Fall concert

The Two Worlds of Mendelssohn

With guest conductor Kirsten Hedegaard

2009 is the 200th anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn's birth, and we open our season by observing his genius as an immensely successful composer in both the German and English styles.

Embracing music of the Church, he is credited with the revival of J.S. Bach's works, conducting in 1829 the first performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion since the composer's death eighty years earlier.

That same year Mendelssohn went to Britain where he was immediately accepted and highly admired. From then on, his music reflected a mastery of German cantata and symphony forms as well as English oratorios and canticles.

Our concert features works of both styles, including Op. 69, Jubilate Deo, and Jauchzet Gott. We will also perform excerpts from the St. Matthew Passion, as well as Mendelssohn's forward-looking works which presage Brahms' later choral work.

Winter concert

Feminine and Divine

Wit, Wiles, and Wisdom: Music by and about Women

Conducted by Kirsten Hedegaard, Rosetta Sellers-Varela and Victoria Hellyer

CCA celebrates the many facets of the feminine with music by Hildegard von Bingen, Alice Parker, Ysaye Barnwell, Janika Vandervelde, and Stacy Garrop, professor of composition at Roosevelt.

The performances will be jointly conducted by guest conductor Kirsten Hedegaard, along with CCA members Victoria Hellyer and Rosetta Sellers-Varela.

Concert repertoire will additionally include settings of texts by U.S. poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, the well-loved Song for Athene, sung at Princess Diana's funeral, as well as settings of sonnets by William Shakespeare.

In connection with International Women's Day, March 8, we invite you to join us as we sing music by and about women who have shaped and enriched our understanding of life.

Hear Victoria Hellyer's interview on
WBEZ's Eight Forty-eight Program

Purchase Tickets

Spring concert

Dialogue With the Divine

Psalms of Lament, Praise and Thanksgiving

Conducted by Artistic Director Andrew Paul Fredel

The rise and fall of a voice at prayer, the surging and sinking of a heart in meditation. Almost no other collection of spiritual writing has captured the intimacy and grandeur of the human conversation with the Divine as the Psalms. For millenia, the Psalter, with its various genres of psalms, has universally lifted up the spirit of humanity at prayer, for at least two of the major world religions, Judaism and Christianity.

Over the centuries, composers have been exceptionally inspired to set these texts, ever more deeply touching the quality and character these texts bear. Join the CCA community--its singers and audience--for an exploration of these spiritual and musical gems, with settings by early composers such as Antoine Brumel, William Croft, and Claude Goudimel and featuring Allegri's Miserere (Psalm 51).

Contemporary works on the program include Yehezkel Braun's Niggunim, Arvo Pärt's De Profundis (Psalm 130), and William Mathias' ' Let All the People Praise Thee (composed for the wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles). Two works will also honor recently deceased Chicago composers Richard Hillert and Richard Proulx.