Part of the human condition is to be rarely satisfied with farewells, if we are even given the chance to say goodbye at all. For Cherishing featured music of loss and remembrance spanning seven centuries. The program centered around Parry’s “Songs of Farewell,” Howells’ “Take Him, Earth, for Cherising,” and other pieces by Ockeghem, Victoria, Convery, and Tavener. The program was performed June 1st and 3rd, 2018, in Bryn Mawr and Philadelphia.

Hubert Parry - Never Weather-beaten Sail

Ockeghem - Requiem: Introitus

For thousands of years, we have created stories to chronicle, to educate, to entertain, and to explore our identities. Where the Truth Lies began by exploring stories of conquest and loss through the music of colonialism and warfare. We wove together the programmatic songs of Clément Janequin and Mateo Flecha, bookended by American and Spanish colonial hymns, to show how music can be used as a vehicle of conquest itself. Meanwhile, through the heartbreaking music of Maurice Ravel and Mack Wilberg, we feel how war destroys us by cutting short our stories with the people we love.

Selections by Benjamin Britten, William Billings, Bob Chilcott, and Gustav Holst then take us on a transcendent exploration of devotion, showing us how stories of love, both human and divine, have intertwined and nurtured each other through the ages. As with music and conquest, here we experience music as a vehicle for love, and love as an integral ingredient in music (no more so than in Britten’s Hymn to Saint Cecilia, a complicated love story about music itself). We begin and end our program with the same musing: how do stories take shape—in the telling or the retelling?

Short/Wilberg - The Dying Soldier

The music of Zoltán Kodály, with its blend of traditional Hungarian folk melodies and 20th-century western harmonies, created a unique image of the composer’s beloved nation. This concert was anchored in some of Kodály’s most beloved choral music, with complementary pieces based in the American folk tradition.

Moses Hogan - Elijah Rock

Kodaly - Matrai Kepek

Kodaly - Pange Lingua

Kodaly - Koszonto

Kodaly - Akik Mindig

Kodaly - Norveg Leanyok

In programming The Northern Wild, we searched for a musical kernel that would make a concert of a wide range of styles hold together in a compelling way. In that search, we realized that our favorite music by composers like Veljo Tormis, Jean Sibelius, and Eriks Ešenvalds simply sounds like it couldn’t come from anywhere else in the world. This is not to say that all the music we sang sounded the same—far from it. Tormis’ folk roots could not be more different than the cerebral soundscapes of R. Murray Schafer, while Sibelius and Elgar teeter on the threshold between the late romantic and early modern. But despite all the differences, the wild North is the irreplaceable central character in all of the pieces. This music is grounded in visceral explorations of what it’s like to be in the North, to have the wild earth beneath one’s feet and to be in the unwavering watch of the same celestial bodies for months on end.

There is a loneliness in the way much of this music stretches out like the untouched lands and vast skies it evokes. But in regions still dominated by primal forces, there is great joy in making singular human connections—with a neighboring cowherd across acres of pasture, with a lover thought lost over the hillside, or simply with oneself in the stillness of the pines. These connections are why we sing together.

Sibelius - Rakastava (The Lover)

Schafer - Sun

Rautavaara - Lahto

Esenvalds - Stars

Elgar - My Love Dwelt In A Northern Land

In the long, snowy winter of 2010, a handful of Philadelphia choral singers decided that they needed more from the local music scene. Hoping for an ensemble featuring challenging repertoire, cooperative musicianship, and innovative programming, they decided to take matters into their own capable hands and founded Chestnut Street Singers.

Based in Center City, Chestnut Street Singers is a cooperative chamber choir committed to active engagement with musical traditions and their evolution. We seek to illuminate commonalities linking the early Renaissance to contemporary practices, integrating canonical repertoire with lesser-known works and augmenting our musicality with creative and irreverent programming. We are dedicated to presenting polished, engaging performances while still being able to sip wine with our audience.

Besides performing great and sometimes under-appreciated music, our goals are many: we cherish our place in the Philadelphia community and are dedicated to offering concerts that are accessible––both financially and intellectually––to our friends, neighbors, and students; we support the work of young composers and instrumentalists; we celebrate the varied inspirations––sometimes silly, sometimes sexy, sometimes thoughtful, and sometimes all three––of classical music; and we believe that making music together is a stimulating, strenuous endeavor, one worth celebrating and supporting.

Chestnut Street Singers

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