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The Cecilia Chorus of New York Presents on April 26 at Carnegie Hall: Brahms: A German Requiem and Hailstork: The World Called

April 11, 2025 | By Jeffrey James Arts Consulting

President

Saturday, April 26 at 8:00 PM, The Cecilia Chorus of New York, Mark Shapiro, Music Director, will present Brahms’ A German Requiem and the New York Premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s The World Called (text by Rita Dove) at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, 57th Street & 7th Avenue in Manhattan. Soloists will be Brandie Sutton, soprano and Justin Austin, baritone.

Pairing works by Johannes Brahms and the distinguished American composer Adolphus Hailstork (setting a text by former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove), this concert celebrates the meaning and purpose of our time on earth, and pays tribute to the memory of Heather Heyer in what would have been her 40th birthday year (On August 12, 2017, Heyer was murdered in the Charlottesville terrorist attack.) Her mother Susan Bro will address the audience, and honored guest Rita Dove will recite her poem from the stage. “The world called, and I answered.”

Program note:

Music Director Mark Shapiro writes about the piece, “I’m a longtime fan of Adolphus Hailstork. He’s an unapologetically neo-Romantic composer, inexhaustibly creative, equipped with a flawless technique. Steeped in the styles and tropes of his classical forbears, he’s particularly well-attuned to singing, solo as well as choral (which is its own thing). Hailstork’s writing is luxuriantly melodious, carried forward by vigorous rhythm and a purposeful yet sensuous harmony.

And he writes about the Brahms, “The loss of (his) mother in 1865 affected the composer deeply and likely turned his mind toward the writing of his German Requiem, which he worked on over a period of three years… Brahms devised his own libretto, eschewing references to a specific religion in favor of a fully ecumenical spirituality; he was quoted as having wished to title this work “A Human (“menschliches”) Requiem.”

For tickets:

Single tickets for April 26 range from $40 to $120 and are available online at https://www.carnegiehall.org/calendar/2025/04/26/the-cecilia-chorus-of-new-york-with-orchestra-0800pm, by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800 or visiting the box office at 57^th Street and 7th Avenue.

For more about this concert, visit The Cecilia Chorus of New York or call 646-638-2535. CCNY Carnegie Hall concerts are ADA accessible. For MTA transportation information, visit https://new.mta.info/tripplanner/results.

About the Chorus:

The Cecilia Chorus of New York, winner of the ASCAP/Chorus America Alice Parker Award, is recognized as one of the finest avocational performing arts organizations in New York City. In February 2025 the chorus released its first commercial album, on the Naxos label, of Daron Hagen’s human rights cantata Everyone, Everywhere, recorded live in Carnegie Hall at its world premiere in December 2023. Other recent highlights include the 2024 world premiere of Power in the Blood by jazz great Cyrus Chestnut, with Chestnut at the piano; the world premiere of Fifty Trillion Molecular Geniuses by The Brothers Balliett on words by Jill Bolte Taylor; the New York premieres in Carnegie Hall of the Mass in D and The Prison by Dame Ethel Smyth and Dixit Dominus by Marianna von Martinez; and the Carnegie Hall Premiere of The Ballad of the Brown King: A Christmas Cantata by Margaret Bonds with text by Langston Hughes. Much more at http://ceciliachorusny.org/.

Mark Shapiro was appointed the seventh Music Director of The Cecilia Chorus of New York in 2011. Conductor Emeritus of The Prince Edward Island Symphony, Principal Conductor of Marshall Opera in New York, and Artistic Director of Cantori New York, he is one of a handful of artistic leaders in North America to have won a prestigious ASCAP Programming Award six times, achieving the unique distinction of winning such an award with three different ensembles. The New York Times has characterized his conducting as "insightful" and acknowledged its “virtuosity and assurance” and “uncommon polish.” Bio at https://ceciliachorusny.org/about/#music-director.

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