Orpheus Chamber Choir Concert Report

Masterworks Ancient and Modern

On Sunday October 18, 2015 at 7:00 pm, Sarah and I traveled downtown to the City Performance Hall to watch the Orpheus Chamber Choir's production of Masterworks Ancient and Modern. This was the third time I have attended an Orpheus Chamber Choir concert and every time I am impressed by the choir's excellent musicianship. The pieces performed at the concert included a mixture of traditional and contemporary works. The traditional works were composed by well-known composers such as Bach, Mendleson, Gabrielli, Byrd, and Lobo. The contemporary works were written by Argento and Elder. It was also exciting to see that Rachel Jones, one of the private voice teachers at Lake Highlands High School performed as a member

The next piece was written Mendleson and was titled "Lord Now Lettest." This was another A Cappella piece. The choir had very pretty cannons and I really enjoyed the crescendo of piano to fortissimo. I thought the choir did a great job remaining in a four part harmony and one part did not shadow the other parts. At the end of the piece the choir closed on an "n" syllable which was very pretty. "O Be Joyful" was a legato piece by Gabrielli that consisted of two sections. The A section was major and was followed by a minor B section. I liked the choir's strong crescendos and decrescendos as well as their strong metric stress. I also they had very strong cutoffs and I loved their eight part harmony on "amen." "Jubilate Deo" was a strong ACappella song. The women began the piece and were followed by the men. There was a beautiful four part canon. I really enjoyed the sustained notes as well as the good diction. Another enjoyable aspect of the piece was its combination of staccato and legato. The final pieces before intermission were "Credo" and "Versa Est in Luctum." Both works were A Cappella and had wonderful diction and tone. The first act with works exclusively written by ancient composers was very entertaining and showed very good