During the month of March, CONCORA (Connecticut Choral Artists) presented “Mastering the Mass,” a festival composed of workshops, seminars, lectures, and concerts, in preparation for the professional choir’s performance of the Bach Mass in B Minor with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. All events took place in South Church, New Britain, the institution that founded CONCORA in 1974.
Keynote presenter Christoph Wolff, professor emeritus at Harvard, well known for his work on the music and life of Bach, lectured on new findings about Bach’s life and works, and the Mass in B Minor. Between Dr. Wolff’s lectures, violinist Emlyn Ngai played the Bach Partita in D Minor on a Baroque violin.
Other lectures were presented by Reverend Louis Nuechterlein, retired Lutheran pastor, Bach scholar, and choral conductor; Jason Charneski, director of music and the arts for Hartford’s Center Church; harpsichordist and conductor Christine Gever; and mezzo soprano Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, of the early music ensemble Anonymous 4.
Soprano Julianne Baird and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek led vocal masterclasses with the soloists (all members of CONCORA), accompanied by Kyle Swann of Yale University. Each day included a morning “sing-in” of choruses from the Mass in B Minor, and an afternoon open rehearsal of CONCORA in preparation for its forthcoming concert, accompanied by Edward Clark, director of music for the First Church of Christ in Farmington and organist of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.
The performance on March 30, in Hartford’s Immanuel Congregational Church, marked the end of founding conductor Richard Coffey’s forty-year tenure with CONCORA.
For information: http://www.concora.org
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