On Sunday, April 13, the Ithaca College Choral Union and Symphony Orchestra will give a free Ithaca performance of Giuseppe Verdi's "Requiem," a work the ensembles will perform two days later at New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The Ithaca concert will begin at 3:00 p.m. in Ford Hall in the James J. Whalen Center for Music. Lawrence Doebler will conduct.
The Lincoln Center performance will be held in Avery Fisher Hall at 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 15. Tickets are $45 for adults and $20 for children 12 and under. Tickets can be purchased from Center Charge Tickets at 212-721-6500 or at www.lincolncenter.org.
Composed of the choir, women's chorale, and chorus, the choral union totals 250 student performers. Professor of music education Janet Galvan prepared the chorus and women's chorale; Doebler prepared the choir.
Soloists Sharon Sweet (soprano), Leah Summers (mezzo soprano), David Parks (tenor), and Randie Blooding (baritone) will also be featured. Sweet is a 1978 master's degree alumna of the Ithaca College School of Music and has had a major international operatic career. Parks and Blooding are current faculty members. Summers performs with New York City Opera, the Vienna Staatsoper, and other companies.
In addition to the Verdi, the "Tragic Overture" by Johannes Brahms will be played by the symphony orchestra under the baton of Jeffery Meyer.
Ithaca College's connection to Lincoln Center goes back to the early 1970s, when the School of Music sponsored seven different concerts at that venue. A 1992 concert featured five world premiere performances of compositions commissioned by the School of Music to celebrate the College's centennial. Another Lincoln Center performance was given in 2002 to celebrate the 80th birthday of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Karel Husa, who taught composition at Ithaca College from 1967 to 1986 and is the Kappa Alpha Professor of Music Emeritus at Cornell University. The most recent performance featured Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana," performed by the choral union and symphony orchestra.
The Ithaca College School of Music offers some 300 free concerts each academic year. More information on these performances is available by calling 607-274-3717 or visiting www.ithaca.edu/concerts.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20080407140639227