2011-2012 St. Luke’s Concert Series
David Shuler, Director of Music
Phone: 212.633.2167 Email: dshuler@stlukeinthefields.org
Elissa Weiss, Concert Series Assistant
Phone: 212.414.9419 Email: music@stlukeinthefields.org
5 Thursday nights at 8 PM--pre-concert lectures at 7 PM
Tickets (except January 19): $35 general admission; $25 students/seniors
Tickets (January 19): $20 general admission; $15 students/seniors
Save 15% by purchasing a season subscription for $135.
October 27, 2011
Secret Music for Secret Chapels: Music of William Byrd
Byrd’s Gradualia (1605/07) is one of the most unusual and elaborate musical undertakings of the Renaissance. This monumental collection of liturgical music was composed for clandestine use by English Catholics at a time when it was illegal to celebrate or attend mass. The program will include music for All Saints Day and the Feast of Saint Peter and Paul, along with the Mass for Five Voices, also composed for these secret services.
Choir of St. Luke in the Fields
December 8, 2011
Christmas in Iberia
Motets, hymns and villancicos for the Christmas season by Renaissance Spanish and Portuguese composers including Tomás Luis de Victoria, Francisco Guerrero, and Cristóbal de Morales. The concert will feature Victoria’s sublime Missa O magnum mysterium and 12-voice responsories for Christmas by Juan Bautista Comes.
Choir of St. Luke in the Fields
January 19, 2012
Baroque Blockbusters
Large-scale virtuosic masterpieces for the organ by J.S. Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude, Nicolaus Bruhns, Johann Pachelbel, Bernardo Storace and Louis Marchand, performed on St. Luke’s Casavant tracker organ.
David Shuler, organist
Tickets: General admission $20 Students & Seniors $15
March 8, 2012
Vespers in Venice - Music of Monteverdi
As a follow-up to last year’s performance of the 1610 Vespers, we will again feature the music of Claudio Monteverdi, this time performing music from the Selve morale anthology of 1641, including the ever-popular Beatus vir. The service of Vespers in seventeenth-century Venice was a musical extravaganza, a Concert spirituel. The church music of Monteverdi and his contemporaries reflected the “modern style” of the day, with dazzling displays of vocal virtuosity and a kaleidoscope of instrumental colors.
Choir of St. Luke in the Fields with an ensemble of period instruments
Tickets: General admission $35 Students & Seniors $25
April 26, 2012
Earthquake Mass!
Antoine Brumel was a student of Josquin Desprez and one of the leading Franco-Flemish composers around 1500. His “Earthquake” Mass is based on the Easter plainsong Et ecce terrae motus and its depiction of the Resurrection (“And behold, the earth shook…”). The Missa Et ecce terrae motus is a mass of expansive length scored for 12 independent voice parts, employing spectacular musical effects. In the words of Peter Phillips of the Tallis Scholars, “There is nothing comparable to it in the Renaissance period.” The concert will also include Easter motets by Brumel and Josquin along with the 12-voice Regina coeli by Nicolas Gombert.
Choir of St. Luke in the Fields
Tickets: General admission $35 Students & Seniors $25
About the Artists
David Shuler – Musical Director, was educated at the Eastman School of Music, Columbia University, and the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. He studied organ with David Craighead and Leonard Raver, and composition with Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler and Gunther Schuller. He has received numerous awards, including a BMI-SC award for composition and First Prize in the Mid-Hudson Valley Chapter American Guild of Organists Organ Playing Competition.
Mr. Shuler has been Director of Music and Organist at the Church of Saint Luke in the Fields in New York City since 1988. Prior to the appointment at St. Luke’s, Mr. Shuler was the Director of Music at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Stamford, Connecticut. He has also held positions as Organist and Choirmaster at the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City and Assistant Organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. In addition, Mr. Shuler is the Music Director of the DaltonChorale in Manhattan.
In addition to a wide array of historically informed concerts of early music, Mr. Shuler has been particularly active as a champion of contemporary music. He has premiered organ works of Charles Wuorinen, William Albright, Ralph Shapey, Gunther Schuller, and Frank Retzel, among others. Mr. Shuler received a National Endowment for the Arts Consortium Commissioning Grant to commission works from Ralph Shapey, Charles Wuorinen, and Gunther Schuller as well as a grant from the Washington, D.C. American Guild of Organists Foundation for the promotion of contemporary music. In addition, he has recorded the choral music of Frank Wigglesworth with the Choir of the Church of St. Luke in the Fields for CRI. In 1998, Mr. Shuler received a grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Trust to record Responsoria by Richard Toensing with the Choir at St. Luke’s for the North/South Consonance label.
Mr. Shuler has been featured as an organ soloist on both the East and West coasts in productions of the ballet Voluntaries, Glen Tetley’s choreography of Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani by the American Ballet Theatre and the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
Mr. Shuler is a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists, and was awarded the certificate at the age of 22, one of the youngest organists to achieve this distinction. He has served on numerous AGO committees, both at the national and local levels, and was for seven years the Director of the National Examination Committee of the A.G.O. He is currently the President of the Association of Anglican Musicians.
Phillip Cheah – baritone, is the Music Director of the Central City Chorus and Guildsingers, the staff accompanist at The Brearley School, and a member of the Bach Choir at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.
Hailed by the New York Times for the “warm tone and carefully calibrated blend” elicited from his choirs, he has conducted Amuse, Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, Houston Chamber Choir, Handel Society of Dartmouth, Indiana University Opera Theatre Chorus, The Amato Opera, and C4 Choral Composer/Conductor Collective, of which he was a founding member.
His singing has been praised for its “potent contribution” (New York Times) and “warm tone and stately presence” (paterre box). He has sung under the batons of Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, Kurt Masur and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and regularly collaborates with pianist Trudy Chan in recitals featuring his three-and-a-half octave vocal range that “defies the laws of nature” (Time Out New York).
A former guest lecturer at Barnard College, he has held teaching appointments at Manhattan School of Music, The Putney School, and Cathedral High School where he was the Director of Music. He has been the personal assistant to the composer/satirist Peter Schickele, and worked at Oxford University Press as Manager for Concert and Choral Promotion. He holds both B.S. and M.M. degrees from Indiana University where he studied piano, conducting, and opera coaching.
Kit Emory, mezzo-soprano, is accomplished in a wide range of musical genres, from jazz to opera. She has been a featured soloist with the Handel & Haydn Society, New York Virtuoso Singers, Collegiate Chorale of NY, and numerous other fine ensembles in both New York and Boston. She also sings regularly with the critically-acclaimed ensemble, Boston Baroque.
Kit played a truckstop waitress at Carnegie Hall in Ricky Ian Gordon’s Grapes of Wrath, singing in a close harmony trio with Broadway’s Christine Ebersole. She also shared that same stage with Dawn Upshaw in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, and has performed Bach cantatas with the Orpheus Ensemble at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. World premieres include Thea Musgrave’s Voices of Power and Protest at the United Nations and the Little Match Girl Passion by David Lang, along with works by Harbison, Corigliano, Adamo, Babbit, and others. Internationally, she has sung with the Handel & Haydn Society at the Proms Festival in London with Sir Roger Norrington and in the Edinburgh Festival as part of Mark Morris’s production of Orféo. Other festival appearances include Tanglewood, Bard Summerscape, and several of the Boston Early Music Festivals.
U.S. tours have included engagements with New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and Opera New England. She has performed leading operatic roles in La Cenerentola, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Hänsel and Gretel, and Mahagonny Songspiel with such companies as Virginia Opera, Sarasota Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, and the Opera Theatre of St. Louis.
Kit Emory is an honors graduate of Harvard University.
Noted by The New York Times for her “delirious abandon” onstage, versatile soprano/vocalist Melissa Fogarty has performed with New York City Opera in King Arthur, The Magic Flute has been featured their VOX series, NYCO’s annual showcase of new American operas. A favorite of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici, she has premiered works of his at Symphony Space. With Seattle Baroque Orchestra, she was Serpina in La Serva Padrona, and Ismaele in Agar e Ismaele in Esiliati (recorded on the Centaur label). Last summer, Melissa gave a centennial tribute concert of Samuel Barber songs at Bargemusic with pianist Marc Peloquin, and received outstanding reviews from The New York Times and The Financial Times. In January, they recorded a full-length CD of Barber’s songs at Drew University in Madison, NJ to be released later this year. Recently, she made her debut with Center for Contemporary Opera in Enemies: A Love Story. No stranger to cross-over, Melissa sings with Metropolitan Klezmer & Isle of Klezbos and frequently performs with them down the block from Saint Luke’s at City Winery on the Klezmer Brunch Series, right after services! She also performs with the renaissance ensemble Pomerium. For more information, please visit melissafogarty.com.
Todd Frizzell has been a member of the St Luke's Choir for 11 years. He performs regularly with the Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, Early Music New York, The Nashir Chorale and is a cantorial soloist at Temple Emanuel in Great Neck, New York. He has performed annually in recital for the LGBT Charities of St Luke's, including June 2011 with "Music for Queens", a tribute to all the gaiety and hardship of history's most beloved and notorious queens. He has also worked professionally as an entertainer on American Hawaii Cruises, with the San Francisco Opera Chorus, Opera Colorado, and regionally in music theater.
Tim Krol is a professional singer, teacher and recording artist. He recently recorded a setting of Oscar Wilde's "De Profundis," for baritone and piano, by composer Thomas Oboe Lee [available on Amazon]. In the spring of 2011, the NY Times called Tim and Phillip Cheah's solo performances in C.P.E. Bach's St Matthew Passion, at St Luke in the Fields, “particularly potent.” Tim was a featured soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra in the world premiere of Ikon of Eros by Sir John Tavener. He played Pontius Pilate in the staged production of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, directed by Sir Jonathan Miller, at Brooklyn Academy of Music. In the summer of 2012, Tim will return for his 10th season as an ensemble member and soloist with the Carmel Bach Festival. He can be heard on many recordings, including thirteen with the Grammy-award-winning vocal group Chanticleer; David Conte’s "The Gift of the Magi;" Richard Link’s "Committed to My Heart;" Christopher Winslow’s "The Ghost and Ms. Muir;" Sir John Tavener’s "Ikon of Eros;" and an album of a cappella lullabies titled “All Through the Night.” Tim's Web site is www.TimKrol.com.
Tenor David Root is equally at home on opera and concert stages. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has called his voice “fresh” & “mellifluous”. He has performed leading roles with Nevada Opera, The NY Gilbert & Sullivan Players, Lyric Opera Cleveland, One World Symphony, The Vertical Repertory Theater, Hudson Opera Theater and Cleveland Concert Opera. On the concert stage Mr. Root has been heard throughout NY, NJ, OH & CT in works ranging from Bach’s Magnificat & various Cantatas to Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. David is also a member of the Phoenix Quartet, which is comprised of four classically trained singers dedicated to the exploration of the medium of vocal chamber music. The quartet is especially focused on the composition of new music written for vocal quartet. Recent premieres include Richard Pearson Thomas’ Ascension and the haunting Songs of War & Peace of Paul Stephan. Mr. Root sings the part of the angel Gabriel in the world premiere recording of Randall Thompson’s The Nativity According to St. Luke (Koch Classics International).
Alexandra Sweeton, mezzo soprano, studied jazz and classical singing at the Manhattan School of Music and has since developed a career which embraces her three loves: new classical music, jazz, and singer-songwriter pop/rock music. In the classical realm, Ms. Sweeton performs regularly as soloist with Dogs of Desire, the new music ensemble of the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Opera performances include lead roles in Chaos, by Michael Gordon at New York’s “Kitchen”, and Reflections on the Watermoon, by Patricia Burgess at Merkin Hall. She premiered Between My Mouth and Your Ear, a song cycle by Todd Levin at Merkin Hall, sang with the Michael Gordon Band at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and toured Europe and Canada, performing the music of David Lang and Lou Reed with La La La Human Steps, a French-Canadian ballet company. She has also been featured at Carnegie Hall as soloist with Alarm Will Sound, as well as with the Philip Glass Ensemble in a concert performance of Einstein on the Beach. As a singer-‘songwriter, Ms. Sweeton performs her original songs in New York City and throughout the U.S. Her recent album, Perfectly Broken, garnered stellar reviews from regional press. Her music and performance calendar are available at http://www.alexsweeton.com/
Marcia Young was cited by the Washington Post for her “elegant, dark-hued soprano voice” and “winning mixture of formal restraint and emotional intensity.” She is a founding member of My Lord Chamberlain’s Consort and the medieval trio Trefoil. She also performs regularly with lutenists Andy Rutherford and Christopher Morrongiello. In recent seasons Young has appeared with the Folger Consort, Parthenia, Piffaro, and the Newberry Consort; at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Cloisters; Bargemusic; the Yale Center for British Art; the Center for Jewish History; the CityMusic Series in Columbus; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; Amherst, Washington, and Connecticut Early Music Festivals; the Ars Antiqua series in Chappaqua; the Distinguished Artists Series in Syosset; the Marco Festival in Knoxville; the HotShops gallery space in Omaha; and the Lute Society of America Conference and Seminar in Cleveland. Young has taught vocal and instrumental classes at the San Francisco Early Music Society’s summer workshop. During the academic year she serves as Director of Performance Studies for the Department of Music at Stern College, Yeshiva University.
Leah Gale Nelson - violin and baroque violin, specializes in historical performance practice of the 17th and 18th centuries. A semi-coastal musician based in New York, she has performed as a chamber musician and soloist throughout North America and in Europe, and is in demand as concertmaster throughout the United States for her interpretations of baroque and classical music. In Minneapolis, she is Concertmaster and Artistic Advisor for Ensemble Sebastian and in 2004 was appointed String Artist in Residence at the Basilica of St. Mary. She has been concertmaster with Chicago Opera Theater for productions in Chicago and New York; a guest director for Lyra Baroque Orchestra in Minneapolis; has led Handel's Messiah throughout the country; concertmaster for some of the finest choirs in New York City in repertoire from Monteverdi to Mozart; and guest lecturer at Columbia University, Vassar College, the College of St. Benedict/St. John's University, and the Schubert Club in St. Paul. She has performed and recorded with leading early music ensembles throughout the United States, including Concert Royal, the Boston Camerata, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and the American Classical Orchestra. Born in Texas and raised in Minnesota, Leah holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Chicago Musical College and a Master of Music degree from the Mannes College of Music in New York.
