Trinity Wall Street remembers 9/11 with week of free concerts
After September 11, 2001, it was in Trinity Wall Street and St. Paul’s Chapel – just a stone’s throw from Ground Zero – that many sought spiritual refuge. Now, ten years on, the 300-year-old Episcopal parish presents a wealth of musical offerings – all free, and open to the public – in its weeklong observance of the tenth anniversary of the attacks (Sept 4–12). Opening on Sunday, September 4 at 9am, when Trinity Wall Street’s Director of Music and the Arts Julian Wachner leads the resident Trinity Choir in an all-Fauré service, the week builds to a climax on Friday, September 9, with a full day of concerts featuring celebrated choirs from New York City, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, and Boston – regions forever linked by the tragic events of 9/11. After taking turns to give hourly performances throughout the day, the five adult choirs come together for a final, stirring concert at 8:30pm, with guest star appearances by Grammy Award-winning violinist Gil Shaham and Metropolitan Opera singers Angela Meade, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and Luca Pisaroni. The week’s highlights also include a recital by the Chiara String Quartet and six performances by Wachner, the Trinity Choir, and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra in their popular “Bach at One” series, showcasing the motets of J.S. Bach (Sept 5–8, 10, 12). The same forces make their debut recording of the complete motets on the Musica Omnia label; due for release on September 1, the album is offered as a memorial to those who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks.
One of the oldest, largest, and most vibrant of all Episcopal parishes, Trinity Wall Street is located in the heart of New York’s financial district, where it has created a dynamic home for great music. Informed by the theme “Remember to Love,” the week of commemorative concerts is designed to honor the memory of those tragically lost, and to mark the unparalleled efforts of the first responders, recovery workers, and volunteer community by offering contemplation, solace, and the embrace of a hopeful future. As the Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper, 17th Rector of Trinity Wall Street, observes:
“Ten years ago, the final act of many 9/11 victims was one of love. Facing the unthinkable, their parting gesture was to reach out to their families, friends, and colleagues. Ten years later, let us ‘Remember to Love’ those who are gone, those who remain, and those to come. Let us further remember and honor those who perished by generating a post-anniversary community committed to reconciliation and peace.”
Except where noted, concerts take place at either Trinity Church, on Broadway at Wall Street, or St. Paul’s Chapel, on Broadway and Fulton Street. Having survived intact both New York’s Great Fire of 1776, which destroyed the original Trinity Church, and the annihilation of the World Trade Center across the street, St. Paul’s has come to be known as “the little chapel that stood.”
Full Day of Concerts on September 9
At the heart of the scheduled week of observances are the nine choral concerts on Friday, September 9. The six participating choirs are the Trinity Choir, New York City Master Chorale, Young People’s Chorus of New York City, Washington Chorus (DC), Bach Choir of Bethlehem (Pennsylvania), and Copley Singers (Boston). Besides representing the four regions most closely associated with the 9/11 attacks, all six ensembles are justly – in several cases, internationally – celebrated.
At 11am on September 9, the Grammy® Award-winning Washington Chorus performs Rachmaninoff’s Vespers: a cappella settings of texts taken from the Russian Orthodox all-night vigil ceremony, and one of the composer’s personal favorites. At 1pm, the Washington Chorus returns, performing Cantique de Jean Racine, a youthful work by Fauré, who is far better-known for his own timeless Requiem, which opens the day’s main event; this earlier concert concludes with another French Requiem: that of Maurice Duruflé, who derived nearly all its thematic material from the Gregorian “Mass for the Dead.”
The Trinity Choir, recently praised by the New York Times for its “superbly performed” account of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, is the premier ensemble of the music and arts program at Trinity Wall Street. At 6pm, the choir, led by its principal conductor, Julian Wachner, will offer works by Martin Amlin, Herbert Howells, Julian Wachner, and György Ligeti. His Lux aeterna, which – though best-known for its use in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey – is actually a setting of lines from the Catholic Requiem mass for the dead.
Fittingly, the Requiem is the theme at 2pm, when the New York City Master Chorale, conducted by its Founder Thea Kano, presents American composer Paul Leavitt’s unique vision of the genre. Following the sudden death of his partner Gwénole Le Dréan during the summer of 1999, Leavitt was inspired to write a monumental Requiem after he awoke one morning to hear the peaceful notes of the “Pie Jesu” melody he had penned earlier playing in his head. In homage to one of the most famous choral Requiems written by a French composer, Leavitt modeled his work on the text of Maurice Duruflé’s 1947 Requiem. Leavitt and Duruflé’s Requiems also share a similar harmonic palette, degree of symmetry, emotional range, and impressionistic structure.
Duruflé figures once again on the program for the Boston-based Copley Singers, who proffer a smorgasbord of eclectic fare, from Schubert to Andrew Lloyd Webber by way of spirituals and more, under the direction of Brian Jones, Emeritus Director of Music and Organist at Boston’s Trinity Church, at 3pm.
At 4pm, the Young People’s Chorus of NYC tenders a similarly wide-ranging mix, including compositions and arrangements by its Founder and Artistic Director Francisco J. Núñez; popular songs from John Legend and Rufus Wainwright; and new music from contemporary composers Nico Muhly and John Corigliano. The chorus has won almost a dozen gold medals in international competitions as well as Chorus America’s Education Outreach Award and two Chorus America/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming.
No less distinguished is the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, America’s oldest Bach Choir, which gave the U.S. premieres of two of J.S. Bach’s most important works: the Christmas Oratorio and Mass in B minor. Now, under the baton of Artistic Director Greg Funfgeld, the choir presents two programs before taking part in the evening’s finale. The first, at noon, spotlights Stephen Paulus’s Dream of Time, a 2009 Bach Choir commission dedicated to Funfgeld in honor of his 25th year as the ensemble’s Artistic Director. For its second program, at 5pm, the choir returns to its roots with Bach’s beloved Cantata BWV 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (“Sleepers, Wake!”), alongside motets by Brahms and Mendelssohn.
Final Concert Features Combined Choirs, NOVUS NY and Guest Soloists
The music-filled day reaches its apex when all five adult choirs unite for a final performance with NOVUS NY, Trinity Wall Street’s resident contemporary music orchestra, at 8:30pm at Trinity Church. Two famous Requiems, by Brahms and Fauré will feature prominently in the evening program. The combined forces will perform selected movements from Brahms’s mammoth Ein deutsches Requiem, featuring soloists from the Metropolitan Opera’s fall line-up: American soprano Angela Meade and Italian bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni. Fauré’s complete Requiem features violinist Gil Shaham, winner of a Grammy® Award and the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize; Trinity’s own baritone Dashon Burton; and soprano Jolle Greenleaf “a soprano with a light, bright tone and impeccable delivery” (New York Times), who will sing the famous soaring “Pie Jesu” movement; according to Fauré’s compatriot and fellow composer Saint-Saëns, his was “the only Pie Jesu” that mattered.
The night’s final guest star is countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, who makes his Metropolitan Opera debut this season in its world premiere production of The Enchanted Island. In Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Costanzo sings the famous setting of Psalm 23, one of the Psalms of David, which opens “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want”. Also on the program are Lukas Foss’s setting of the same verse, and Randall Thompson’s Last Words of David. Further fostering the spirit of reconciliation and acceptance this kindles, the concert closes with the “Dona nobis pacem” (Grant us peace) from Bach’s transcendental Mass in B minor, conducted by the Bach Choir’s Greg Funfgeld.
Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra
Given the sacred and spiritual nature of his work, it is hardly surprising that Bach’s music figures so prominently in this week of observances. For the next six installments of their “Bach at One” series, Wachner, the Trinity Choir, and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra undertake some of the peerless Baroque master’s most profound and potent works. Jesu, meine Freude (Jesus, My Joy), Motet No. 3 in E minor, BWV 227, abounds with starkly contrasted images of heaven and hell, heightened by Bach’s vivid setting of the German text, and resulting in an uncommonly wide dramatic range. No less powerful is Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (God’s Time is the Very Best Time), BWV 106, also known as the Actus tragicus. The early sacred cantata intended for a funeral impressed musicologist Alfred Dürr as “a work of genius such as even great masters seldom achieve.” These and other Bach motets and cantatas on sacred themes, feature in “Bach at One” (see full programming details below), while the composer’s complete motets will soon be available on the Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra’s new Musica Omnia recording, in memory of the victims of September 11.
In addition to the special events programmed, Wachner and the Trinity Choir will continue to provide music at the Eucharist services on September 4, 9, and 11, with repertoire ranging from Bach and Fauré to new music by Roxanna Panufnik and Wachner himself; Eucharist at 11:15am on Sunday, September 4 features his own Ave dulcissima Maria, which has been described as “wonderful…, elegant and profound” (Spectrum Music).
Chiara String Quartet and more
The week’s observances also include a recital by the Chiara String Quartet, lauded for its “highly virtuosic, edge-of-the-seat playing” (Boston Globe), on Thursday, September 8. The quartet will present Richard Danielpour’s Quartet No. 6, “Addio” and Robert Sirota’s Triptych, a commemoration of the victims of 9/11, which was written for the quartet in 2002.
Further musical highlights include live music at Charlotte’s Place on Greenwich Street September 8, 9, and 11, when it follows the unveiling and blessing of a symbolic flag; the Trinity Youth Chorus concert on September 7; and an appearance by singer-songwriter Melanie DeMore on September 9 at 7pm, as a prelude to the final choral concert of the day.
A full schedule of performances, webcasts, and more, is available at www.trinitywallstreet.org/911.
Trinity Wall Street
One of the oldest, largest, and most vibrant of all Episcopal parishes, Trinity Wall Street is located in the heart of New York’s financial district, where it has created a dynamic home for great music. Trinity Wall Street opened its 2010-11 season with an exciting new appointment, as noted conductor, composer, and keyboardist Julian Wachner took over as Director of Trinity’s Music and the Arts program. Serving as principal conductor of the Trinity Choir, Trinity Baroque Orchestra and NOVUS NY, he also oversees all liturgical, professional, and community Music and Arts programming at Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel.
All concerts at Trinity Wall Street are professionally filmed and broadcast live at www.trinitywallstreet.org.
Trinity Wall Street
“Remember to Love”: Observance of the Tenth Anniversary of September 11
September 4–12, 2011
Sunday, September 4
9am: Eucharist, Trinity Church
Gabriel Fauré: Messe basse
Gabriel Fauré: “Pie Jesu” from Requiem
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
10am: Eucharist, St. Paul’s Chapel
Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni: Cantate Domino
Chapel Singers / Marilyn Haskel
11:15am: Eucharist, Trinity Church
J.S. Bach: Komm, Jesu, komm
Julian Wachner: Ave dulcissima Maria
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
Monday, September 5 (Labor Day)
1pm: Bach at One, St. Paul’s Chapel
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 106, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit
J.S. Bach: Jesu meine Freude
J.S. Bach: Singet dem Herrn
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
Tuesday, September 6
1pm: Bach at One, St. Paul’s Chapel
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 131, Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir
J.S. Bach: Fürchte dich nicht
J.S. Bach: Komm, Jesu, komm
J.S. Bach: Der Geist hilft
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
Wednesday, September 7
1pm: Bach at One, St. Paul’s Chapel
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 106, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit
J.S. Bach: Jesu meine Freude
J.S. Bach: Singet dem Herrn
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
6pm: Trinity Youth Chorus, Trinity Church
Robert Moran: Trinity Requiem (World Premiere)
Commissioned by Trinity Wall Street for the Trinity Youth Chorus.
Trinity Youth Chorus / Julian Wachner and Melissa Attebury
Thursday, September 8
1pm: Bach at One, St. Paul’s Chapel
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 131, Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir
J.S. Bach: Fürchte dich nicht
J.S. Bach: Komm, Jesu, komm
J.S. Bach: Der Geist hilft
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
5pm: Live music, Charlotte’s Place (109 Greenwich Street)
8pm: Concert: Chiara String Quartet, Trinity Church
Richard Danielpour: Quartet No. 6, “Addio”
Robert Sirota: Triptych
Friday, September 9
11am: Choral concert: Washington Chorus, Trinity Church
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Vespers
Washington Chorus / Julian Wachner
12pm: Choral concert: Bach Choir of Bethlehem, St. Paul’s Chapel
Stephen Paulus: Dream of Time
Bach Choir of Bethlehem / Greg Funfgeld
12:05pm: Eucharist, Trinity Church
Spiritual: “Soon I Will Be Done”
Anthony Furnivall: “Amazing Grace”
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
1pm: Choral Concert: Washington Chorus, Trinity Church
Gabriel Fauré: Cantique de Jean Racine
Maurice Duruflé: Requiem
Washington Chorus / Julian Wachner
2pm: Choral Concert: NYC Master Chorale, St. Paul’s Chapel
Paul Leavitt: Requiem
NYC Master Chorale / Thea Kano, Artistic Director
3pm: Choral Concert: Copley Singers, Trinity Church
Maurice Duruflé: Ubi caritas
Geraint Lewis: Souls of the Righteous
Spiritual: “Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray”
Andrew Lloyd Webber: “Pie Jesu” from Requiem
Leo Sowerby: Psalm 122, “I Was Glad”
Samuel Barber: Agnus Dei
Spiritual: “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”
Franz Schubert: Litanei
Stephen Paulus: Pilgrims’ Hymn
John Taverner: Song for Athene
Copley Singers / Brian Jones
4pm: Choral Concert: Young People’s Chorus of NYC, St. Paul’s Chapel
Chant: Ubi caritas
Tomás Luis de Victoria: Vere languores nostros
Francisco Núñez: Criomé mi Madre
Francisco Núñez: Selections from Misa pequeña para niños
Rufus Wainwright: “Bloom: One Self I Sing,” “Unseen Buds,” and “Lux Aeterna”
John Corigliano: One Sweet Morning
Nico Muhly: I Drink the Air Before Me
Stephen Foster: “Beautiful Dreamer”
Derek Bermel: Small Red Tree
Gabriela Lena Frank: Picaflor Esmeralda
John Legend: “If You’re Out There”
Jim Papoulis, arr. F. Núñez: Give Us Hope
Young People’s Chorus of NYC / Francisco J. Núñez, Founder and Artistic Director
5pm: Choral Concert: Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Trinity Church
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
Motets by Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn
Bach Choir of Bethlehem / Greg Funfgeld
5pm: Live music, Charlotte’s Place (109 Greenwich Street)
6pm: Choral Concert: Trinity Choir, Members of NOVUS NY, St. Paul’s Chapel
Martin Amlin: Time’s Caravan
György Ligeti: Lux aeterna
Herbert Howells: Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing
Robert Kyr: Selections from Songs of the Soul
Julian Wachner: Scenes from the Rubaiyat
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
Members of NOVUS NY
7pm: Concert Prelude, Trinity Church
Melanie DeMore, singer-songwriter
8:30pm: Choral concert: Remember to Love, Trinity Church
Maurice Duruflé: Ubi caritas
Johannes Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem (selected movements)
Gabriel Fauré: Requiem
Randall Thompson: Last Words of David
Spiritual: “Soon I Will Be Done”
Marjorie Merryman: Windhover Fantasy
Lukas Foss: Psalm 23
Anthony Furnivall: “Amazing Grace”
Leonard Bernstein: Chichester Psalms
J.S. Bach: “Dona nobis pacem” from the Mass in B minor
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
NYC Master Chorale / Thea Kano
Young People’s Chorus of New York City / Francisco J. Núñez
Washington Chorus / Julian Wachner
Bach Choir of Bethlehem / Greg Funfgeld
Copley Singers / Brian Jones, Conductor
NOVUS NY
With Gil Shaham, violin; Anthony Roth Costanzo, countertenor; Angela Meade and Jolle Greenleaf, sopranos; Luca Pisaroni, bass-baritone; and Dashon Burton, baritone. (Angela Meade and Luca Pisaroni appear courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera.)
Saturday, September 10
1pm: Bach at One, St. Paul’s Chapel
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 34, O ewiges Feuer, O Ursprung der Liebe
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
Sunday, September 11
9am: Eucharist, Trinity Church
Roxanna Panufnik: Westminster Mass
Anthony Furnivall: “Amazing Grace”
Herbert Howells: Coventry Antiphon
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
11:15am: Eucharist, Trinity Church
Herbert Howells: Coventry Antiphon
John Tavener: Song for Athene
Stephen Paulus: Dream of Time
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
2pm–5pm: Live music, Charlotte’s Place (109 Greenwich Street)
8pm: Compline, St. Paul’s Chapel
Carlyle Sharpe: Peace (2004)
György Ligeti: Lux aeterna
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
Monday, September 12
1pm: Bach at One, St. Paul’s Chapel
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 79, Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 192, Nun danket alle Gott
Trinity Choir / Julian Wachner
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