CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The Philadelphia Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 8:00 PM

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Christoph Eschenbach, Music Director and Conductor
Christine Brewer, Soprano
Michaela Kaune, Soprano
Marisol Montalvo, Soprano
Stephanie Blythe, Mezzo-Soprano
Charlotte Hellekant, Mezzo-Soprano
Vinson Cole, Tenor
Franco Pomponi, Baritone
James Morris, Bass
The Philadelphia Singers Chorale
David Hayes, Director
Westminster Symphonic Choir
Joe Miller, Conductor
Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia
Alan Harler, Music Director
The American Boychoir
Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, Music Director

MAHLER Symphony No. 8

Sponsored by United Technologies Corporation

This concert is made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for choral music established by S. Donald Sussman in memory of Judith Arron and Robert Shaw.

This concert is made possible, in part, by The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.

Program Notes:

By Christopher H. Gibbs

GUSTAV MAHLER Symphony No. 8 in E-flat Major, “Symphony of a Thousand”
Born July 7, 1860, in Kalischt (Kalištì), Bohemia; died May 18, 1911, in Vienna.

Composed in 1906, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 received its first performance on September 12, 1910, in Munich, with an especially assembled orchestra, the Riedelverein of Leipzig, the Vienna Singverein, the Munich Central School Children’s Chorus, and soloists Gertrud Förstel, Marta Winternitz-Dorda, Irma Koboth, Ottilie Meyzger, Tilly Koenen, Felix Senius, Nicola Geisse-Winkel, and Richard Mayr. The Symphony was first performed at Carnegie Hall on April 6,1950, by the New York Philharmonic, Leopold Stokowski, conductor, with Frances Yeend, Uta Graf, and Camilla Williams, sopranos; Martha Lipton and Louise Bernhart, contraltos; Eugene Conley, tenor; Carlos Alexander, baritone; George London, bass-baritone; the Schola Cantorum of New York; Westminster Choir; and Public School No.12 Boys Chorus.

Scoring: piccolo, 5 flutes (V doubling piccolo II), 4 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, 4 bassoons, contrabassoon, 8 horns, 8 trumpets (4 onstage, 4 offstage), 7 trombones (4 onstage, 3 offstage), tuba, 2 timpani, percussion (bell, bass drum, chimes, cymbals, glockenspiel, tam-tam, triangle), 2 harps, piano, celesta, organ, harmonium, mandolin, strings, 3 soprano soloists, 2 mezzo-soprano soloists, tenor soloist, baritone soloist, bass soloist, mixed chorus, and boys’ chorus.

“On the first day of the holidays, I went up to the hut in Maiernigg with the firm resolution of idling the holiday away (I needed to so much that year) and recruiting my strength. On the threshold of my old workshop the Spiritus creator took hold of me and shook me and drove me on for the next eight weeks until my greatest work was done.” So Mahler wrote to his wife, Alma, in June 1910, remembering the events four summers earlier, when in unusually short order he sketched his monumental Eighth Symphony in a small town on Lake Wörth amid the Carinthian Mountains. The eighth-century Pentecost hymn “Veni creator spiritus” (Come Creative Spirit) served as the initial inspiration for the Symphony while the ending of Goethe’s Faust II provided the basis for the rest of the work.

Various factors have helped promote the idea that in some respects Mahler composed one gigantic symphony over the course of his career. There are the many interconnections between and among his symphonies, his famous comment to Sibelius that the symphony must be like the world, embracing everything, and then there is the intensely personal nature of all his works. No matter the various groupings—the early “Wunderhorn” symphonies, the middle instrumental ones, and the late works—each symphony nonetheless has its own particular genesis, musical profile, and reception. To say that the Eighth is a work apart is in many ways true, but that could be said of the others as well.

Mahler told his biographer Richard Specht that in comparison to the Eighth “all the rest of my works are no more than introductions. I have never written anything like it; it is quite different in both content and style from all my other works, and certainly the biggest thing that I have ever done. Nor do I think that I have ever worked under such a feeling of compulsion; it was like a lightning vision—I saw the whole piece before my eyes and only needed to write it down, as though it were being dictated to me.”

According to conventional definitions the Eighth Symphony is more a cantata or oratorio than a symphony. The choruses and vocal soloists pervade the work, unlike earlier choral symphonies such as Beethoven’s Ninth, Mendelssohn’s Second, and Mahler’s own Second and Third that use the chorus at or near the end. Mahler recognized this as a revolutionary feature, telling Specht, “Its form is something altogether new. Can you imagine a symphony that is sung throughout, from beginning to end? So far I have employed words and the human voice merely to suggest, to sum up, to establish a mood . . . Here the voice is also an instrument. The whole first movement is strictly symphonic in form yet completely sung. It is really strange that nobody has ever thought of this before; it is simplicity itself, The True Symphony, in which the most beautiful instrument of all is led to its calling. Yet it is used not only as sound, because the voice is the bearer of poetic thoughts.”

Mahler thus combines the two outlets of his compositional oeuvre—symphonic and vocal music—in a piece that is in many respects a synthesis of his creative past and that of music history more generally. As Donald Mitchell has remarked, “There is scarcely a genre that is not touched on, whether it is cantata or oratorio, solo song or operatic aria, childlike chorus or exalted chorale.” Mahler cast the Eighth Symphony in two movements, with texts in Latin and German, and uses an immense orchestra, two large mixed choirs and separate children’s chorus, organ, off-stage brass, and eight soloists. These extraordinary forces led to its unofficial title, “Symphony of a Thousand,” which was not of Mahler’s own devising. The name came rather from the shrewd impresario Emil Gutmann, who arranged the legendary premiere on September 12, 1910, at Munich’s New Music Festival Hall, which held more than 3000. The performance, which was repeated the next day, allegedly employed 858 singers and 171 instrumentalists, for a total of 1,029 performers (plus Mahler conducting).

If Mahler had been surprised in the summer of 1906 that the Symphony came unbidden and was written so quickly, he hardly could have anticipated what the next few years would hold as he awaited its premiere. In May 1907 he resigned as director of the Vienna Court Opera; his beloved elder daughter Marie died in Maiernigg later that summer. He took a position with the Metropolitan Opera in New York and then with the New York Philharmonic. Returning to Europe for the summers, he composed his late works: Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth Symphony, and sketches for his Tenth. Preliminary rehearsals for the premiere of the Eighth Symphony began in late May 1910 in Vienna and Leipzig. That summer Mahler learned that Alma was having an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius and in despair sought out Sigmund Freud. Shortly after their famous meeting in Leiden, which evidently proved helpful, Mahler went to Munich to lead the final rehearsals of the Eighth. He dedicated the Symphony to Alma; it is the only one of his symphonies to have a personal dedication. The premiere was by all accounts an enormous success, undoubtedly the greatest of Mahler’s career as a composer. It also turned out to be the final time he conducted a first performance of one of his own pieces; he never heard Das Lied von der Erde or the Ninth Symphony, both premiered after his death the next year at the age of 50.

The audience attending the Munich premiere included many of the musical and cultural elite in Europe. Among the distinguished musicians attending was 28-year-old Leopold Stokowski, who would soon be appointed the third music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra. Six years later, in April and May 1916, he presented the Symphony’s American premiere in 10 highly acclaimed performances at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music and New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. The forces employed outdid even the Munich premiere, featuring 1068 performers (plus Stokowski), and the performances marked a turning point in the Orchestra’s history.

After an introductory measure in which the organ firmly establishes the key of E-flat, the Symphony opens with an enormous burst of energy as the massed choral forces project the Veni creator spiritus text. The opening motto reappears throughout the Symphony and ultimately caps the final measures. The soprano initiates the soloists and their interactions with the double chorus and children’s chorus. One of the climaxes of the movement is the section “Accende lumen sensibus, Infunde amorem cordibus!” (“Illuminate our senses, Pour love into our hearts!”), which serves as a conceptual bridge to the more humanistic themes of the second movement. Also prominent is the elaborate contrapuntal writing, evidence of Mahler’s deep study of Bach around this time, including a massive double fugue.

Mahler had originally planned for the Symphony to have four movements, with a slow one (Caritas) coming next, followed by a scherzo (Christmas Games with the Child), and a hymn finale (Creation through Eros), which apparently would have drawn its text from Goethe’s Faust. In looking to an author and play he revered, Mahler was following a long tradition of Faust settings in music, not only in many operatic versions, but also as orchestral works, including those by Berlioz, Liszt, Schumann, and Wagner.

The second part of the Symphony is more than twice as long as the first and indeed is the longest movement Mahler ever composed. It begins mysteriously, with an extended slow introduction in the minor. The movement is often described as encompassing the expected next three sections of a typical symphony—a slow movement, scherzo, and finale—but that does not do full justice to its layout, parts of which return to music from the opening movement. The soloists, who had been anonymous in the Veni creator movement, are now used to convey specific Biblical and quasi-spiritual figures (among them Mater Gloriosa as the Virgin Mary, “the personification of the Eternal Feminine”), as well characters from Faust (including a penitent woman, Faust’s beloved Gretchen).

One of the most remarkable features of the Symphony is that despite the surface disparities between the two movements—the one sacred, the other secular, the first in Latin, the second in German, the opening a choral cantata and the following much more operatic in character—despite all this, there is a fundamental unity that functions on multiple levels. The two movements share prominent musical themes, most notably the Veni creator spiritus motive that opens and closes the work.

Mahler’s ultimate vision for the Symphony is intimately bound to his relationship with Alma, whom he associated both with the creative spirit and with Goethe’s “eternal feminine.” As he was rehearsing the Symphony in Munich he wrote to her, “Freud was right. For me you have always been the light, the central point!” That was in 1910, but already in a sketch inscribed to Alma he calls her “the first inspiration” and “spiritus creator.” All this is congruent with the intellectual and artistic explorations of fin-de-siècle Vienna, of Freud, of a writer like Arthur Schnitzler (who attended the Munich premiere), and of the painter Gustav Klimt (one of Alma Mahler’s many admirers), which suggest a fundamental connection between creativity and sexuality. The unexpected connections between the two parts of this overwhelming Symphony are testimony to Mahler’s remarkable ability for personal, musical, literary, and philosophical synthesis.

Program note © 2008. All rights reserved. Program note may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Christoph Eschenbach, Music Director and Conductor
Founded in 1900, The Philadelphia Orchestra has distinguished itself as one of the leading orchestras in the world through a century of acclaimed performances, historic international tours, best-selling recordings, and its unprecedented record of innovation in recording technologies and outreach. The Orchestra has maintained an unparalleled unity in artistic leadership with only six music directors piloting its first century: Fritz Scheel (1900–07), Carl Pohlig (1907–12), Leopold Stokowski (1912–41), Eugene Ormandy (1936–80), Riccardo Muti (1980–92), and Wolfgang Sawallisch (1993–2003).

This rich tradition is carried on by Christoph Eschenbach, who became music director in 2003. The 2006–07 season, Mr. Eschenbach’s fourth, highlights the music of Mozart and Shostakovich. In January 2007, Mr. Eschenbach leads the Orchestra in the Academy of Music 150th Anniversary Concert. During his tenure, he has conducted Beethoven’s nine symphonies paired with music of our time; led a four-week Late Great Works Festival; launched the Orchestra’s first-ever multiyear cycle of Mahler’s complete symphonies; and led tours of Europe and Asia, as well as Florida and Puerto Rico.

The Orchestra began a three-year partnership with Ondine Records in 2005, and has released five recordings taken from live concerts. As of April 2006, the Orchestra is broadcast regularly on NPR. Other recent highlights include a five-year, $125 million endowment campaign launched in 2003; the Orchestra’s move to The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in 2001; and the Orchestra’s 100th anniversary in 2000. The Philadelphia Orchestra annually touches the lives of more than one million music lovers worldwide through its performances, publications, recordings, and broadcasts. The Orchestra presents a subscription season in Philadelphia each year from September to May, in addition to education and community partnership programs, and appears annually at Carnegie Hall. Its summer schedule includes an outdoor series at Philadelphia’s Mann Center for the Performing Arts, free Neighborhood Concerts, a three-week residency at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York, and an annual weeklong residency at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival beginning July 2007.

Christine Brewer, Soprano
Highlights of American soprano Christine Brewer’s 2007–08 season include a recital at London’s Wigmore Hall; her Lyric Opera of Chicago debut; and concerts with Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Toulouse Orchestra, and the Dallas, Saint Louis, and Atlanta symphonies. In previous seasons she has appeared with the Boston, Chicago, Montreal, San Francisco, National, London, BBC, and City of Birmingham symphonies; the New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, and London philharmonics; the Orchestre de Paris; the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; the Cleveland, BBC, and Flanders orchestras; the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; and at the Ravinia, Edinburgh, and Saito Kinen festivals. Ms. Brewer has been seen in a variety of roles with opera companies including the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Opéra de Lyon, Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet, the Santa Fe Opera, and the English National Opera.

Ms. Brewer has recorded for the Hyperion, Telarc, Chandos, Naxos, and EMI labels, as well as the London Symphony’s LSO Live and the London Philharmonic’s LPO Live labels.

Michaela Kaune, Soprano
Soprano Michaela Kaune was born in Hamburg and studied with Judith Beckmann at the Music Academy of that city. She was a prize winner at the Belvedere Competition in Vienna in 1996 and was awarded the Otto-Kasten-Preis of the Deutsche Bühnenverein in 1999. Since 1997 she has been a member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she has appeared in roles ranging from Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen to Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute to the Marschallin in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. Ms. Kaune has also performed with the Cologne Opera, the Semperoper Dresden, the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, the Opéra National de Paris, the Aalto Theater Essen, the Frankfurt Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, the Opéra de Montpellier, the Vlaamse Opera, the Hamburg State Opera, and the Netherlands Opera.

Ms. Kaune has collaborated with the Hamburg NDR, Bamberg, and NHK symphonies; the Strasbourg and Dresden State orchestras; the radio symphonies of Berlin, Frankfurt, and Vienna; and the Dresden Philharmonic. She has also appeared at the Festival de Radio France and the Schleswig-Holstein, Salzburg, Berlin, Bad Urach, and Bonn Beethoven festivals.

Marisol Montalvo, Soprano
Soprano Marisol Montalvo’s 2007–08 season includes performances with the London Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Ensemble Intercomporain; the German premiere of Matthias Pintscher’s L’espace dernier at the Alte Oper Frankfurt; the world premiere of Peter Eötvös’s Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne; Pintscher’s Hérodiade Fragments in Munich, Paris, and London; and Frank Martin’s Maria Triptychon in Utrecht. She has recently appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Orchestre Colonne, the Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk Orchester, and at the Strasbourg Music Festival.

Ms. Montalvo has performed a wide range of operatic repertoire at opera houses including the Teatro Real, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Opéra National de Paris, the Zurich Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Théâtre d’Avignon, the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, L’Opéra National de Lorraine, the Opéra Royal de Wallonie, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Théâtre de Rennes, the Nationaltheater Mannheim, Seville’s Teatro de la Maestranza, the Opéra de Toulouse, the Theater Basel, and at Belgium’s Ideé Fixe Festival and Vienna’s Klangbogen Festival.

Stephanie Blythe, Mezzo-Soprano
Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe has performed with leading orchestras including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Opera Orchestra of New York, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Minnesota Orchestra, the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, and the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphonies. She has also appeared with the Royal Opera Covent Garden, the Seattle Opera, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, and the Opera National de Paris, among others. This season Ms. Blythe makes debuts with the Hallé Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Opera and appears with the Metropolitan, Los Angeles, and Arizona operas.

Ms. Blythe, winner of the 1999 Richard Tucker Award, has performed recitals at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street Y, and with the Cleveland Art Song Festival and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, among others. This season she premiered Alan Smith’s Covered Wagon Woman, commissioned for her residency with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Ms. Blythe’s solo recordings include a collection of works by Mahler, Brahms, and Wagner and a disc of Handel and Bach arias, both on the Virgin Classics label.

Charlotte Hellekant, Mezzo-Soprano
Swedish mezzo-soprano Charlotte Hellekant’s 2007–08 season includes concert appearances with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the BBC Proms, the Seattle Symphony, and the Russian National Orchestra, and productions of Bizet’s Carmen in Bergen, Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking in Dublin, and Handel’s Julius Caesar in Brussels and Amsterdam. Ms. Hellekant has appeared with leading opera companies including the Metropolitan, Glimmerglass, Canadian, Vlaamse, Netherlands, English National, and Zurich operas; the Paris Bastille; the Deutsche Oper Berlin; the Opéra National de Lille; Stockholm’s Royal Opera; the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; and at the Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, and Glyndebourne festivals. In concert she has appeared with the NDR, Cleveland, and Halle orchestras; the Orchestre de Paris; the Czech and Oslo philharmonics; the City of London Festival; and the RSO Frankfurt.

Ms. Hellekant’s recordings include Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the San Francisco Symphony for Decca, Ligeti’s Le grand macabre for Sony, Handel’s Julius Caesar and Messiah for Deutsche Grammophon, Grieg’s Peer Gynt for Virgin Classics, and Britten’s Owen Wingrave for BBC’s Channel 4.

Vinson Cole, Tenor
American tenor Vinson Cole’s career has taken him to all of the world’s major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Opéra National de Paris Bastille, the Teatro alla Scala, the Deutsche Staatsoper, the San Francisco Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Australia, and the Royal Opera Covent Garden. His operatic roles include Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème, Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Edgardo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Alfredo in Verdi’s La traviata, Don José in Bizet’s Carmen, Renaud in Gluck’s Armide, Des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon, Belmonte in Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, the Duke in Verdi’s Rigoletto, Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca, and the title roles in Verdi’s Don Carlo, Gounod’s Faust, Massenet’s Werther, Mozart’s Idomeneo, and Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann.

Born in Kansas City, Mr. Cole began to study singing at the age of nine. He received a scholarship to the Philadelphia Musical Academy and continued his studies at the Curtis Institute with Margaret Harshaw.

Franco Pomponi, Baritone
Highlights of baritone Franco Pomponi’s 2007–08 season include his Italian debut as Nick Shadow in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at Palermo’s Teatro Massimo and his Santa Fe Opera debut as Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff. Mr. Pomponi also appears as Donato in Menotti’s Maria Golovin at the Amazonas Opera Festival in Brazil, the title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni for the Opéra National de Montpellier, Paolo Aliani in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra for the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Count di Luna in Verdi’s Il trovatore in Dijon, the title role in Thomas’s Hamlet in Marseille, and in Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Orchestre de Paris.

A former member of the Juilliard Opera Center and the Lyric Opera of Chicago Center for American Artists, Mr. Pomponi was the first recipient of Juilliard’s DeRosa Prize. He has been heard at the Metropolitan, Los Angeles, Florida Grand, Washington Concert, Portland, Canadian, Boston Lyric, New Orleans, and Dorset operas; the Spoleto Festival USA; the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis; the Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona; L’Opéra National du Rhin; and the Nationale Reisopera in the Netherlands.

James Morris, Bass
Bass-baritone James Morris has performed in virtually every international opera house and has appeared with the major orchestras of Europe and the United States. His 2007–08 season includes performances as Nick Shadow in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at the San Francisco Opera, Wotan in Wagner’s Die Walküre at the Metropolitan Opera, Hans Sachs in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger at Berlin’s Staatsoper unter den Linden, King Philip II in Verdi’s Don Carlo at the Paris Opera; a gala concert at the Lyric Opera of Chicago; and concert appearances with the Saint Louis, Boston, and Montreal symphonies.

Mr. Morris’s extensive discography includes complete Wagner Ring cycles for Deutsche Grammophon and Angel/EMI; a recording of arias by Verdi and Wagner on Angel/EMI; the Grammy-nominated Desire under the Elms by Edward Thomas with the London Symphony on Naxos; operas by Offenbach, Mozart, Massenet, Verdi, Gounod, Donizetti, Puccini, Bellini, and Thomas; Haydn’s The Creation; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9; and the requiems of Mozart and Fauré. Born in Baltimore, Mr. Morris studied at the Peabody Conservatory and the Academy of Vocal Arts.

The Philadelphia Singers Chorale
David Hayes, Director
The Philadelphia Singers is a unique chorus of professional singers who excel in solo as well as ensemble work. Founded in 1972 and now under the direction of David Hayes, the Philadelphia Singers performs regularly with leading national and local performing arts organizations, including The Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Mannes Orchestra, the Curtis Institute of Music, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and Astral Artistic Services.

The Philadelphia Singers Chorale was founded in 1991 as the symphonic chorus of the Philadelphia Singers. The Chorale is composed of professional singers and talented volunteers. In its role as resident chorus of The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chorale appears with the Orchestra in all its choral subscription concerts, as well as annual performances of Handel's Messiah. Past performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra have included Verdi’s Requiem, Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé for the opening of the Kimmel Center, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, Liszt’s Dante Symphony, Mahler’s Second and Third symphonies, Brahms’s Requiem, Haydn’s Seasons, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and “Choral” Fantasy, Adams’s Harmonium, Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, and Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible.

Members of the ensemble come from outstanding educational backgrounds, including Curtis, the Academy of Vocal Arts, the Juilliard School, the Peabody Conservatory, Westminster Choir College, the Eastman School of Music, and the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, as well as vocal institutes in Austria, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.

David Hayes was appointed music director of the Philadelphia Singers in 1992. He studied conducting with Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School and with Otto-Werner Mueller at the Curtis Institute, where Mr. Hayes is a staff conductor; he is also director of orchestral and conducting studies at New York’s Mannes School of Music. He has performed as guest conductor with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Sinfonia Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Relâche Ensemble, the Springfield (MA) Symphony, the Louisiana and Warsaw philharmonics, the American Repertory Ballet, the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, and at the Verbier and Berkshire Choral festivals. Mr. Hayes is also a cover conductor for The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Westminster Symphonic Choir
Joe Miller, Conductor
Composed of students at Westminster Choir College, a division of Rider University’s Westminster College of the Arts, the Westminster Symphonic Choir has recorded and performed with virtually every major orchestra and conductor of the last 85 years. Under the leadership of Joe Miller and recognized as one of the world’s leading choral ensembles, the choir has sung over 300 performances with the New York Philharmonic alone.

The choir’s 2007–08 season has included performances with the New Jersey Symphony, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra. Mr. Miller also leads the 32-voice Westminster Choir, which forms the core of the Symphonic Choir. Chorus-in-residence for the Spoleto Festival USA since 1977, the Westminster Choir recently appeared with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic.

Joe Miller is director of choral activities at Westminster Choir College. Formerly director of choral studies at Western Michigan University School of Music and director of choral and vocal activities at California State University, Mr. Miller has also held positions with the Stockton Chorale and the Mother Lode Music Festival.

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia
Alan Harler, Music Director
Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia was founded in 1874 by William Wallace Gilchrist, who also organized and conducted the Philadelphia Symphonic Society, which was to become the nucleus of The Philadelphia Orchestra. The choir began as an eight-voice male chorus and quickly grew into a large mixed chorus, making its Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1904 in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. For the US premiere of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in 1916 with Leopold Stokowski and The Philadelphia Orchestra, Mendelssohn Club provided more than 300 singers. Other historical premieres include the first performance outside the Soviet Union of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13, and the Philadelphia premieres of Brahms’s German Requiem, Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible, Scriabin’s Symphony No. 1, and Bartók’s Cantata profana. Under the leadership of Alan Harler, now in his 20th season as music director, Mendelssohn Club continues to present classic repertoire as well as commissioning and premiering 36 new works since 1990, winning an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.

Alan Harler serves as Laura H. Carnell professor and chairman of choral music at Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music, in addition to teaching and presenting conducting master classes nationally and internationally.

The American Boychoir
Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, Music Director
Currently celebrating its 70th anniversary, the American Boychoir is made up of boys from grades four through eight who come from nine states and four foreign countries to study at the American Boychoir School, the only non-sectarian boys’ choir school in the nation. Founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1937, the American Boychoir has been located in Princeton, New Jersey, since 1950. In addition to an active touring schedule, the choir performs and records regularly with such artists and ensembles as the Boston Symphony, Jessye Norman, Bobby McFerrin, Beyoncé, and Paul McCartney.

During the 2007–08 season, the American Boychoir, under the direction of Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, will perform in over 120 concerts in 14 states, including appearances with the New York Philharmonic and a tour to the Czech Republic as a featured ensemble during the Second International Boys and Men’s Choral Festival in June 2008. The American Boychoir has released 45 commercial recordings and has received Gold Records for its collaborations with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Michael W. Smith. The ensemble recently released Harmony: American Songs of Faith, the seventh CD to be produced for its own label, Albemarle Records.