Evento

Jazz Mass: A Fusion of Heaven and Earth

"Classically Yours" means that the music is classical, and also very approachable. Our season ends with African drum rituals, and an exciting jazz-inspired choral mass that crosses comfortably from classical to jazz and gospel.

Mass by Steve Dobrogosz
The Making of the Drum by Bob Chilcott
Curve of Gold by Donald Skirvin

Steve Dobrogosz is an American pianist and composer based in Sweden whose career spans several decades and ranges in style from classical to jazz and pop. Dobrogosz grew up in Raleigh, NC, and later studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. In 1978 he moved to Stockholm, Sweden, and began a fruitful musical career there amid the city's vibrant jazz scene. His Mass, which appeared in 1997, was premiered by Gary Graden and the St. Jacob's Chamber Choir. It is an exciting jazz-inspired choral mass that crosses comfortably from classical to jazz and gospel. It will performed for the first time in Seattle.

Paired with Steve Dobrogosz' modern-day "Mass" will be a very different choral work, also based on a sacred ritual-"The Making of the Drum"-an exuberant and rhythmic cantata for chorus and percussion, based on African rituals associated with drum making. Former King Singer, Bob Chilcott, composed "The Making of the Drum" using the poetry of Caribbean poet Edward Kamau Braithwaite. The work is a celebration of how the living spirit of the drum is brought to life.

Seattle composer Donald Skirvin originally wrote his choral suite, "Curve of Gold," in 2003 and revised it in 2015 with a dedication to Freddie Coleman and Scott Kovacs. Skirvin selected poems from "Love Songs," a collection of poems by the American poet Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933.) Critics have found much of Teasdale's poetry to be full of musical language and evocative emotion. "Love Songs" was published in 1917 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry the following year, as well as the Poetry Society of America Prize. "Curve of Gold" will receive its first performance on June 13.

For these June performances, the Seattle Choral Company will be joined by pianist William Chapman Nyaho, the Talvi String Quartet, and Tess Altiveros, Soprano.