Fauré Requiem
Saturday, May 18, 2024, 7:00pm
Lutheran Church of the Newtons (Newton, MA)
Boston Choral Ensemble performs Gabriel Fauré’s beloved Requiem in an innovative, fully-staged production of this classic choral work in collaboration with director Patrick Chiu. This performance combines theatrical movement with exquisite choral singing, to take the audience on a journey through a world of unknowns to find glory and hope.
Carley DeFranco, Soprano
Described as “sunny”, “supple” and “soaring,” Boston-based soprano Carley DeFranco is known for her committed dramatic portrayals. Highlights of her 2022-23 season included Britten’s Les Illuminations (Emmanuel Music), Mozart’s Requiem (Symphony New Hampshire), Ralph Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem (Heritage Chorale), Debussy Sirénes (Lorelei Ensemble and Boston Ballet), Brahms’ Requiem (Falmouth Chorale), Mozart’s Mass in C Minor (Pioneer Valley Symphony), Christopher Tin’s Lost Birds with VOCES 8 and a tour with the American Soloists Ensemble in South Korea. Her 2023-24 season brings performances with Handel and Haydn Society, Oregon Bach Festival, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Baroque, Falmouth Chorale, Monadnock Music, Sarasa Ensemble, Aurora Ensemble, Music Worcester and her German debut at Bachfest Leipzig with Emmanuel Music.
Carley has sung more than 80 cantatas with Emmanuel Music in their Bach Cantata Series and has been a soloist in Harbison’s Chorale Cantata, St. John Passion, Magnificat, Mass in B Minor and Christmas Oratorio. She was Angelo in Emmanuel’s staged recording of La Resurrezione and Lucy Lockit in Britten's The Beggar’s Opera. This year, is a soloist in the St. Matthew Passion and the weekly Bach cantata series.
Carley’s operatic credits include Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro) with Boston Opera Collaborative, The Rose (The Little Prince) with NEMPAC Opera Project, the title role in Alcina with Opera del West and many premieres in Boston Opera Collaborative’s critically-acclaimed festival of ten-minute operas: Opera Bites. In demand for her performances of new music by American composers, Carley has given premieres at the Kennedy Center, Fog X FLO on the Emerald Necklace, New England Conservatory, Middlesex Community College, Mount Holyoke College, Longy School of Music, and American University.
Carley was a soprano scholar with VOCES 8 and a Lorraine Hunt Lieberman fellow with Emmanuel Music. She is the Director of After School Music at Dexter Southfield, Voice Instructor with the Holden Voice Program at Harvard University, and teaches voice out of her home in Somerville, MA.
Mordecai SJ Choi, Narrator
'Mordecai SJ Choi is a Boston-based actor who most recently directed Hovey Player's 'Strawberry Shortcake' in the 26th annual Boston Theater Marathon and performed in Noah Good's Nineteen Lights at Breeze Knoll, at TCSquared Theater.
He is elated to perform alongside the Boston Choral Ensemble, and is honored to collaborate with the inspirational Katherine Chan. Mordecai invites you to relax and allow the music to breathe. He hopes the performance moves you and leaves you with a hopeful feeling. He would like to thank Gabrielle Jaques, Patrick Chiu, and Katherine Chan. He also thanks his family, friends, and educators who have helped him grow into the man he is today. Without further ado, Requiem.
Psyche Loui, Violin
Psyche Loui is Associate Professor of Creativity and Creative Practice in the Department of Music and director of the MIND (Music, Imaging, and Neural Dynamics) lab at Northeastern University, and violinist in the Boston area’s Longwood Symphony Orchestra. She graduated from Duke University as an undergraduate with degrees in Psychology and Music and from University of California, Berkeley with her PhD in the Psychology of music. Dr. Loui studies the neuroscience of music perception and cognition, tackling questions such as: What gives people the chills when they are moved by a piece of music? How does connectivity in the brain enable or disrupt music perception? Can music be used to help those with neurological and psychiatric disorders? Dr. Loui’s work has been supported by National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, and has received multiple Grammy awards, a young investigator award from the Positive Neuroscience Institute, and a Career award from the National Science Foundation. She is passionate about merging the sciences and the arts as shown in her new edited volume, The Science-Music Borderlands, published this year by MIT Press. Her projects have been featured by the Associated Press, New York Times, Boston Globe, BBC, CNN, the Scientist magazine, and other news outlets.
Her performance credits include Lowell House Opera, Mercury Orchestra, the string quartet Folie à Quatre, and Boston area’s garage chamber pop band, The Wiggly Tendrils.
Justin Thomas Blackwell, Organ
Justin Thomas Blackwell is the associate director of music at Marsh Chapel, Boston University, and is the principal organist for the University’s Sunday morning service. His concert repertoire draws heavily on the works of Bach, Mendelssohn, and Schumann, while his repertoire as a continuo organist includes the principal works of Bach and Handel. He is a Teaching Fellow for the Harvard Choruses, a member of the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra, and the rehearsal accompanist for the Jameson Singers. In addition, he performs regularly with Miami-based Seraphic Fire. At Marsh Chapel, he is also the operations manager and continuo keyboardist for “Music at Marsh Chapel,” a large concert series that includes annual performances of four Bach cantatas and one large work of Bach or Handel. As a pianist, he can be heard on Seraphic Fire’s recording of Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem (4-hand piano version), which was nominated for a 2012 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance. He holds a BM in organ performance from Furman University (SC) and a MM in conducting from Boston University.
Nathan Halbur, Baritone
Baritone Nathan Halbur is a singer and composer based in Boston. His eclectic career has led him to perform semi-improvised opera with Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding in the world premiere of Wayne Shorter’s …(Iphigenia); to provide the speaking voice of Dr. Seuss’s Grinch for the Boston Pops; to be a soloist in the Carnegie Hall world premiere of Heidi Breyer’s Amor Aeternus: A Requiem for the Common Man; to embody an Infernal Spirit as a Pegasus Rising Young Artist in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo; to tour and record with ensembles including Skylark, Ensemble Altera, and Boston Baroque; and to give numerous solo performances with Emmanuel Music and Cantata Singers, especially in the music of J.S. Bach.
He has led pioneering work with Nightingale Vocal Ensemble in the realm of choral free improvisation, directing the live program Photoplay at The Brattle Theatre, and producing Nightingale’s album Composition Sped Up (described variously as “transcendent” and “a unique statement that delights the ears, even while occasionally boggling the mind”). His compositions and arrangements have been performed by numerous ensembles in settings such as the Sparks & Wiry Cries GRAND songSLAM, the Otter Creek Music Festival, and at the Charles Hayden Planetarium. His band DREAMGLOW reimagines music from the classical canon with pop production, in a lo-fi aesthetic. He also enjoys playing percussion instruments, engraving musical notation, graphic design, and rollerskating.
The Fauré Requiem is a beloved staple of Nathan’s repertoire—this is his seventh time performing its baritone solos.
Patrick Chiu, Stage Director
Transdisciplinary artist Patrick Chiu works as a stage director, conductor, composer, program curator, and educator. In recent years, his choral theatres have been injecting innovation and vibrancy into the arts scene. Recent staged productions include Monteverdi Madrigals of War and Love, English madrigals The Triumphs of Oriana, Handel Messiah, Bach Ich habe genug, Wedding Cantata, Coffee Cantata, Hercules at the Crossroads, Johannes-Passion, Markus-Passion, and Pergolesi Stabat Mater. Being born and raised in Hong Kong and having lived in Europe and the United States for years, Patrick places great importance on the idea of musicians from different cultures working for a better world.