The Choir of Trinity Wall Street backs the Rolling Stones for band’s 50th anniversary
Just two days after receiving its first Grammy nomination for its recording of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street will back the Rolling Stones at the rock ’n’ roll band’s 50th anniversary concerts in Brooklyn (Barclays Center, Dec 8) and Newark (Prudential Center, Dec 13 and 15). Especially chosen for these historic events, the Trinity Choir will join the Stones for the band’s first encore each night, providing the iconic vocal opening and choral finale of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – one of the most famous secular hymns in popular music and recorded by the Stones in 1969. In an ironic musical twist, the choir will also give one of its annual performances of Handel’s Messiah at sold-out Trinity Church on Dec. 9, the night after the choir’s first concert with the Stones – the band known for its “Sympathy for the Devil.” The next chance to hear the choir perform Messiah will be at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on December 12. The Newark concert with the Stones on December 15 will be broadcast pay-per-view worldwide.
The Rolling Stones originally recorded “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” for the band’s album Let It Bleed, with the London Bach Choir providing the choral support in the studio. With its lyric of “You can’t always get what you want / But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need,” the song addresses the possibility of hope in the wake of the societal upheaval, bacchanalian experimentation and frustrated ambitions of the 1960s. The message of the words and the uplift of the music in this Mick Jagger/Keith Richards composition have resonated across the decades, striking a chord with each successive generation. Trinity music director Julian Wachner will conduct the Trinity Choir in each of its performances of the song with the Stones.
Trinity Wall Street
Trinity Wall Street’s annual performances of Handel’s Messiah have become a holiday event in New York City. The New York Times has given Trinity’s performances of Messiah high praise. A recent review observed that Trinity Wall Street’s presentation, “largely on the strength of its extraordinary choir, pierced the heart,” adding that while other groups present Messiah as “a comfortable holiday tradition, Trinity put on something closer to a sacred rite.” When Messiah was first presented at Trinity Church in 1770, it was only the second performance of Handel’s work in the New World. Trinity was also involved in the American premiere of Messiah just eight months before and only blocks away at Burns Coffee House at 9 Broadway, as a fundraiser for Trinity’s organist.
The Trinity Choir and Baroque Orchestra also made waves this year with their recording of one of Handel’s other great oratorios, Israel in Egypt, which has now earned the more than 300-year-old choir its first Grammy nomination for Best Choral Performance. The three-CD set presents the final 1756 revised version of Israel in Egypt, Handel’s most elaborate “chorus” oratorio. Along with the 1756 score in its entirety, the set includes the oratorio’s original “Part One” from the initial 1739 performance as an appendix – making this release the most complete version of Israel in Egypt on the market.
Handel’s Israel in Egypt tells a tale of Jewish bondage and escape drawn from the biblical Psalms and Book of Exodus. The score comprises 28 massive double choruses, linked together by a few bars of recitative, with five arias and three duets interspersed among them. Reviewing the 2010 live performance of Israel in Egypt at Trinity Wall Street, the New York Times singled out the “marvelous series of choruses depicting the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea and their aftermath. These splendid studies in tone painting were all superbly performed by the Trinity Choir, obviously well prepared by Mr. Wachner, a composer and choral director of considerable experience.”
One of the oldest, largest and most vibrant of all Episcopal parishes, Trinity Wall Street is located in the heart of Manhattan’s financial district, where it has created a dynamic home for great music. Serving as director of Trinity’s Music and the Arts Program – as well as principal conductor of the Trinity Choir, the period-instrument Trinity Baroque Orchestra and the contemporary-music ensemble-in-residence NOVUS NY – Julian Wachner oversees all liturgical, professional and community Music and Arts programming at Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel. The music at Trinity ranges from large-scale oratorios to chamber music, from intimate a cappella singing to jazz improvisation. All concerts at Trinity Wall Street are professionally filmed and broadcast live at www.trinitywallstreet.org.
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