Knox United Church

506 4th Street SW

Calgary

May 17, 2008, Saturday 8:00 PM

Buy Tickets online: $20 Adult / $15 Student/Senior/Child
For Tickets Call at 403-263-0079

SPIRITUS CHAMBER CHOIR & BERGMANN PIANO DUO PRESENTS CARMINA BURANA

An event celebrating Love and Spring with bright and suave sonorities! This concert features the iconic 20th century choral masterpiece, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, performed in the reduced version prepared by Orff himself (for soloists, mixed choir, 2 pianos and percussion). It is paired with a newly commissioned piece for Spiritus Chamber Choir, Midsummer Flower by Marcel Bergman, and some well-loved, quintessential Brahms love songs, the Neue Liebeslieder, op. 65 for choir and piano (4-hands).

SPIRITUS CHAMBER CHOIR: SPIRITUS Chamber Choir is a 30-voice chamber choir that was founded in 1995 by David Wilson. Known for its diverse programming, SPIRITUS has enriched the Canadian choral scene with its mandate of performing high quality choral repertoire, acting as a forum for world music and integrating the various performing and visual arts within its performances. SPIRITUS won an international recording award in 1999 for its performance of Anton Bruckner’s Os Justi, a selection from its CD, Crossing Bridges. SPIRITUS was also a finalist in the 2000 CBC National Choral Competition and is regularly heard on CBC and CKUA.

Spiritus Chamber Choir is committed to providing high quality concerts to choral music lovers in Calgary and surroundings. Our thirty members are accomplished performers who delight in sharing their love for music and the art of singing. Led by Artistic Director Pierre Simard, the choir sings in a wide array of musical styles, from Renaissance motets to full-fledged choral-orchestral masterworks. We invite everyone to attend our concerts, and discover the amazing wealth and richness of the choral repertoire, from the very old to the most recent.

BERGMANN PIANO DUO

Elizabeth and Marcel Bergmann have been performing together as a duo since 1989. They studied with Arie Vardi at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hannover and with Jean-Eudes Vaillancourt at the the Université de Montréal. The duo received first prize at the International Chamber Music Competition in Caltanissetta, Italy, and were laureates of the 4th Murray Dranoff International Two Piano Competition.

In 1993 they became members of the young artists' roster of Yehudi Menuhin-Live Music Now. Their recitals and concerts with orchestra have taken them to many parts of the world, including the USA, Italy, Germany, Holland, Greece and Canada. The duo has appeared at the celebrated Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, the Banff Summer Arts Festival, the Royal Bank Calgary International Organ Festival and Competition, the International Two Piano Symposium and Schubertiade, Miami, the Tage für neue Musik, Darmstadt,the Braunschweiger Kammermusik Podium and at the EXPO 2000, Hannover.

They have made recordings for the CBC, for several stations of the ARD in Germany and for National Public Radio in the USA. In 1997 they recorded their first CD with 20th century works for two pianos. The duo's most recent recording appears on the Arktos label featuring works by Rachmaninov, Bernstein and Debussy. As founding members of the International Piano Quartet they had the opportunity to record Stravinsky's Les Noces under the direction of Robert Craft at the Abbey Road Studios in London. The CD first appeared on Koch International Classics and has been recently re-released on Naxos.

Currently on faculty at The Mount Royal College Conservatory in Calgary, Elizabeth and Marcel have also been involved in various musical activities at the Banff Centre for the Arts in recent years. They are members of the Calgary based group Land's End Chamber Ensemble and have appeared as soloists with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and the Red Deer and Lethbridge Symphonic Orchestras. Their extensive repertoire ranges from the baroque to the contemporary and includes numerous own arrangements and compositions.