PROGRAM

Voces8

Andrea Haines & Molly Noon (soprano)

Katie Jeffries-Harris (alto)

Barnaby Smith (artistic director, countertenor)

Blake Morgan & Euan Williamson (tenor)

Christopher Moore & Jonathan Pacey (bass)

Opus Artists
presents

February 25, 2022
After Silence - Voces8

PROGRAM

• “Liner Notes with Tom Neenan” at 7:10pm in the church.
• Follow St. Matthew’s Music Guild on Facebook and other social media platforms.
• Receiving our e-newsletter with interesting listening notes and announcements? Sign up at MusicGuildOnline.org.
• Recording (audio or video) and photography during the concert are not allowed.
• We ask that you do your best to maintain a quiet environment in the church by stifiling coughs and making sure watch alarms and cell phones are silenced.
• If you wear a hearing aid, please make sure the volume is adjusted so as to avoid feedback that may disturb others in the audience.

A Note on the Program

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” — Aldous Huxley

In the essay from which the title After Silence is taken, Aldous Huxley offers his thoughts on the essential force of music. The most profoundly significant constituents of our being, he says, include our responses to beauty, pleasure, pain, ecstasy, and death. These can best be ‘experienced, not expressed’ through silence, and after silence, through music. The choral works in this 15th-anniversary programme (to accompany the ensemble’s compendium album release) are exalted, vital, and freed from their original contextual restraints and are distinguishable by their inexhaustible capacity to express the inexpressible.

About Voces8

The British vocal ensemble VOCES8 is proud to inspire people through music and share the joy of singing. Touring globally, the group per-forms an extensive repertory both in its a cappella concerts and in collaborations with leading musicians, orchestras, conductors and soloists. Versatility and a celebration of diverse musical expression are central to the ensemble’s performance and education ethos which is shared both online and in person. VOCES8 is passionate about music education and is the flagship ensemble of the VOCES8 Foundation which actively promotes ‘Music Education For All’, reaching up to 40,000 people a year.

VOCES8 has performed at many notable venues since its inception in 2005 including Wigmore Hall, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Cité de
la Musique Paris, Vienna Konzerthaus, Tokyo Opera City, NCPA Beijing, Sydney Opera House, Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall, Victoria Concert Hall Singapore, Palacio de Bellas Artes Mexico City amongst many others. This season they perform over 100 concerts in the UK and across Europe, in Israel and the USA. The pandemic provided the impetus for 2 continuing initiatives: the VOCES8 Digital Academy, an online choral programme; and the LIVE From London digital festivals which to date has broadcast 70 concerts and sold 150,000 tickets in 75 countries. The ensemble is a Decca Classics artist and also releases projects on its own label, VOCES8 Records. The latest album is “Infinity” which reached the top of the classical charts on release. New projects with composers Christopher Tin, Eric Whitacre and Paul Simon are be-ing recorded in 2022.

USC Thornton Chamber Singers

Jo-Michael Scheibe, Conductor
Laura Legh Spillane, Associate Conductor
So Mang Jeagal, Assistant Conductor

Tickets purchased online are held at Will Call beginning at 7pm on the night of the concert