KANSAS CITY JEWISH CHRONICLE - 11 APRIL 2024
The William Baker Festival Singers & Chamber Orchestra will perform a concert of five masterworks, including William W. Dreyfoos’ “Songs of the Holocaust” and Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms.”
The concert will be held on Sunday, April 14, at 3 p.m. at the St. Mary’s Episcopal Church (1307 Holmes St, Kansas City, MO 64106). Music Director William O. Baker, Associate Music Director Christine Freeman and Choral Intern Kelsey Emmanuel will lead the 50 voice, semi-professional choral.
Tickets and more information are available at festivalsingers.org/concerts or at the door.
“Songs for the Holocaust” by William W. Dreyfoos is a centerpiece of the concert. Dreyfoos, based in Atlanta, Georgia, has been a composer and performer with the William Baker Choral Foundation’s Jewish ensemble, Zimria Festivale Atlanta. His setting of “Songs of The Holocaust,” which will be sung in Yiddish, is based on tunes and writings of youth and young adults who were trapped in ghettos in Poland during the Holocaust years.
The songs are scored for soprano soloist, choir, piano, gypsy violin and cello. Dreyfoos will be in Kansas City for the April 14 performance.
“Chichester Psalms” is one of Leonard Bernstein’s best-known compositions and most famous choral work. It is a setting in Hebrew of psalms including the Psalm 23, Psalm 100, Psalm 108, and Psalms 130 and 133. The work will be performed by the Festival Singers with Organist Geoffrey Wilcken, percussionist Mark Lowry and former Kansas City Symphony principal harpist Deborah Wells Clark.
In addition to Dreyfoos’ and Bernstein’s works, Benjamin Britten’s “Festival Te Deum,” Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Dona Nobis Pacem” and Ed Frazier Davis’ “At Our Last Awakening” will also be performed.
The William Baker Festival Singers is the flagship ensemble of the Choral Foundation, a national arts organization based in Kansas City that sponsors 12 performing ensembles in four states, in addition to the Institute for Healthy Singing and Voice Research. The ensemble has produced two dozen nationally-released recordings and has been featured in numerous national broadcasts and publications.
The Festival Singers have toured to 14 states and the District of Columbia, including performances in the Washington National Cathedral, Helzberg Hall of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Trinity Wall Street Church in New York City, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in Charleston and The Temple on Peachtree in Atlanta.
The Choral Foundation has long had a commitment to music of the Jewish tradition, from the founding of a dedicated Jewish choral ensemble, Zimria Festivale Atlanta in 2014, to performances of the Donald McCullough “Holocaust Cantata” in Lee’s Summit in 2023 and in Marietta, Georgia, in 2024; previous performances, broadcasts and recordings of “Songs of the Holocaust;” and a 2012 performance and Kansas Public Radio broadcast of Ernst Bloch’s “Avodath HaKodesh (Sacred Service).”
The Choral Foundation’s 130-voice Summer Singers of Kansas City will perform Bloch’s “Avodath HaKodesh (Sacred Service)” on Aug. 25 in Helzberg Hall of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.
Additional information on the April 14 performance is available by emailing mail@festivalsingers.org or calling (913) 488-7524.