Our Mission The mission of ROS is to produce live choral music of the highest quality, engaging and educating our community in numerous musical genres, and gratifying our volunteer singers with the professionalism of their art. Our Vision Our vision as a professional choral group is to provide our audience a consistently superior and pleasingly unique artistic experience that will inspire their attendance and support. We expect to be regarded as the premier choral group among our peers, noted not only for the quality of our music, but also for our engagement with the community in our art and educational outreach. 2014-2015 MEMBER GUIDE TABLE OF CONTENTS AND KEY PERSONNEL 2014-2015 Member Guide Welcome Letter 3 2014-2015 Concert Season 4 2014-2015 Season Overview 5 2014-2015 Season Calendar 6 Eric Townell, Artistic Director 8 Kevin Nitsch, Accompanist 10 About the Rochester Oratorio Society 11 Special Programs 12 Elise Rosenfeld Service Award 14 Membership and Standards 15 Tips on Ticket Sales 18 Member Communications 19 Become a Patron 20 Endowment Fund 21 Key Personnel Staff Officers Board of Directors Eric Townell Katherine Clark Katherine Clark Artistic Director Chairperson Maryellen Giese Alayne Gosson Kevin Nitsch Daniel McInerney Carol Green Accompanist Secretary Charles Guerin Jenny Horn Dennis Rosenbaum Mario Urso Carole Huther Arts Administrator Treasurer Daniel McInerney Sandy Moncrief Kathleen Green Pati Piper Treasurer Andrea Quercia Stephen Rosenfeld Jo Ann Lampman Marc Smith Registrar, Historian Mario Urso Jeff Wright 1050 East Avenue • Rochester, NY 14607 (585) 473-2234 • Fax (585) 473-4704 Website: www.ROSsings.org Email: [email protected] 2 Welcome Letter September 2014 Dear Friends and Colleagues, If you're like me, you agree that the single most reinforcing, life-affirming and rewarding activity I know is to sing is a really great choir! This ideal has driven our initiatives of the past eight years, a time of real accomplishment for ROS. I am most proud that our choir's artistic footprint has grown immensely in our home region through added performances of a wide variety of music, including: up to four annual engagements for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra; two Sacred Services at Chautauqua; Pirates of the Caribbean, an evening of Gershwin and a July 4th event at CMAC, all in the summertime, all for the RPO; five days of collaboration for Resonanz at SUNY-Brockport with the Sankofa Dance Company; two Backstage Pass performances (Resonanz) and a live, one-hour televised program called "Voices," all for WXXI Public Broadcasting; a trip to Houghton College for Mozart and Beethoven, and literally dozens of performances by Resonanz for opera companies, dance companies, private parties and paying concert audiences. All of this occurred outside of ROS's usual concert schedule! It could not have happened without a great investment of time and dedication from all of you, from your Board and my colleagues on the staff. This year promises many more of these wonderful activities, in addition to our own concerts at Hochstein. Things have changed in the arts world, from a time when simply mounting a performance of Messiah would guarantee a full house! Now, arts groups, ROS included, must find its audience wherever it may be, performing in non-traditional settings and with creative programming. We've done remarkably well with this. We have gained many new friends and supporters, much name recognition and lots of gratis publicity. The artistic level has been uniformly high, and we have had a LOT of fun along the way. Now, the challenge is to bring the good will, all those new friends and all that support at home, to benefit ROS now and through next year as we celebrate 70 years of singing. If the budget our Board created for us truly reflects our values and priorities, then we all must agree that our HOME concerts are where the emphasis lies, because that is where the biggest amount of income from performances will be derived, more for each event than ROS receives when we appear with the RPO, for example. When it comes right down to it (by the way, they don't teach you this in music school!), all arts organizations are in business for the purpose of selling tickets to concerts. While we each have our own reasons for loving ROS, including the excitement, camaraderie, long-term friendships (and marriages!), artistic reward, extended learning, travel etc., the purpose of ROS, as our bottom line requires, is to fill the hall with paying guests. Our paying audience has the right to expect a completely polished, exciting performance of top-level repertoire. That is our mission, and our vision statement says that we expect to be regarded as "the best." With this in mind, my own priority, and I urge the same for each member, will be on finding ways to raise the level of our performance while communicating widely and fervently about our incredible people and projects. That is the best possible means of ensuring a long and enjoyable life for our organization. We have a superb year ahead! Let's all take the "professionalism" in our mission statement quite seriously this season, as we go about the "business" of loving our art form and one another. See you very soon! Eric Eric Townell Artistic Director 3 2014-2015 Concert Season All performances at Hochstein Performance Hall unless otherwise noted. Exciting details about soloists and guest musicians will be coming soon! Rochester Oratorio Society 2014–15 Season Programming Eric Townell, Artistic Director Concert I: October 24, 2014 with the ROS Orchestra Hochstein Performance Hall Handel: My song shall be alway (Chandos anthem #7) Gerald Finzi: Eclogue for Piano and Strings Kevin Nitsch, piano Haydn: “Lord Nelson” Mass Concert II: December 7, 2014 Community Holiday Concert, Sibley Building Soloist: Elizabeth Phillips, soprano Resonanz plus additional ROS members as available Potential collaborating choirs/artists Repertoire to be announced Concert III: December 13, 2014 RPO engagement – Kodak Hall, Eastman Theatre Handel: Messiah Concert IV: January 15, 2015 RPO engagement – Kodak Hall, Eastman Theatre Spiegel: Kaddish Concert V: February 26 and 28, 2015 RPO engagement – Kodak Hall, Eastman Theatre Resonanz plus additional ROS members as available Verdi La Traviata Concert VI: March 13, 2015 Hochstein Performance Hall Dello Joio: A Jubilant Song Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. 45 Mendelssohn: Verleih uns Frieden Concert VII: June 4–6, 2015 RPO engagement - Kodak Hall, Eastman Theatre Orff: Carmina Burana July and August 2015 (to be confirmed) ROS at Chautauqua Institution: Carmina Burana by Carl Orff 2014-2015 Season Overview CLASSICS FEATURED IN ORATORIO SOCIETY SEASON Classics of the choral repertoire feature prominently in the Rochester Oratorio Society’s 2014– 15 concert season, its 69th year. Haydn’s masterwork, the Lord Nelson Mass, for chorus, orchestra and soloists, anchors the opening concert on October 24, 2014, 7:30 P.M. at Hochstein Performance Hall. Guest artists with strong local ties perform as soloists, including pianist Kevin Nitsch, soprano Emily Mills Woodruff, mezzo-soprano Katie Hannigan, tenor Matthew Valverde and baritone Carl DuPont. Woodruff, Hannigan, Nitsch and Valverde, graduates of the Eastman School of Music who reside in Rochester, now pursue international careers. Nitsch, Hannigan and Valverde serve on the faculty of Nazareth College. They are featured in the Haydn and in Handel’s Chandos anthem #7, “My song shall be alway.” Nitsch performs the solo piano part in Gerald Finzi’s “Eclogue for Piano and Strings.” Bass-baritone Carl DuPont, likewise an Eastman graduate, has recently returned to New York after a year at the Leipzig Opera. Artistic Director Eric Townell conducts. The ROS produces a second masterworks concert on March 13, 2015, 7:30 P.M. at Hochstein Performance Hall. The program opens with Norman Dello Joio’s classic “Jubilant Song,” an energetic, hopeful setting of Walt Whitman poetry that has become a choral favorite. Johannes Brahms’s “German Requiem” offers a darker but similarly consoling perspective on mankind’s effort to fathom human destiny. The ROS performs this majestic work in Brahms’s own setting for piano 4-hands, with Nazareth College faculty member Linda Boianova joining Kevin Nitsch in the accompaniment. Soloists are the Finnish soprano Jenni Lattila and baritone Benjamin Bloomfield, both of New York. Lattila makes her Rochester debut with this performance; Bloomfield has performed leading roles with the Rochester Lyric Opera. Mendelssohn’s popular anthem “Verleih uns Frieden” (“Grant us Peace”) completes the program. Community performances, prominent in the ROS 2014–15 season, include four performances with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, an appearance at the Greentopia Festival in September and two performances with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. Information on the RPO performances may be found at RPO.org. Eric Townell, Artistic Director 5 _________________________________________2014-2015 Season Calendar ROS Season Calendar 2014–15 All rehearsals at Fellowship Hall, Asbury First United Methodist Church, 1050 East Avenue, Rochester NY 14607, 7:30 – 10:00 P.M. unless otherwise noted. 2014 8/25 Rehearsals commence 8/26 AUDITIONS 9/6 Saturday double (mandatory attendance) 9:30 A.M.–2:30 P.M. 9/8 9/15 9/22 9/29 10/6 10/13 10/20 Hochstein dress rehearsal 10/21 Hochstein dress rehearsal 10/24 Concert I Handel & Haydn 10/27 11/3 11/10 11/17 11/24 12/1 12/7 Concert II Community holiday (Resonanz-plus) 12/8