Goshen College choirs to perform Verdi’s Requiem with Fort Wayne Philharmonic and Chorus
Event: Verdi’s Requiem – Goshen College combined choirs with Fort Wayne Philharmonic and Chorus
Date and time: Sunday, March 22, 2015, 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Goshen College Music Center’s Sauder Concert Hall
Tickets: $15 adults, $10 seniors/students. GC students $5. Online at goshen.edu/tickets or (574) 535-7566
Sauder Concert Hall will resound with Giuseppe Verdi’s mighty Requiem Mass on Sunday, March 22, 2015 as more than 150 singers from Goshen College and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Chorus combine with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, under the baton of Andrew Constantine. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Goshen College Music Center.
Joining the choirs are soloists Jonita Lattimore, soprano; Barbara Rearick, mezzo soprano; Noah Baetge, tenor; and Jeremy Galyon, bass.
Verdi’s Requiem, completed in 1874, is one of the enduring mass choral and orchestral works of the late Romantic period. Composed for mixed chorus, solo quartet and symphonic orchestra, Verdi’s work was written to commemorate the death of poet Alessandro Manzoni. The Requiem was described at the time of its composition as “Verdi’s latest opera, in church vestments.” It is a mass for the dead that stands proudly beside those of Johannes Brahms and Gabriel Fauré as among the finest in the genre.
The Goshen College choirs are directed by Dr. Debra Detwiler Brubaker and Dr. Scott Hochstetler. The Fort Wayne Philharmonic Chorus is directed by Benjamin Rivera.
General admission tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors/students. Goshen College students are $5. Tickets are available online at goshen.edu/tickets or by calling (574) 535-7566.
In addition to the Goshen performance, a performance will be held in Fort Wayne’s Embassy Theater on Friday, March 21 at 7:30 p.m.
Soprano Jonita Lattimore is a faculty member of Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts. She has performed a wide range of operatic roles and oratorios with international and national orchestras. She made her Lyric Opera debut in Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.
Mezzo-soprano Barbara Rearick studied at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music and currently resides as a voice professor at Princeton University. Since her 1993 Carnegie Hall debut in Handel’s Messiah, she has performed with many national orchestras including the Houston Symphony and Baltimore Symphony, as well as international orchestras such as Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
Tenor Noah Baetge has received degrees in vocal performance from Pacific Lutheran University and operatic studies from The Julliard School. He has performed with numerous opera companies and orchestras such as the Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Skagit Opera, Spokane Opera, Opera Orchestra of New York and the Seattle Symphony. Baetge made his Met debut in Richard Strauss’ Ariadne Auf Naxos.
Bass Jeremy Galyon is a native of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. An Adler Fellow since 2006, he made his San Francisco Opera debut as Count Horn in A Masked Ball. Galyon spent four years as a resident artist with Tri-Cities Opera in Binghamton, New York, where he held many leading roles.
In his first full season as music director of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Andrew Constantine brings with him a reputation gained in Europe and the United Kingdom as a conductor of great skill, charisma, energy and versatility. A native of England, he moved to the United States in 2004 to become assistant conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Constantine has always had a love of Russian conductors, and because Yuri Temirkanov was conductor of the Baltimore Symphony at that time, it was an opportunity he gladly seized. Within Constantine’s first season in Baltimore, he was promoted to associate conductor. In May of 2007, following a two-year search, he was appointed music director of the Reading Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania. And in July 2009, after a similar search by the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Constantine was chosen from a field of more than 250 applicants to become The Phil’s new music director.
Constantine has won praise for his ability to communicate with audiences, and his energetic and compelling advocacy for classical music has gained him many admirers. But it is his great skill and grace as a conductor that garners the highest admiration. That talent was nurtured under the tutelage of one of Constantine’s mentors, the great Russian conducting teacher Ilya Musin.
Described by Classic FM (the UK’s largest radio station) as “a rising star of classical music,” Andrew Constantine is regularly engaged by the UK’s leading symphony orchestras, including The Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra. He was recently awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music by the University of Leicester for his “contribution to music” and also a prestigious British NESTA Fellowship to further develop his international career.