Join us as we mark Paul Hillier’s final season as Artistic Director of Chamber Choir Ireland, bringing his sixteen year tenure to an end.
In our Autumn-Winter 2024 season, we’ll travel to Romantic Vienna and Renaissance Venice, collaborate with our friends in the Irish Chamber Orchestra and Irish Baroque Orchestra, hear three composers develop their new musical ideas, and perform masterworks by Mozart and Handel.
The opening concert of the season features works by Brahms, Schubert, Wolf and Ligeti that explore the beauty and tranquility of the nocturnal world in Night Watch: Romantic Choral Music from Vienna. This programme will be performed on Friday 27 September, 7.30pm, in Carlingford Heritage Centre, Co. Louth, and on Saturday 28 September 2024, 6:30pm in Pepper Canister Church, Dublin.
This autumn will also see the continuation of Choral Sketches, a career development initiative for composers, delivered in partnership the Contemporary Music Centre. Choral Sketches provides a creative and open environment for them to deepen their experience in writing for choir, with mentorship from renowned Irish composer, Rhona Clarke.
This year’s participating composers are Bianca Gannon, Laura Heneghan and Caterina Schembri, who will bring their new musical ideas (or sketches) to the public in an open workshop with Chamber Choir Ireland and Paul Hillier on Thursday 26 September, 4.00-6.30pm in The Studio, National Concert Hall.
After sixteen years at the helm of Chamber Choir Ireland, Paul Hillier marks his final performance as Artistic Director with an exquisite programme of sacred choral music, transporting us to Renaissance Venice in In Illo Tempore.
The programme opens with Nicolas Gombert’s intricate and optimistic motet, In illo tempore, meaning ‘at that time’, published in Venice in 1539. Over sixty years later, Claudio Monteverdi took inspiration from Gombert in his Missa in illo tempore, drawing from ten different themes extracted from the original motet. Weaving together the work of two crucial transitional figures in the shift from Renaissance to Baroque, each section of Monteverdi’s six-part mass is followed by a motet by Giovani Gabrieli, from the joyful Plaudite omnis terra to the serenity of O magnum mysterium.
Chamber Choir Ireland presents In Illo Tempore on Saturday 12 October, 6:30pm, in Fisherwick Church, Belfast, and on Sunday 13 October, 6:30pm, in Pepper Canister Church, Dublin.
In November, Chamber Choir Ireland teams up with the Irish Chamber Orchestra to present Mozart Requiem, conducted by Thomas Zehetmair. This production features soprano Ailish Tynan, Mezzo soprano Carolyn Holt, tenor Robin Tritschler, and bass Padraic Rowan, as well as two of Ireland’s leading ensembles, representing the best in Irish classical music.
There are performances on Sunday 17 November 2024, 4pm, in RIAM Recital Hall, Dublin, and on Saturday 23 November 2024, 7.30pm, in St Elisabeth Church, Berlin as part of Zeitgeist Irland 24, an initiative of Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in Germany.
The Irish Baroque Orchestra’s annual production of Handel’s Messiah in partnership with Chamber Choir Ireland is an established highlight of the December calendar.
Handel’s Messiah, with its powerful arias and majestic choruses, is a timeless celebration of faith, hope, and the human spirit. It is Handel at his most brilliant, in a well-paced blend of aria and chorus to perfectly match the arc of the Christian story. This production is led by Peter Whelan, Artistic Director of IBO, with step-out solos from the singers of Chamber Choir Ireland.
Handel’s Messiah is on Thursday 5 December, in the National Opera House, Wexford, and on Friday 6 December, in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.