NIU Chamber Choir to present new composition
At 8 a.m. Tuesday, April 17, the Chamber Choir will present its final concert of the year in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall in the Music Building, 400 Lucinda Ave., on the campus of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.
The choir will present the world premiere of “Alarum Bells.” Composed by Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjarvi, this work was commissioned by the NIU choral department and the Lynne M. Waldeland Endowed Fund for Choral Music. The composition sets Edgar Allan Poe’s text from his famous poem “The Bells.” Mäntyjarvi will be on campus for the performance.
Highlights of Chamber Choirs’ performances at the National Collegiate Choral Organization National Convention and the American Choral Directors Association Division conventions also will be sung.
Music selections will be of their performances of Israeli choral music and two-year collaboration with graduate student Seth Ole Sululu on Tanzanian choral music.
As a composer, Mäntyjarvi describes himself as an eclectic traditionalist: eclectic in that he adopts influences from a number of styles and periods, fusing them into his own idiom; traditionalist in that his musical language is based on a traditional approach and uses the resources of modern music only sparingly.
His major choral works are “Four Shakespeare Songs” (1984), “Dagen svalnar ...” (Day is cooling, 1991/93), “Ave Maria” (1991), “Pseudo-Yoik” (1994), “Kouta” (1996), “El Hambo” (1997), “More Shakespeare Songs” (1997), “Deux ballades de Francois Villon” (2001), “SALVAT 1701” (2001) and “Tentatio” (2006).
“Canticum Calamitatis Maritimae,” a memorial to the victims of the sinking of the car ferry Estonia in 1994, received third prize in the European composition competition for cathedral choirs in 1997.
His works, many of which number among the best-selling sheet music items of his publisher, SULASOL, have been performed as far afield as Japan, Singapore, South Africa and the U.S., and some have been recorded by distinguished ensembles, such as the Swedish Radio Choir, the BBC Singers and Chanticleer.
The concert is free and open to the public. The building is accessible to all. For details, call Lynn Slater in the School of Music at (815) 753-1546 or email to lslater@niu.edu.