Our 2023-2024 Season
Truth, Light, and Serenity
December 9, 2023, 2:00 PM & 5:00 PM
Christ Church Greenwich
254 E Putnam Ave, Greenwich, CT 06830
December 10, 2023, 4:00 PM
First Congregational Church of Greenwich
108 Sound Beach Avenue, Old Greenwich, CT 06870
Join Greenwich Choral Society, soloists, and orchestra for our annual holiday performances featuring the vibrant music of Vivaldi and Mozart, gorgeous works by Hagenberg, Jacobson, Powell, Rudoi, and two newly commissioned carols by James Fitzwilliam.
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Illuminare: Darkness to Light
February 24, 2024, 4:00 PM
Greenwich High School, Performing Arts Center
10 Hillside Road, Greenwich, CT 06830
Explore this moving and imaginative program by American composers Jake Runestad, Elizabeth Alexander, and Eric Whitacre, with a new work for chorus and orchestra by Elaine Hagenberg.
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Transcendence & Triumph
April 20, 2024, 4:00 PM
Greenwich High School, Performing Arts Center
10 Hillside Road, Greenwich, CT 06830
From the transcendent to the triumphant, we begin the program with Vaughan Williams’ sublime and romantic Serenade to Music and Gjeilo’s Luminous Night of the Soul. We conclude our season with the dramatic and joyful Lord Nelson Mass, arguably Haydn’s finest choral-orchestral work.
2022-2023 Season
Our completed performances
Legends and Traditions
Christ Church, Sanctuary
Benjamin Britten: Saint Nicolas, op. 42,
Gerald Finzi: Magnificat op. 36
The generosity of Saint Nicolas and the many legends surrounding his heroic life will be revealed through Benjamin Britten’s cantata for large chorus, semichorus, soloists and orchestra of strings, complemented by piano and organ. GCS will share the spotlight with the Greenwich Academy Madrigal Singers, Choristers from Christ Church, Greenwich, and tenor Chance Jonas-O’Toole as Nicolas. In addition, the infinite love and kindness of Mary will be proclaimed in Gerald Finzi’s dramatic setting of the Magnificat in an arrangement for strings and organ, featuring Jonathan Vaughn at the console of the mighty new organ at Christ Church. To conclude, a garland of traditional carols for choirs and audience will highlight the blessings of the season – weaving a tapestry of images for all ages. Don’t miss this Greenwich tradition.
Carmina Burana
Greenwich High School, PAC
Carl Orff: Carmina Burana
The rhythmic charge of Carl Orff’s popular Carmina Burana is the central work on a concert that will feature the unusual interplay of voices, piano and percussion. Delight in the youthful energy of the Fairfield County Children’s Chorus and three stupendous soloists, soprano Brittany Hebel, countertenor Logan Tanner, and baritone Marcus DeLoach. Based on texts written by clergy and students in the 11th -13th centuries, Orff’s Secular Songs for Soloists and Choruses accompanied by Instruments and Magic Images captures the blissfulness of youth, love and drinking through simple, repeated melodies, and an innate sense of theatricality.
Coupled with the second movement of Bernstein’s ecstatic Chichester Psalms, anticipate a memorable afternoon…with a few additional surprises waiting for you on February 25.
Lamentation and Exaltation
Greenwich High School, PAC
Antonín Dvořák's Stabat Mater, op. 58
Antonín Dvořák was among many composers, including Palestrina, Mozart, Schubert, Rossini and Poulenc, to set the Stabat Mater to music, but his version stands out with its extraordinary spiritual intensity and emotional range, as well as a strongly symphonic quality. It is a huge work – for orchestra, chorus and soloists – but it is the expressive beauty of Dvorák’s setting that strikes the listener. The shifts of mood from grief and near despair to complete ecstasy run throughout the ten movements and culminate in the uplifting final movement. In the dying minutes of the Stabat Mater, the orchestra goes silent, and the choir enters with an amazing unaccompanied hymn of praise. The orchestra returns to accompany the choir for the final Amen culminating in one of the most powerful declarations in the history of music. Revel in the beauty of this work with soprano Serena Benedetti, mezzo-soprano Perri di Christina, tenor Omar Najmi and bass-baritone Edward Pleasant.
Our 2022-2023 Season
December 2022
Bruckner: Ave Maria
Benjamin Britten: St. Nicolas
Greenwich Academy Madrigal Singers
Blessings Over the Lights by JB Levine
Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day by John Rutter
Mendelssohn: Hark,the Herald Angels Sing
Gerald Finzi: Magnificat
Ola Gjeillo: The Rose
John Rutter: All Bells in Paradise
Mark Wilberg: Fum, Fum, Fum!
February 2023
Antonín Dvořák's Stabat Mater, op. 58