HWS News
3 November 2022 • Arts Everyday Wonders
The HWS Community Chorus will perform Everyday Wonders: The Girl from Aleppo and Gloria in D on Nov. 16 at The Presbyterian Church, 24 Park Place.
Under the Direction of Colin Mann, the HWS Community Chorus will present Everyday Wonders: The Girl from Aleppo and Gloria in D, works that juxtapose two very different cantatas, in a performance at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 16 at The Presbyterian Church, 24 Park Place, Geneva. The concert is free and open to the public.
Cecilia McDowall's The Girl from Aleppo is a work for children's chorus, violin, piano and mixed chorus. The music illuminates the journey of refugees escaping war in Syria. Nujeen Mustafa, a young Kurdish teenager with cerebral palsy, was pushed in a wheelchair from Aleppo to Germany in 2014. Her story is told through chorales, haunting vocal solos, piercing violin solos, restless choruses, and body percussion.
Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria in D is a multi-movement cornucopia of Baroque style. Vivaldi uses an array of colors and articulation to convey chiaroscuro (light and dark). Light, bouncy, fast movements are matched with dark, heavy, serious singing and playing. Vocal soloists and a small chamber orchestra made up of strings, oboe, trumpet and organ will accompany.
Performing in the chorus will be Anna Louise Martin, soprano; Andrea McGaugh, mezzo-soprano; Leo Liao, violin; and Meg Heaton, piano.
Colin Mann, the music director of the Hobart and William Smith Community Chorus, is a graduate conductor at the Eastman School of Music and conductor of Viva Bach Peterborough.
