Master Chorale Will Perform A Rarity: Brubeck’s ‘To Hope!’

The Connecticut Master Chorale, under the direction of Tina Johns Heidrich, will present a rare opportunity to hear a choral work by the legendary Dave Brubeck. The chorale will perform in concert on Sunday, March 5, at 3 pm, at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Newtown.

The program will feature To Hope! by Brubeck, a Wilton resident, and Anton Bruckner’s Te Deum. The performance will feature the soloists Cynthia McCorkindale of Bethel and Mark Beams of Newtown. The 55-voice chorus will be accompanied by Joseph Jacovino and the Connecticut Master Chorale Orchestra.

Tickets are $10 in advance or $12 at the door. They are available by calling 743-0473 or by visiting Jersey Mike’s in Southbury.

Mr Brubeck’s rarely-performed choral work will be receiving its Newtown area premiere on March 5. Mr Brubeck is not only a legendary jazz composer and musician, for which his name may be better known, but also a master classical choral composer.

To Hope! A Celebration is a mass in the revised Roman ritual. It is an exciting work of grand proportion and a monumental affirmation of hope and exultation. Composed in 1979, To Hope! is a powerful, multi-faceted work. It contains elements of fugal writing reminiscent of the Baroque period, the large scale chordal sections of classical composers, the colors of the Romanticists, the rhythms and chord structures of the modernists and the uninhibited joy of gospel.

To Hope! was Brubeck’s first encounter with the Roman Catholic mass, the result of a commission by Ed Murray of the Catholic publication, Our Sunday Visitor.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Mr Brubeck once told an interviewer, “because I didn’t know anything about the mass. But [Murray] refused to take no for an answer.”

Legendary jazzman Dave Brubeck has also gained wide recognition as a composer of classical orchestral works, ballets, chamber music, oratorios and cantatas. He is the creator of what has become a sizeable shelf of remarkable choral works.

Te Deum (We Praise Thee, O God), the second major work to be performed by the chorale, has been described as a “hymn in praise of Wagner,” the composer Bruckner revered more than any other. Te Deum represents the most immediate declaration of Bruckner’s unshakeable belief in God.