If you were lucky enough to be in the audience for the Monmouth Civic Chorus world premiere of Jorge Martin's Stronger Than Darkness in March '07, you know what an exciting concert that was. Now we're even more excited. We just received a national award for that performance! In fact, it's international, because only one chorus in North America gets this award each year – the Chorus America/ASCAP Alice Parker Award. We're in good company – other awards went to Chanticleer, The Esoterics and Peninsula Girls Chorus. We're the first New Jersey-based ensemble to win any Chorus America/ASCAP award since 1993.
We got the Alice Parker award for "programming significant recently composed music that expands the mission of the chorus and challenges the chorus's audience in a new way." If you ever sang in your school or church choir, you probably recognize the name Alice Parker. Her arrangements with Robert Shaw of folksongs, hymns and spirituals are favorites with choruses all over the world. This award honors her because she loves new music, and if you hang around with us, you'll love new music, too.
Yes, we know new music can be scary – maybe you think it can't be any fun, or it's dull or depressing or dissonant. Maybe you think all classical composers are already dead. Well, you're wrong, and we can prove it. We got a standing ovation for that March 2007 world premiere, and we sold out the house for our world premiere of Golden Gate in May 2008. We just got a French-American Cultural Exchange grant (co-sponsored by the French Embassy) for our U.S. premiere of a French piece in May 2009. If you think the composer is some old codger from the 19th century, think again – he's Guillaume Connesson, a 35-year-old Parisian who's written pieces called Techno-Parade, Disco-Toccata and Jurassic Trip.
Sure, we love the classics, like Handel's Messiah (coming up in December); in fact, we make old music sound new again, with the same freshness and adventure that we bring to new music. We learn to love old and new music by singing it, and you can learn to love it by coming to our concerts. We'll do our best to make it easy – we have user-friendly program notes, informal talks before or after concerts, a lively e-mail newsletter, and on-stage comments by our director, Mark Shapiro, who is quite the engaging speaker. So check out our web site, listen to our sound clips, visit us on MySpace or e-mail me. If strangers are friends you haven't met yet, new music is familiar music you haven't heard yet.
Go to our Web site and Read the program notes from the award-winning concert.
Go to our Web site and Listen to the composer's pre-concert talk.