Written by Richard Knox Hope is the theme of the New Hampshire Master Chorale’s spring concerts, on June 15 in Concord and June 16 in Plymouth – why we need to hope, how dark and despairing life is without it. Master Chorale director Dan Perkins says the concert program was inspired by Hope On, a recent composition by Polish-American Martin Sedek that the composer calls “socially conscious music.” “Sedek challenges us to maintain hope in today’s social, economic, environmenta

The New Hampshire State Council on the Arts has awarded a $4,500 grant to the New Hampshire Master Chorale to support three November concerts of the highly acclaimed contemporary oratorio, Considering Matthew Shepard. The 30-voice chamber chorus, led by Dan Perkins of Plymouth State University, will offer three performances of the concert-length work. The concerts will be at South Church in Portsmouth at 8 p.m. on Friday, November 16; at the First Congregational Church in Con

A Meditation on Time and Human Existence Time is the ocean we all swim in…infinite, invisible as air. We spend lifetimes trying to find our bearings in the unpredictable currents of this vast ocean. In one way and another, this concert is a meditation on time and human existence. It’s a radically different take on the human condition from the one offered in last spring’s Master Chorale concert, From Time to Time, a rollicking voyage from the tender hope of infancy to the lust

TIME in OUR VOICES Featuring a newly commissioned work by Boston composer Oliver Caplan The New Hampshire Master Chorale, one of the region’s leading chamber choirs, will make its Boston debut on Friday, June 22, in a concert of wide-ranging contemporary music. It includes the premiere of a new work by Boston composer Oliver Caplan called “We Exist” – a plea for a universal humanity composed in response to the 2017 racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The concert, fe

We are very excited to be performing the “The Heart of the Singer” at First Congregational Church, 177 North Main Street, Concord on November 18th. This is the New Hampshire Master Chorale’s first performance at this beautiful and historic church, the first church in the settlement which came to be known as Concord. Parking is available for the 7PM concert in the church parking lot behind the building, accessible from the Washington Street side as well as the parking lot for

All living things are connected. This bond, whatever its identity, known by whatever name you choose, is undeniable, omnipotent, expressed by powerful emotion. For our upcoming concerts, Dan has chosen music which reflects our universal commonality. The centerpiece, The Wound in the Water, is by Norwegian composer Kim André Arnesen, with texts by European poet Euan Tait. As is often true of poetry, meaningful but curious ambiguity leaves room for interpretation. But there i

The Heart of the Singer: A Contemporary Lament And the Redeeming Power of Music By Richard Knox Master Chorale devotees won’t be surprised to encounter another concert with an edge. That’s a hallmark of Music Director Dan Perkins. In fact, there’s a good chance this program – in large part a lament for a damaged environment and humanity’s troubled psyche – may seem even edgier in retrospect as the 17th year of a new millennium limps to a close. You have to admit it’s hard to

The theme of this fall’s New Hampshire Master Chorale two-concert series is “The Heart of the Singer.” That’s also the title of the concluding section of the concerts’ centerpiece, The Wound in the Water, a new work for chorus and chamber orchestra that laments our damaged environment, humanity’s anxious and wounded psyche, and the redemptive power of music. The work is a collaboration between the rising young Norwegian composer Kim André Arnesen and Welsh librettist Euan Tai

The New Hampshire Master Chorale’s spring concerts, on June 17 in Concord and June 18 in Plymouth, embrace life’s gamut. The program, titled From Time to Time, ranges from the innocent hope embodied in a newborn baby to the funk and lustiness of youth, and from the dawning sense of life’s limitations in middle age to the poignancy of failing health and memory in the twilight years. The centerpiece is a new commissioned work provocatively entitled Smoking, Drinking, Messing Ar

Boston-based composer Oliver Caplan chose three poems of Ruth Kessler’s for his new choral work, Eve Absinthe Alice, commissioned by the New Hampshire Master Chorale for premiere performances on November 19 and 20, 2016. The poems are among 17 depicting women from myth, art and literature, published under the title Fire Ashes Wings. Eve – the mother of us all, Genesis tells us – tastes a forbidden fruit that awakens a world of knowledge. Addressing Posterity, she rues the bla

The three poems set by composer Oliver Caplan as Eve, Absinthe, Alice - commissioned by the New Hampshire Master Chorale and to be premiered by the group in November 2016 – are from a cycle of 17 poems by Ruth Kessler, published under the title Fire Ashes Wings. They are part of a larger project giving voice to women in myths, art and literature. Kessler is a Polish-born poet who grew up in Israel and now lives in New York City. Caplan selected the three poems for his composi

The opening program of the New Hampshire Master Chorale’s 14th season is all about women. There are choral settings of poems written from a woman’s point of view; songs about mythical, fictional and historical women; and pieces by female composers. The program is called “Eve, Absinthe, Alice” after its centerpiece – a new choral work commissioned by the Master Chorale that will receive its world premiere on November 19 at 8 p.m. at the Eagle Square Atrium in Concord and Novem