Exile and Return
The New York Virtuoso Singers presents a seventy-fifth birthday concert for artistic director Harold Rosenbaum
At 2pm on Saturday 25 January 2025 at the Church of St Luke in the Fields, 487 Hudson Street, Manhattan, New York, USA, the New York Virtuoso Singers (NYVS) presents 'Exile and Return', a concert to celebrate the seventy-fifth birthday of the group's artistic director Harold Rosenbaum. The concert features a cappella post tonal masterpieces such as Thea Musgrave's For the Time Being: Advent, George Perle's Sonnets to Orpheus, Hans Werner Henze's Orpheus Behind the Wire and Milton Babbitt's Three Cultivated Choruses. These pieces document the effects of war, the darkest corners of mankind's existence and the expectation of salvation and hope for humanity.
NYVS is one of the USA's leading exponents of contemporary choral music. Although the chorus performs music of all periods, its emphasis is on commissioning, performing and recording the music of living American composers. The choir appears on nearly fifty commercial CDs.
NYVS concerts are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. NYVS concerts are also made possible by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
American arranger, author, conductor, lecturer, organist, pianist and teacher Harold Rosenbaum was born on 24 January 1950 in Danville, Pennsylvania. He began to sing in choirs and to study piano when very young. At Queens College from 1967 he became passionate about classical and contemporary choral music and established his first choir, the Canticum Novum Singers, in 1973, which soon became known on the New York City music scene. He founded the professional choir NYVS in 1988, and has led them in more than a hundred concerts. The group has given first performances of more than five hundred new works. Rosenbaum has commissioned more than a hundred new American choral works.
Harold Rosenbaum in 2008
Further information: nyvirtuoso.org
Posted 27 December 2024 by Keith Bramich
