April 25,2000

Rachmaninoff Festival Choir to Perform Liturgy on May

6

Event is Free and Open to the Public

MIDDLEBURY, Vt.¾Conducted by Anthony Antolini, the Rachmaninoff

Festival Choir-a 100-voice choir combining the Bowdoin Chorus and the Down

East Singers-will perform Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Liturgy of St. John

Chrysostom” in the original Church Slavonic language on Saturday, May

6 at 7 p.m. The event will take place in Middlebury College’s Mead Chapel

on Hepburn Road off College Street (Route 125). The event is free and open

to the public.

Appearing as bass soloist will be Dean Jorgenson, a Wisconsin native who

now resides in Camden, Maine. He received his music education from the

University of Wisconsin in Madison, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia,

and the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, Calif. Jorgenson studied

opera under Dino Yannapoulos, Boris Goldovsky, and Michael Singher. He

has performed opera for many years throughout Germany.

Anthony Antolini, a faculty member of the Bowdoin College music department,

is a specialist in Russian choral music. He rediscovered the music to the

long-forgotten Rachmaninoff Liturgy in 1984 and produced the first modern

edition of the work. Antolini has performed this a capella piece throughout

the United States and in major cities of the former Soviet Union. He is

also the featured artist in “Rediscovering Rachmaninoff,” an award-winning

documentary written for public television and distributed internationally.

The Middlebury performance of “The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom”

will employ the very distinctive deep bass solo chanting and extended choral

responses characteristic of such music intended originally for use in the

Russian Orthodox Church. Rachmaninoff asked that choruses sing a cappella

since only the human voice was thought worthy to express the praises of

God. By employing this singing technique, preserving the traditional word

order of the liturgy, and using the heavily stressed syllabification of

Slavonic, he created music which is at once characteristic of the rich heritage

of Russian choral music and yet unique in its highly inventive and intensely

beautiful interweaving of multiple vocal lines.

In 1996 the two Maine-based choirs collaborated under the direction of Antolini

to record Rachmaninoff’s Liturgy; it is available as a CD and is being distributed

by Collegium Records.

The Bowdoin Chorus from Brunswick, Maine, is comprised of students, faculty,

and area community members. The Down East Singers from Thomaston, Maine,

is a community chorus. Antolini serves as director of both groups.

For more information, contact Elizabeth Karnes in the office of the Middlebury

College Language Schools at 802-443-5685.

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