiered in 1883. The lovely
flower duet from this opera is frequently performed in recitals and
concerts and is one of the most beautiful duets in the opera repertoire.
Deliebes was commissioned by the Madison Boy Choir in the latter part
of the nineteenth century to compose Messe Brève
(a short Mass in which the Credo section is often omitted). The charming
simplicity of this piece, written for young boy*s voices and string
orchestra, captures the essence of Delibes* artistry with its simple
elegant melodies and beautiful harmonies.
Johannes
Brahms, a true master of the Romantic compositional style,
was an accomplished pianist and composer who spent most of his professional
life in Vienna. Brahms* compositional output was vast and his works
include chamber music, as well as works for orchestra, piano, chorus,
voice and organ. He wrote many songs for piano and voice, including
the Liebeslieder Waltzer (Love Song Waltzes), which was composed for
piano four hands and vocal quartet. Brahms is best remembered for
his brilliant Ein deutches Requiem (German Requiem) that was written
for chorus and orchestra. The Requiem premiered just before the Liebeslieder
was published in 1869. Although the Liebeslieder Waltzer was composed
for a quartet, the set is often
The Head-Royce Chorus is an ensemble open to all Upper School students who wish to sing.
Previous musical experience or sight reading ability is not required.
Members of the ensemble are asked to participate in several performances
each year including the Fall Concert, the Holiday Program, the Winter
Choral Concert, Cabaret, the Spring Concert, community concerts and
the Spring Tour. The chorus also holds a retreat in late October at
the McGucken Center in Occidental, California.The Chorus rehearses
three times a week as a full ensemble and holds weekly sectionals.
Colla
Voce is a select mixed vocal ensemble made up of 24
upper school singers. Repertoire is selected from madrigal to modern
music. Members are required to sing in the chorus and perform at all
of the same functions as the chorus. Auditions are held each spring.
Colla Voce rehearses twice a week.
Cantabile is a small treble ensemble open to 9th grade students.
|
