Oratorio Society of New York Concludes 24-25 Season with World Premiere of 'All Shall Rise' by Moravec/Campbell

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mallory McFarland | Morahan Arts and Media
mallory@morahanartsandmedia.com | (646) 378-9386 

ORATORIO SOCIETY OF NEW YORK CONCLUDES
2024-2025 SEASON WITH WORLD PREMIERE OF
PAUL MORAVEC AND MARK CAMPBELL’S ALL SHALL RISE

Featuring Soloists Susanna Phillips, Lucia Bradford,
Jonathan Pierce Rhodes, and Steven Eddy

May 5, 2025 at Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall

“a beautifully blended, thoroughly unified sound” –The New York Times

www.osny.org

New York, NY (March 18, 2025) — The renowned Oratorio Society of New York (OSNY), led by Music Director Kent Tritle, concludes its 2024-2025 season with the world premiere of Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell’s All Shall Rise, as well as Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang on Monday, May 5, 2025 at 7:00 pm at Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall.

Moravec and Campbell's All Shall Rise delves into the critical and timely issue of voting rights in the United States. This powerful work is the third collaboration between the acclaimed composer and librettist duo, commissioned by OSNY, after the Grammy-nominated Sanctuary Road and A Nation of Others.

“In my libretto for All Shall Rise, I intersperse speeches and writings by such inspirational figures as Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, and Mathilde Franziska Anneke with stories of imagined lives that are affected by them,” remarked Mark Campbell. “Paul's music deftly renders the details of these stories and also soars with emotional power as it captures the triumphs in the struggles for human equality.”

Kent Tritle shared, “I am so proud to be conducting the premiere of this timely oratorio. Personally, it speaks powerfully to me at this moment in our nation’s history; a moment when we most need compassion, inclusivity and equity.”

Also on the evening’s program is Felix Mendelssohn’s hymn of praise, Symphony No. 2, Lobgesang, Op. 52.

Joining the Society, Maestro Tritle, and the Orchestra of the Society for this performance are acclaimed soloists Susanna Phillips, soprano, Lucia Bradford, mezzo-soprano, Jonathan Pierce Rhodes, tenor, and Steven Eddy, baritone.

The Oratorio Society of New York also holds the 48th annual Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition Finals Concert on Saturday, April 5, 2025 at 1:30 pm at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Since 1977 the Society has hosted a solo competition to encourage the art of oratorio singing and to give young singers an opportunity to advance their careers. International in scope, it is the only competition dedicated solely to the art of oratorio singing.

Event Information
Mendelssohn/Moravec
Monday, May 5, 2025 at 7:00 pm
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall
Tickets: Starting at $40
Link: https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2025/05/05/Oratorio-Society-of-New-York-0700PM 

Program
Paul Moravec, Mark Campbell: All Shall Rise (World Premiere)
Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 2, Lobgesang, Op. 52

Artists
Susanna Phillips, soprano
Lucia Bradford, mezzo-soprano
Jonathan Pierce Rhodes, tenor (Carnegie Hall Debut)
Steven Eddy, baritone
Kent Tritle, conductor
Orchestra of the Society

Ticket Information
Single tickets are available via carnegiehall.org, CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800, or the Carnegie Hall Box Office at 57th and Seventh.

About Paul Moravec
Paul Moravec, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music, has composed over two hundred orchestral, opera, chamber, choral, and lyric compositions. Frequently commissioned by notable ensembles and major music institutions, recent seasons have included The Shining at Minnesota Opera, the song cycle Tell All the Truth for mezzo Raehann Bryce-Davis; Light Shall Lift Us, an online OPERA America anthem for 100 opera soloists and virtual orchestra; A New Country, with mezzo Jennifer Cano and the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival; and The Overlook Hotel Suite, with American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Moravec’s discography includes the GRAMMY-nominated Sanctuary Road, with the Oratorio Society of New York on Naxos. He has two albums with Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP Sound): The Blizzard Voices, an oratorio about the Children's Blizzard of 1888, and Northern Lights Electric, an album of his orchestral music. Mr. Moravec’s works have also been released on other labels including BMG, and Deutsche Grammophon with artists including the Ying Quartet, Hilary Hahn, and Jeremy Denk.
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In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Paul's music has earned numerous distinctions, including the Rome Prize Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. A graduate of Harvard College and Columbia University, he has taught at Columbia, Dartmouth, and Hunter College and currently holds the special position of University Professor at Adelphi University. He was recently the Paul Fromm Composer-in-Residence at the American Academy in Rome, served as Artist-in-Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society. 

About Mark Campbell
The Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning operas of librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell are among the most successful in the contemporary canon. A prolific writer, Mark has created forty-one opera librettos, lyrics for seven musicals, and the text for nine song cycles and five oratorios. He received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Opera Association.

Mark’s best-known opera is Silent Night, which received a Pulitzer Prize in Music and, along with his opera As One, is one of the most frequently produced operas in recent history. The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, an audience favorite, received a 2018 GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording. Mark has received many other prestigious prizes, including the first Kleban Foundation Award for Lyricist, three Grammy nominations for Best Classical Recording, two Richard Rodgers Awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, three Drama Desk nominations, a Jonathan Larson Foundation Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, the first Dominic J. Pelliciotti Award, and a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts.

Recordings of his works include: The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (Pentatone), The Shining (Pentatone), A Nation of Others (Lexicon Classics), Émigré (Deutsche Grammophon), Sanctuary Road (Naxos), Silent Night (Naxos), As One (Bright Shiny Things), Volpone (Wolf Trap Records), Bastianello/Lucrezia (Bridge), Rappahannock County (Naxos), Later the Same Evening (Albany) and Songs from an Unmade Bed (Ghostlight).

Mark is also an advocate for contemporary American opera and serves as a mentor for future generations of writers through organizations like American Opera Projects, American Lyric Theatre, and Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative. In 2020, he created and is funding the Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, the first and only award for opera librettists. In 2022, he helped create and is funding the True Voice Award, administered by Washington National Opera, to help with the training of transgender opera singers.

About the Oratorio Society of New York
The Oratorio Society of New York (OSNY.ORG) is one of the oldest musical organizations in the United States and has become New York City’s standard for grand choral performance. Founded in 1873 by Leopold Damrosch, the Society has played an integral role in the musical life of the city. In its early years, the Society established a fund to finance the building of a new concert hall, a cause taken up in earnest by the Society’s fifth president, Andrew Carnegie. In 1891, under the direction of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, the Society helped inaugurate this new Music Hall, which would be renamed Carnegie Hall several years later.

The Society continues to perform several times each season at Carnegie Hall. Its annual performances of Handel’s Messiah, a New York holiday tradition unbroken since 1874, have become a holiday favorite with New York audiences. In addition to its collaborations with the New York Philharmonic and Orchestra of St. Luke’s, as well as other performing arts institutions, the Society performs internationally every few years – including recent concerts in Japan, Uruguay, Germany, Italy, and Brazil.

The Society is also committed to commissioning and championing new works, including most recently three pieces by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec and Grammy Award-winning librettist Mark Campbell: Sanctuary Road which was nominated for a 2021 Grammy Award and is available from Naxos Records, A Nation of Others, which saw its premiere in November 2022 and is available from Lexicon Classics, and All Shall Rise, focusing on voting rights in the U.S., to be premiered in 2025.

About Kent Tritle
Kent Tritle is one of America’s leading choral conductors. He is Director of Cathedral Music and Organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City; Music Director of the Oratorio Society of New York, the acclaimed avocational chorus; and Music Director of Musica Sacra, New York’s elite professional chorus. In addition, Kent is a member of the graduate faculty of The Juilliard School, serving its Vocal Arts Department. An acclaimed organ virtuoso, he is also the organist of the New York Philharmonic.

Kent Tritle’s discography features more than 20 recordings on the Telarc, Naxos, AMDG, Epiphany, Gothic, VAI, and MSR Classics labels, including the Grammy-nominated 2018 world premiere performance of the Paul Moravec/Mark Campbell oratorio Sanctuary Road with the Oratorio Society of New York.

Kent Tritle is renowned as a master clinician, giving workshops on conducting and repertoire; he leads annual choral workshops at the Amherst Early Music Festival, and recent years have included workshops at Berkshire Choral International, Summer@Eastman, and at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. As Director of Choral Activities at the Manhattan School of Music from 2008 to 2022, Kent established the school’s first doctoral program in choral conducting.

Kent Tritle founded the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert series at New York’s Church of St. Ignatius Loyola and led it to great acclaim from 1989 to 2011. From 1996 to 2004, he was Music Director of New York’s The Dessoff Choirs. Among his recent honors are the 2020 Chorus America Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art, the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award from Career Bridges, and the 2016 President’s Medal for Distinguished Service from the Manhattan School of Music. He was recently featured in the WIRED video series “Masterminds,” an installment titled, “What Conductors Are Really Doing”.

Photo at top of release by Brian Hatton

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