Monday, Apr 18, 2016
Westminster Kantorei and members of Juilliard415, conducted by Amanda Quist, will collaborate for a concert on Saturday, April 23 at 8 p.m. in the Princeton University Chapel. The concert, titled “Love, Lament and Litanies,” will include English and French classics including Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Litanies de la Vierge. Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for students and seniors and are available by phone at 609-921-2663 or online.
Juilliard415 is the Juilliard School’s principal period-instrument ensemble. The concert is the latest in a series of collaborations between the Westminster Choir College and the Juilliard School. The diverse program pairs music from the Baroque era with modern jazz and vocal arrangements including choral arrangements of Erika Lloyd’s Cells Planets and Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now.
Founded in 2004, Westminster Kantorei, Westminster’s early music ensemble, performed at the American Choral Directors Association’s (ACDA) Eastern Division Conference and the American Handel Festival. This summer it will undertake a concert tour of the United Kingdom and France. The ensemble has collaborated with some of the country’s leading Baroque specialists, including violinists Owen Dalby and Nancy Wilson and the Dark Horse Consort. Westminster Kantorei has also premiered many works by such contemporary composers as Caleb Burhans, Daniel Elder, Doug Helvering, Blake Hensen, Philip Rice, Nathan Jones, Stefan Young and the internationally acclaimed Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström.
Since its founding in 2009, Juilliard415, the Juilliard School’s principal period-instrument ensemble, has made significant contributions to musical life in New York and beyond, bringing major figures in the field of early music to lead performances of both rare and canonical works of the 17th and 18th centuries. In 2011 the ensemble made its Carnegie Hall debut in a concert that was cited as one of the 10 best of the season by The New York Times. Juilliard415 tours extensively in the U.S. and abroad, with notable appearances at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Leipzig Bachfest, and the Utrecht Early Music Festival, where Juilliard was the first-ever conservatory-in-residence.
Dr. Amanda Quist is associate professor and department chair of Conducting, Organ, and Sacred Music at Westminster Choir College. In addition to conducting Westminster Kantorei, she is conductor of Westminster Chapel Choir and she teaches graduate and undergraduate conducting. She is the recipient of Westminster Choir College of Rider University’s 2014 Distinguished Teaching Award. She has also worked with Westminster Symphonic Choir and collaborated with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, and composers Ola Gjeilo and Tarik O’Regan. She recently served as Chorus Master for the premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s opera Matsukaze at the Spoleto Festival USA and the Lincoln Center Festival. The New York Times and Charleston City Paper described the chorus’ performance as “beautifully prepared, gripping,” a “gossamer web of voices” and “bridging the vocal and instrumental textures with perfect intonation.”