THRESHOLD OF NIGHT: MUSIC OF TARIK O'REGAN

September 27 - 30, 2007

For a bold and refreshing season opener, Craig Hella Johnson and the Company of Voices plunge deeply into the vibrant and beautiful music of rising star Tarik O'Regan. This captivating concert experience will feature a wide variety of O'Regan's works for voices and string ensemble, including The Ecstacies Above, Threshold of Night and Triptych, plus a new work that Mr. O'Regan is writing expressly for these concerts. Here is captivating language of a fresh new musical voice, born in London in 1978 and now living in New York City. The London Observer describes Mr. O'Regan as "...one of the most original and eloquent young composers," while the London Sunday Telegraph wrote, "Worthy of Benjamin Britten's pen." Dianne Donovan, KMFA-FM program host, will conduct a live interview with Mr. O'Regan one hour before the performance at each Austin concert venue. Following these performances, Conspirare will travel to Troy, New York to record the program at the famed Troy Music Hall. The new CD will be released in early 2008.

BIRDSONG (Conspirare Youth Choir)

December 1, 2007

Vivaldi's Et Exultavit and Fauré's Pie Jesu highlight a reflective program of works inspired by Maya Angelou's poem, "I know why the caged bird sings." Paul Read's Birdsong, Eleanor Daley and Benjamin Britten's settings of The Birds, and Jim Papoulis's Can You Hear will inspire during the holiday season. The joyful spiritual, Children, Go Where I Send Thee, closes the program.

CHRISTMAS AT THE CARILLON

December 5 - 11, 2007

A cherished Austin holiday tradition, Christmas at the Carillon is a concert like none other. Since 1994, Craig Hella Johnson has created a unique program each year that is, in equal parts, sacred and secular holiday music, art music and popular music, concert hall performance, and community sing. The program seamlessly connects a wide variety of musical styles by a single thread of lyrical intent. You will be intellectually challenged, as well as deeply moved, and you most likely will talk about the program long after the last note has sounded. Returning as Special Guest Artist is Austin's own Cynthia Clawson, who has been called a "singer's singer" and "the most awesome voice in gospel music." (Billboard Magazine). Ms. Clawson has played a hugely important role in establishing this series of concerts as one of the most endearing holiday traditions in Austin.

Thursday, December 6, 2007, 8:00 pm
The Carillon
2630 Exposition, Austin
Tickets: $60 General Admission

Saturday, December 8, 2007, 2:30 pm
The Carillon
2630 Exposition, Austin
Tickets: $60 General Admission

Sunday, December 9, 2007, 8:00 pm
The Carillon
2630 Exposition, Austin
Tickets: $60 General Admission

I DREAM A WORLD

January 31 - February 3, 2008

Conspirare invites you to experience the imaginative and beautiful concert program that it will present at the Eighth World Symposium on Choral Music in Copenhagen in July 2008, to be preceded by tour concerts in Stockholm, Oslo and Bergen. As the only American choir performing at the Copenhagen Symposium, Conspirare will join more than 29 choral ensembles from around the world. Craig Hella Johnson has crafted a program that will showcase American choral classics, as well as represent our country's cultural and musical diversity - urban rhythms, the soulfulness of the African-American spiritual, in arrangements by the incomparable Moses Hogan, the glorious Agnus Dei of Samuel Barber, and the music of some of today's finest lyrical composers, such as Morten Lauridsen and Eric Whitacre.

Sunday, February 3, 2008, 2:30 pm
St. Martin's Lutheran Church
606 W. 15th Street, Austin
Tickets: $30 General Admission, $15 Youth

LOVE IS A CIRCLE

March 29 - 30, 2008

With this series, Conspirare makes its performance debut in Wimberley's lovely St. Stephen's Episcopal Church and the exquisite environment of Austin's Congregation Agudas Achim. Special guest composer and guitarist Jeffrey Van joins the Company of Voices for a program that includes the Austin premiere of Van's A Procession Winding Around Me, a setting of four Civil War poems of Walt Whitman. The concert opens with the music of Salamone Rossi, a contemporary of Monteverdi and Gastoldi. He was the first musician in modern times to compose choral motets for the synagogue, and his work displays a particular sensitivity to the Hebrew psalm texts. Also featured will be John Muehleisen's beautiful setting of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem, Perplexed Music, and David Asplin's cantata for peace, For the healing of nations, a work that includes text from the Iroquois Constitution, Confucius, The Holy Qur'an and the biblical books of Isaiah and Revelation.

AN OPEN BLOSSOM (Conspirare Youth Choir)

April 26, 2008

The Conspirare Youth Choir concludes its third season with a glittering array of works based on beautiful images derived from stories and poems. The Dream Keeper, by African-American poet Langston Hughes, is set to music by Andrea Ramsey. Another highlight will be Emily Dickinson's Will There Really be a Morning?, in a musical setting by Craig Hella Johnson. These two works of American poets will complement two works sung in French - an arrangement of the beloved Dôme Epais, from the opera Lakmé, and the sprightly J'entends le Moulin. Completing the program is music of Fauré, Debussy, and several arrangements of American folk songs.

THE VERDI REQUIEM

June 20 - 21, 2008

Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem has been called his greatest opera, and for good reason. Although a reverent setting of a liturgical text, to be sure, the writing is of such vivid tonal coloration and sumptuous melodic flow, of such powerful emotional impact and unrelenting dramatic intensity that the work utterly defies classification and stands alone in the annals of great music. At the first performance in 1874, in the restrained atmosphere of St. Mark's Church in Milan, the audience's reaction was understandably muted. The second performance three days later, at La Scala, was received by the capacity audience with tumultuous enthusiasm. There simply could not be a more appropriate work for Conspirare's first performance at the new Long Center for the Performing Arts. Joining the Conspirare Symphonic Choir will be instrumental and choral forces of the Victoria Bach Festival, for which Craig Hella Johnson has served as Artistic Director since 1992. The long and valued association between Conspirare and the Victoria Bach Festival has resulted in memorable collaborative performances of such masterworks as last season's Elijah, and the Mozart Mass in C Minor, Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and Vaughn Williams's A Sea Symphony of seasons past. Margaret Perry, Director of Education for Austin Lyric Opera, will present a pre-concert lecture on Verdi one hour before the Austin performance.

Conspirare's presentation of the Verdi Requiem in Austin is made possible by a generous grant from South Texas Money Management, and represents the single largest corporate gift in the history of Conspirare. Please see separate news release for more information.

Featuring Soprano Kallen Esperian, Mezzo-soprano Robynne Redmon, Tenor Karl Dent and Bass-baritone Christian Van Horn with the Victoria Bach Festival Orchestra and Chorus and the Texas State University Chorale