*** Auditions for the Orpheus Chamber Singers 2012/2013 roster will be held on June 2, 3, and 16, 2012 ***

Orpheus, a professional, all paid 24 voice chorus, seeks well rounded musicians who are committed to
the choral art and have extensive experience singing in fine choirs. Successful candidates will have:

· Advanced vocal training
· Excellent sight singing skills
· Sufficient understanding of German and Latin pronunciation

The 20 minute audition will include:

· Vocalization
· Sight Singing
· Rhythm Test
· Two solos of your choosing which emphasize your solo vocal ability and musicianship

An accompanist will be provided.

The season will include J. S. Bach’s ‘Magnificat’, Handel Coronation Anthems, Brahms part songs, and a Christmas CD recording project.

If you believe you meet the above criteria, please contact Donald Krehbiel by phone at   972-757-3826 or send an email to  dkrehbiel at dallasuu.org  (spaces and ‘at’ put in to foil spambots) to inquire further or schedule an audition time  (if dates above are not suitable, request another)

Scott Cantrell, the Dallas Morning News

The Orpheus Chamber Singers, Dallas’ superb professional chamber choir, took to North Dallas’ Spring Valley United Methodist Church Saturday night, for the first of two performances of music from the British Isles. For works mostly conceived for quite reverberant churches and cathedrals, the acoustics were hardly cathedral-esque, but the sound was clear and warm.

Music of the Englishman Herbert Howells (1892-1983) provided a pivot point, his 1932/1936 Requiem one of the most sensuous pieces of memorial music ever penned. The words “lux perpetua” spark first an outward radiation of chills-down-the-back harmonies, later a blaze of sonic light.

Artistic director Donald Krehbiel led a performance of exquisite polish and sensitivity, with gorgeous solos from baritone Jason Awbrey and tenor Del Howard. Sarah Griffiths, in the past so radiant a soprano, sounded as if she had a mouthful of cotton, though, and the choir kept dulling vowels in words as different as “the,” “that” and “love” toward a dropped-jaw “ah.”

The choral writing of Scottish composer James MacMillan’s 2000 Mass, to the modern English translation of the traditional texts, takes up where Howells leaves off. But by the Sanctus the harmonies are more stark and dissonant. The organ part, alternating burbles, twitters, crunches and deep rumbles, inhabits a parallel universe, not very convincingly.

The singing was impressively authoritative, and Michael Shake worked wonders with a synthetic-sounding pipe organ. But, written for London’s vast Westminster Cathedral, this is music probably needing lavish reverberation to make its full effect.

Howells was a great admirer of music from England’s Tudor period, nicely represented by two motets by Thomas Tallis. Shake gave a sensitive performance of Howells’ organ homage, Master Tallis’ Testament.

The program ended with three eloquent and nicely contrasted motets by Howells’ teacher, the crusty Irishman Charles Villiers Stanford.  Both the Tallis and Stanford motets were lovingly sung, but music meant for choirs of boys and men wanted a brighter, bolder soprano sound.

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Please join us for the final performance of our 2011/2012 season!!!  This concert features three masterpieces by three renowned composers: James MacMillan, Herbert Howells, and Charles Stanford.  Experience MacMillan’s powerful Mass for choir and organ, Howells’ Requiem for soloists and eight-part choir, and Stanford’s exquisite Three Motets, as well as motets by Thomas Tallis and Howells’  Master Tallis’s Testament for organ solo.  Virtuoso organist Michael Shake will be featured on this inspiring program.

Saturday, 21 April 2012, 8.00pm

Spring Valley United Methodist Church, 7700 Spring Valley Road, Dallas 75254   MAP LINK

Sunday, 22 April 2012, 7.30pm      Priority Seating Sold Out

Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, 3966 McKinney Avenue, Dallas  75204  MAP LINK

All programs, dates, venues and performers subject to change.

Priority seats only available if purchased prior to concert.

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Saturday, 29 October 2011, 8.00pm – Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, Dallas Tx

Sunday, 30 October 2011, 7.30pm -- Cathedral Guadalupe, Dallas Tx

Do you remember a parent or grandparent singing hymns or spirituals as they tended to their daily chores, or just went about their daily business?  This concert will feature some of our most beloved hymns including an exquisite setting of Amazing Grace as well as many well-known African-American spirituals;  one of the uniquely American choral genres.  Our special guest artist for these concerts will be Swedish soprano saxophone phenomenon, Anders Paulsson.

Program

Praise to the Lord [Lobe den Herren] – Joachim Neander, arr. F. Melius Christiansen

Jesu, Meine Freude - Johann Crüger, arr. J. S. Bach & Bedrich Smetana

O Thou in Whose Presence [Samanthra] – American Folk Hymn, arr. J. Harold Moyer

Wondrous Love - American, Sacred Harp, arr. Wayland Rogers

McKay - American, Sacred Harp, arr. Carol Barnett

Saints Bound for Heaven - American, Southern Harmony, arr. Parker/Shaw

Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel - Spiritual, arr. Carl Haywood

There is a Balm in Gilead - Spiritual, arr. William Dawson

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen - Spiritual, arr. Anders Paulsson

Beautiful River - Rev. Robert Lowry, arr. William Hawley

Abide With Me [Eventide] – William H. Monk, arr. Greg Jasperse

Simple Gifts - Joseph Brackett, arr. René Clausen

Amazing Grace [New Britain] – American, Southern Harmony, arr. Anders Paulsson

Elijah Rock - Spiritual, arr. Moses Hogan

There’s a Man Goin’ Round - Spiritual, arr. Moses Hogan

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot - Spiritual, arr. Anders Paulsson

My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord - Spiritual, arr. Moses Hogan

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Carols and Candlelight –

Saturday, 17 Dec 2011, 8:00pm — St. Thomas Aquinas, Dallas, Tx

Monday, 19 Dec 2011, 7:30pm — St. Jude Catholic, Allen, Tx

Tuesday, 20 Dec. 2011, 7.30pm   – Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church, Dallas, Tx

These popular concerts featured carols and motets both familiar and unfamiliar from the past 5 centuries, a procession amidst flickering candles, and the best carol sing-a-long in town.

Program

Processional — Unborn –Alex Roth

A Great & Mighty Wonder - German 16th Century, Arr. James Whitbourn

Resonet in Laudibus — Orlando di Lasso

Lo, How a rose E’er Blooming — Michael Praetorius, arr. Jan Sandstrom

O Magnum Mysterium — Morten Lauridsen

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear — English Traditional, arr. David Willcocks

O Come, All Ye Faithful — John Francis Wade, arr. David Willcocks

What is This Lovely Fragrance? — French Traditional, arr. Healey Willan

Hodie — James Whitbourn

Let Us Gather Hand in Hand — Conrad Suss

In Dulci Jubilo — German 16th Century, arr. Robert Pearsall

Silent Night — Franz Gruber, arr. Stephen Paulus

Wexford Carol — Irish Traditional, arr. John Rutter

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing — Felix Mendelssohn, arr. David Willcocks

Joy in the Morning — John Joubert

The Three Kings — Healey Willan

The Rose in the Middle of Winter — Bob Chilcott

Three Songs for Christmas — Martin Bates

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Scott Cantrell, Dallas Morning News, Feb 20 2012

– John Norine, Jr., www.theaterjones.com    Oct 30, 2011

By SCOTT CANTRELL / The Dallas Morning News
scantrell@dallasnews.com

Across four centuries, some of the most dramatic, virtuosic – and frankly sensuous – music ever penned reverberated through the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe on Sunday night. Marking the 400th anniversary of Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin , Dallas’ Orpheus Chamber Singers performed the work in collaboration with string players from Houston’s Ars Lyrica and a San Francisco-based baroque winds ensemble called The Whole Noyse. It was one of the most glorious musical experiences I’ve had in 11 years in Dallas.

Literally phrase by phrase, Monteverdi explores wide contrasts in musical effects. The 7-voice Magnificat opens with rich harmonies before voices virtually dance to the words “And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” The motet “Audi coelum” (“Hear, O heaven, my words”) answers florid tenor solos with distant echoes. Two tenors soar and flutter to dramatize the two seraphs of Isaiah’s heavenly vision.

Monteverdi left many decisions of voicing and instrumentation to the performers. With 20 singers and 14 instrumentalists, conductor Matthew Dirst liberally displayed the coloristic possibilities.

Mellow trumpet sounds were supplied by cornetts, leather-covered wooden instruments with trumpetlike mouthpieces. Sackbuts, forerunners of modern trombones, lent dusky solemnity. Recorders piped prettily. A theorbo, a bass lute, punctuated with husky twangs.

Dirst’s crisp but expressive direction yielded impressive precision, but also rhythmic buoyancy and rhetorical freedom. Lines were lovingly shaped, harmonic crunches viscerally felt, phrases elegantly rounded off. The one misjudgment was physically shifting singers around in the Magnificat, which was distracting and disruptive.

One soloist after another sang beautifully, but the standouts were soprano Julie Liston Johnson and tenors Derek Chester, Eduardo Tercero and Donald Krehbiel. On this occasion, Krehbiel, Orpheus’ artistic director, yielded direction to Dirst, artistic director of Ars Lyrica and an associate professor of musicology at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music.

Yes, busier music dissolved in a welter of reverberation. But one could close one’s eyes and imagine oneself in Venice’s San Marco, where Monteverdi subsequently directed the music and doubtless performed some of this astonishing music – four centuries ago.

By SCOTT CANTRELL / The Dallas Morning News
scantrell@dallasnews.com

Every so often, a concert leaves us amazed that mere humans can produce such exquisite sounds, so eloquently expressed. That’s how it was Friday night with the Orpheus Chamber Singers, in their annual Christmas concert. If you weren’t there, you have two more chances to catch it.

Donald Krehbiel reliably coaxes world-class performances from his professional chamber choir. But in 11 years I don’t think I’ve heard the group sound quite so finely buffed and blended, yet so subtly expressive. Even traditional four-part harmonizations of familiar carols had the glow and gleam of chords dead in tune, an experience rarer than you might think.

The sound seemed a bit brighter and fresher than usual, the vowels more forward, consonants more crisply projected–all good things. And once again, St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Churchsupplied a dream acoustic for choral music, clear but ringing.

Oboist Eric Barr and harpist Laura Logan lent beautiful accompaniments in several numbers.

“Christmas Hail,” by John Muehleisen, seemed second-rate fare, and both John Rutter’s sublime “What Sweeter Music” and Peter Wishart’s exhilarating “Alleluya, a New Work” were a notch or two too fast. In sing-along carols, an audience full of choir singers sang sonorously and well, in alternating unison and harmony, although organist Michael Conrady allowed no room for breaths.

As appealing as music by Palestrina, Victoria, Britten and Stephen Paulus was, the thoughtfully assembled program also reminded us how much wonderful poetry has been inspired by Christmas. From the Christmas responsory “O magnum mysterium” (set by Victoria) to Robert Herrick (set by Rutter) to Gerard Manley Hopkins (set by Britten), this was a celebration as much verbal as musical.

And practically any choir director on earth would sell his or her soul for those sweetly soaring Orpheus tenors.

Nov. 18, 2010, 5:45PM

Christmas brings the great monument of choral music that most people know: Handel’s Messiah. This year, the holiday season, as defined by when the Christmas merchandise hits the shelves, is focusing on another masterpiece: The 1610 Vespers of Claudio Monteverdi.

It may be unknown, but everybody interested in early music is performing the piece to celebrate its 400th anniversary. Saturday in Zilkha Hall, Matthew Dirst led his Ars Lyrica Houston, the Orpheus Chamber Singers of Dallas and the San Francisco-based Renaissance wind ensemble the Whole Noyse in a vivacious celebration of an early piece by one of the great composers of western classical music.

Filled with almost orgiastic melodies and “let’s see if I can top the last movement” inventiveness, Vespro della Beata Vergine, in its full name, saw the performers totally engaged to the tip of their toes.

Dirst’s conducting was crisp and authoritative. The Orpheus Chamber Singers sounded terrific and looked like they were having a great time (in one movement the entire group was physically moving to the beat of the music). The instrumentalists — especially the brass players handling tricky beasts — added sheen to the total sound.

Unlike Messiah or J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor, 1610 Vespers isn’t easy to pigeonhole. It’s really a collection of motets, settings of Psalms, a hymn, a mini-concerto for instruments (with a simple vocal melody floating over the top) and a setting of the Magnificat (the Virgin Mary’s recitation in the Gospel of John that is known in English as “My soul doth magnify the Lord”). Any one or two movements would be enough to brighten a church service. As a group, they’re electric stuff.

Written because Monteverdi was angling for a job in Venice — he later became music director at St. Mark’s Basilica and, still later, the first great opera composer — the work is a bridge between late Renaissance and early Baroque music. Monteverdi uses plenty of counterpoint but also a ravishing amount of the chordal style that defines early Venetian church music. Both blend nicely into a whole.

Orpheus Chamber Singers was a somewhat unusual choral group in that it contained many fine solo-quality voices that artistic director Donald Krehbiel has melded into a glowing whole. Among them, soprano Julie Liston Johnson and tenors Derek Chester and Eduardo Tercero were strong communicators. Chester in particular handled swaths of music with poise and listen-to-me authority.

Charles Ward was the Chronicle’s classical music critic from 1975 to 2008. E-mail him atsirernest42@gmail.com.