The Dessoff Choirs Continues Mid-Winter Festival - WORD•PLAY - with 'Sing-In: Whitman & Frost' on January 26

NEW YORK, NY - The Dessoff Choirs’ Mid-Winter Festival, WORD•PLAY, continues with Sing-In: Whitman and Frost at the Immanuel Lutheran Church, 1296 Lexington Avenue. This communal sing-in invites participants to join Music Director, Christopher Shepard, and The Dessoff Choirs in exploring the marriage of text and music with two staples of the choral repertoire. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem and Randall Thompson’s Frostiana are set to texts by the beloved American poets Walt Whitman and Robert Frost.

Dessoff’s second Mid-Winter Festival will be presented in various venues around New York City between January 15 and March 16. Dessoff’s Music Director Christopher Shepard says, “The basic premise behind the festival is that vocal music can be as much a literary art as it is a musical art.” The next event on February 7, Self-Portrait: Ricky Ian Gordon, is an exciting and intimate evening with composer Ricky Ian Gordon where he will perform his music and discuss his relationship with poetry and music. The festival continues with a public master class, Life of a Song: The Art of (Re)Writing on February 9, and closes with a A Night of Wonders featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Geraldine Brooks on March 15 and 16.

TICKETS: Single tickets: $10-15; discounted festival packs for $135; children under 12 free for all programs. Order tickets online at dessoff.org.

PRESS TICKETS: For press tickets, artist bios or images, please contact Amy Laudicano: 212.874.7624, alaudicano@lcohnpr.com.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS Christopher Shepard, Music Director, The Dessoff Choirs Christopher Shepard became music director of The Dessoff Choirs in 2010. Best known as a Bach specialist, Shepard has also conducted many staples of the choral-orchestral repertoire, and he has commissioned and premiered a number of new choral works in both the U.S. and Australia where he founded the Sydneian Bach Choir and Orchestra in Sydney, Australia, and was music director of BACH 2010, a project to perform all of Bach’s choral cantatas. Mr. Shepard is currently music director of the Worcester Chorus in Worcester, Massachusetts, the third-oldest community choir in America; music director of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Stamford, Connecticut; and conductor of the Great Waters Festival Chorus. He has also been a guest conductor at Emmanuel Church in Boston, a church renowned for its three-decade Bach cantata project. Since becoming music director, he has prepared Dessoff for performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Radio City Music Hall, including the New York premiere of Italo Montemezzi’s opera La Nave with Teatro Grattacielo; Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe with the Juilliard Orchestra under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin; and Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, performed at the Concert for Peace at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on New Year’s Eve 2011. Mr. Shepard holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of Sydney.

ABOUT THE DESSOFF CHOIRS Tracing its roots back to 1924, when Margarete Dessoff and Angela Diller founded the Adesdi Chorus of women’s voices and, soon after, a mixed chorus called the A Cappella Singers of New York, The Dessoff Choirs continues to make its home in New York City. An independent chorus not affiliated with any religious or community group, Dessoff has established a reputation for pioneering performances of choral works from the Renaissance era through the 21st century. The “s” in Choirs connotes the group’s various ensembles, ranging from the large Symphonic Choir that appears with major orchestras, to the smaller Chamber Choir featured in more intimate works. With Kent Tritle, Dessoff released its first CD, Reflections, which featured the world premiere of Paul Moravec’s “Songs of Love and War” and works by Robert Convery, John Corigliano, and Ned Rorem, an effort that helped earn the group the 1999 ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming. In December 2009, Dessoff released its second CD, Glories on Glories, under the direction of James Bagwell, also available as digital download from multiple online retailers. In 2012, the Dessoff Choirs presented their first Mid-Winter Festival, Refracted Bach.

PROGRAM “SING-IN: WHITMAN & FROST” Saturday, January 26, 2013, 2:00 pm Immanuel Lutheran Church 1296 Lexington Avenue, New York City

Christopher Shepard, conductor The Dessoff Choirs

Ralph Vaughan Williams Dona nobis pacem (text by Walt Whitman) Randall Thompson Frostiana (text by Robert Frost)