Pottstown's Emmanuel Lutheran To Host Westminster Kantorei

Pottstown's  will host the Westminster Kantorei at 4 p.m. April 29.

The free event will feature Andrew Megill as conductor and special guests The Select Choir of Daniel Boone High School. 

The Westminster Kantorei, which was founded in 2004, is an auditioned chamber choir from the renowned Westminster Choir College specializing in early and contemporary music.

The ensemble is composed of roughly 24 graduate and undergraduate students and performs regularly with some of America’s leading specialists in Baroque music, including collaborations with violinist Nancy Wilson and vocal ensemble Fuma Sacra.  

Recent seasons have included performances of Bach’s Missa brevis in G Minor, cantatas, and passions, including the St. Matthew Passion at Avery Fisher Hall, with the Westminster Choir and the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Kurt Masur.

The ensemble has also performed works by Monteverdi (Vespers of 1610, Sestina and Lamento della Ninfa), Buxtehude (Membra Jesu nostri), Schütz, Schein, Telemann, Zelenka, Victoria, and Palestrina, as well as a concert of Latin American Baroque music.  
Westminster Kantorei has also commissioned and premiered many works by such composers as Caleb Burhans, James Blachly, Doug Helvering, Philip Rice, Nathan Jones and Stefan Young.  

This year, the ensemble premieres new works by Blake Henson, Daniel Elder, and the internationally acclaimed Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström, commissioned for the ensemble by the Soli Deo Gloria Foundation and the Westminster Choir College Department of Sacred Music.  

The concert program will include: “Musikalische exequien” by Heinrich Schutz, “The Glory and the Dream” by Richard Rodney Bennett, and “Psalm 67” by Sven-David Sandström.  

The stunningly beautiful funeral music of Schutz’s Musikalische exequien is considered one of the masterpieces of the early Baroque period.  William Wordsworth’s poetic masterpiece “Intimations of Immortality” provides the text for Bennett’s The Glory and the Dream, who, in addition to a 50-year career performing and writing jazz, has composed many classic film scores.  

Sandström’s Psalm 67 is a newly-commissioned work that received its world premier by this ensemble in October of 2011.  Our special guests for this concert will be the select choir from Daniel Boone High School in Birdsboro, PA. 

Led by their conductor, Erin Benn, this outstanding high school ensemble will open the concert with performances of “I’ve Got the Music in Me” arranged by Deke Sharon and “With a Lily in Your Hand” by Eric Whitacre,. 

Music at Emmanuel is dedicated to bringing the live music of the highest calibre to the Pottstown community.  

We are also dedicated to supporting young artists from our region as they develop their performing careers.  

All concerts on our 2011-12 season are offered free of charge to the public, and are funded by the generous support of individuals in our church and community who believe that great music has an essential place in our culture and community.    

Learn more: www.facebook.com/music.at.emmanuel