As a community arts organization, The New Haven Chorale strives to serve the community. We do so in numerous tangible ways—outreach programs and special concerts for all age groups and types of organizations, student scholarships and music education—but it is the less tangible ways that perhaps describe the heart and soul of who we are.
Performance, for the NHC, is not just about entertainment. At the heart of every NHC concert is a drive to engage with and support the community through music. During the pandemic, for example, we created seven virtual pieces that offered solace, hope and encouragement, and even commissioned a work specifically reflecting our shared experience of that difficult time. Our signature holiday concerts incorporate sing-alongs and works representing myriad traditions, to fully represent any and all who attend.
Creating a shared experience will again be the force behind our upcoming spring concert, Music of Remembrance and Resilience. With a moving repertoire of traditional and contemporary choral works, the concert aims to create a space of collective memorial, inspiring performers, and audience members alike to share in a meditation on those who’ve played an influential role in their lives, both personally and publicly.
The first half of the concert will be a stunning performance of Maurice Duruflé’s exquisite Requiem, an ethereal, contemplative, and inspirational work. Maurice Duruflé was a perfectionist and, as a result, published few works, but those gems he did create have remained in the standard repertoire and are performed frequently throughout the world. His Requiem contains some incredibly dramatic moments to depict the final judgement, but taken as a whole, the work is by and large filled with consolation, solace, and hope. Gregorian melodies are tastefully and deeply woven into the exquisitely crafted choral and instrumental parts. There are many moments during the work when its delicacy and calmness invite the audience and performers alike to reflect on loved ones who have passed on yet continue to inspire us.
The second half features smaller works that describe the transformative power of music to inspire us and give us the strength to keep moving forward. In particular, the NHC will be paying tribute to the New Haven-based artist Winfred Rembert, whose own spiritual resilience and love of family, music and creative expression allowed him to overcome great obstacles in his life as well as create stunning works of visual beauty, despite the incredible hardships he faced.
Winfred Rembert grew up working as a sharecropper in the fields in the south during the Jim Crow era. His involvement with the Civil Rights Movement led to years of incarceration and hard labor on chain gangs. He eventually settled in New Haven and fulfilled a lifelong inclination as a visual artist. An overview of Rembert’s remarkable life can be found at https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/40477-winfred-rembert/.
Singing was a huge part of Rembert’s life, through good times and bad. It was a way to express happiness, but also a support that gave him the strength to keep going. Sarah Quartel’s Sing My Child urges us to turn to singing when life presents its inevitable challenges, as Rembert did. Jake Runestad’s A Silence Haunts Me is a dramatic musical adaptation of a letter by Beethoven, who lost his hearing yet persevered to compose some of his greatest masterpieces—a portrait of an artist who, like Rembert, turned tragedy into works of beauty. Rollo Dilworth’s gospel setting of I Sing Because I’m Happy will be paired with another gospel hymn, His Eye is on the Sparrow—a Rembert favorite—to remind us to have spiritual focus and celebrate the joys in our lives.
Sam Cooke’s timeless song A Change is Gonna Come was another favorite of Rembert, and no tribute would be complete without it; it’s a classic that reminds us to hold firm and believe positive change is possible, despite the obstacles. And, in the spirit of all that is inspirational and beauty triumphing over adversity, Lil Boulanger’s setting of Hymn to the Sun speaks to the awakening of the earth at sunrise as a gift of love, a reminder of nature’s stunning beauty and the need to appreciate and protect it.
Finally, The Music of Stillness, Elaine Hagenberg’s lovely work, captures the power of music to provide an inner refuge of calm and stillness. What better place to remember and honor those icons of strength, resilience and creativity that live on as examples to each of us—and to channel those qualities ourselves? This is the gift that we hope to deliver to the community in Woolsey Hall on May 7.
