USM Chorale performs a Spring concert

The USM Chorale will perform Donald McCullough’s Holocaust Cantata:Songs from the Camps and John Rutter's Requiem on Saturday, April 20 at 5 p.m. under the direction of Robert Russell in Corthell Concert Hall on the USM Gorham Campus.

Tickets are $6 for the general public, and $3 for students, seniors, USM employees and alumni. Call the USM School of Music Box Office for reservations, (207) 780-5555, or make reservations online at www.usm.maine.edu/music/boxoffice.

Maestro McCullough, composer and music director of the Master Chorale of Washington DC, conceived the Holocaust Cantata following a rigorous search of the archives of the Holocaust Museum. His first task was to immerse himself in the collection, playing through hundreds of tunes. He was encouraged to find that they contained some compelling melodies, and for the first time he began to imagine a choral cantata – perhaps reflecting the role of music in the camps or evoking the daily lives of these people – that might rise from the material. What finally emerged is a 40-minute work that gives a human voice to victims of the Holocaust through a cycle of songs and spoken prose written by prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.  After intermission the Chorale performs Rutter's sublime and lyrical Requiem, a work of deep beauty and rich insight, that sets the traditional liturgical text with English texts interspersed.

Members of the press, and those needing special accommodations to participate fully in this program, contact Lori Arsenault, (207) 780-5142, larsenault@usm.maine.edu. Hearing impaired: call USM's telex / TDD number (207) 780-5646