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 Friday's
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 Psalms are some of the earliest recorded prayers in history, and are a fundamental part of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths. For millennia they have inspired readers to meditate and pray and to search beyond human understanding for the meaning of life.

The Psalms express the full spectrum of human emotion, and countless composers have sought to capture their intensity, poetry and awe-inspiring beauty.

Featured on this program is Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms (Psalms 39,40, and150), Pärt's De Profundis (Psalm 130), Allegri's Miserere (Psalm 51), and one of Schütz's many Psalm settings.