Articles

By John Y. Lawrence James Kallembach led the Rockefeller Chapel Choir and the Decani in a concert titled Sacred Powers of Water, as part of the chapel’s Quire & Place series. The concert, which took place Saturday evening at Rockefeller Chapel, was true to its title, and consisted of water-themed pieces, with the first half devoted exclusively to a cappella repertoire. The high level of artistry at this concert was established by its opening work—Michael Tippett’s setting of the African-American spiritual Deep River, from his oratorio A Child of Our Time. Kallembach and the choir employed a large dynamic range, and the solo quartet delivered each cry of “Lord” with great urgency. The...

By Mary Abowd Kate Pukinskis loves to sing in choirs, to be on stage with others enveloped by the “crazy, loud sounds” of Beethoven’s Ninth or Verdi’s Requiem. “Choral music comes very naturally to me,” said Pukinskis, a doctoral student in composition in the Department of Music who has sung in professional choirs since she was a child. “There is great joy in making music with other people—and it’s such a cool thing to use your voice as your instrument and feel it resonate inside your body.” Pukinskis enjoys crafting that experience for others as she has done with her latest work, Water on the Thirsty Land: Three Songs from the Book of Isaiah, a set of choral pieces for unaccompanied choir...

By Laura Demanski, AM'94 Seasons is the title of artist Libby Chaney’s fabric installation that currently graces Rockefeller Memorial Chapel (it will be up through March 3). So it was fitting that on February 1, the morning Chaney delivered the sermon at the chapel’s Sunday service, Chicago was in the middle of the fifth-biggest blizzard in its history. The snow lay heavy over everything and was still falling hard. Living a half-dozen blocks from Rockefeller, I was happy to be close enough to reach the service on foot, and equally happy for a reason to venture out into the white, white world. About 25 others were getting warm and dry inside the chapel, looking pleased to be there too. The...

By Laura Demanski, AM'94 Amid winter’s darkness, an art installation multiplied the colors in Rockefeller Chapel. The grayest months of a stubborn winter found Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in full bloom. In artist Libby Chaney’s evocative fabric installation Seasons, which hung in the east transept gallery and on the chapel’s lower level from January to early March, hundreds of cloth scraps were sewn into scenes of summer, fall, winter, and spring, rich with color—and, the closer one got, with pattern and texture too. In her sermon at a Sunday service in February, Chaney spoke about how differently she thought of each season after she and her husband moved from San Francisco to Cleveland...

By Mary Abowd Photo by Robert Kozloff When Chelsie Coren stepped inside Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on an autumn day in 2012, she heard the majestic thunder of the chapel’s E.M. Skinner organ echoing through the high-domed space. “It seemed like all the stops were pulled out; the entire building just shook,” recalls Coren, then a high school senior visiting campus as a prospective student. “I knew right away that I had to learn to play that organ.” An accomplished pianist and clarinetist, Coren says she spent the rest of her senior year in suburban Wheeling, Ill., dreaming about finding someone to teach her. A year later, she had her wish. In fall 2013, as Coren enrolled as a first-year in...

On Friday November 21, 2014, 7:30 pm, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel launches the fourth season of its signature Quire & Place concert series with seventeenth century Heinrich Schütz’s charming Christmas drama Weihnachtshistorie and his Deutsches Magnificat alongside contemporary composer Kile Smith’s spectacular Vespers, written for Renaissance band Piffaro. This performance features Matthew Dean, evangelist, and soloists Kaitlin Foley, soprano, and Andrew Schultze, bass, with a period instrument group including sackbuts, natural trumpets, and theorbo under the baton of choral director James Kallembach. Four further concerts are included in this season’s Quire & Place, including two...

The 25-voice chamber ensemble brings a program that includes pieces from the 16th century to the present with music by Victoria, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov, Pärt, Tavener, Gjeilo, and others. The program closes with six instrumentalists joining the choral ensemble for Bach’s Cantata No. 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden. In a recent conversation, Di Grazia shared how very excited the Glee Club is to be presenting this performance as a part of their 2014 tour. “Rockefeller Memorial Chapel is such a glorious venue with a wonderful history of hosting top choral and instrumental ensembles. It is a tremendous opportunity for our students to perform here, where the music should resound beautifully in...

Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross is a luminous, compact jewel, a deeply felt, subtly colored contemplation of Christ’s crucifixion that lasts less than an hour. Wednesday night two gifted ensembles—the Florida-based a cappella chorus Seraphic Fire and Chicago’s own Spektral Quartet—combined forces for an unusual and potent version of Haydn’s work at Rockefeller Chapel in the University of Chicago Presents series.

Rockefeller Chapel welcomes Minnesota gem VocalEssence at the next Quire & Place concert, Sunday, March 2 at 3 pm. The performance will feature a collection of American and Mexican choral music of the kind championed by VocalEssence, including the première performance of Timothy Takach’s new work To Love, To Be Swallowed Up. Takach’s work is receiving broad notice for its strong melodic lines and intriguing harmonies. Also included are works by some of the leading choral composers of today, Stephen Paulus (The Day is Done), Eric Whitacre (Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine), and Aaron Jay Kernis (Glorious Majesty). Mexican rhythms are heard in Pasar la Vida by Jorge Cozatl, and La...

Founded by Phillips in 1973, the Tallis Scholars quickly found acclaim for their pure-toned, historically scrupulous and pioneering performances of a wide array of Renaissance sacred music. The genial Phillips has remained as director and guiding light while the ensemble has seen inevitable personnel turnover over the last four decades. If not quite as evenly blended and tonally glowing as at its peak, under Phillips’ direction the Tallis Scholars’ current roster of ten singers brought stylish and historically informed vocalism to a wide range of Christmas settings. No Frosty the Snowman here. The Tallis Scholars rigorous program was built on texts centered on the Virgin Mary with a...