Bray Choral Society

Our summer concert will take place in St. Fergal’s Church, Ballywaltrim (on the corner of Boghall Road and Killarney Road), Bray, at 8:00 pm on Sunday 18th May. We are proud to present the Irish premières of:

SUNRISE MASS by Ola Gjeilo, and
MIRROR OF PERFECTION by Richard Blackford

We will be joined by soloists
SARA DI BELLA, soprano
BEN RUSSELL, baritone

and the
DEGANI ENSEMBLE, leader Alan Smale

conducted by FRANK KELLY, our musical director

This is a change from our regular venue and it is a few years since we last presented a concert at St. Fergals; but it is still a lovely place for a concert like this. We gratefully acknowledge the kindness of Fr Larry Behan in making available St Fergal’s Church for our concert.

Tickets €15, available at the door, from choir members, and from Photocraft (Quinsboro Road) and Dargle Pharmacy (Superquinn SC).

Rehearsal recording of “The Ground” from Sunrise Mass by Ola Gjeilo: click here

Virginia Kerr, Chairperson of Opera Theatre Company had this to say about our preview performance of “The Ground”:

I had the great pleasure of working with the Bray Choral Society last December when the choir participated in the Opera Theatre Company Sing and Be Merry Christmas Tour. Amongst other items, the choir sang an excerpt from Sunrise Mass by  Ola Gjeilo. This Norwegian composer was completely unfamiliar to me and I was very impressed by his beautiful music and his wonderful ability to portray visual effects through sound. The Sunrise Mass is a piece which I am sure will be enjoyed by audiences worldwide and I commend the Bray Choral Society for their innovative and interesting programme planning. It is a great opportunity for Irish audiences to hear new works which might not be performed in Ireland very often. Having enjoyed hearing the choir sing a short excerpt from the Mass, I feel sure that it will be a wonderful evening and one which should attract a full attendance.

Virginia Kerr
http://www.virginiakerr.ie/
Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Opera Theatre Company

About the music

Ola Gjeilo (pronounced Yay-lo) was born in Norway in 1978, and moved to the United States in 2001 to begin his composition studies at the Juilliard School in New York City.

Ola’s concert works are performed all over the world, and his debut recording as a pianist-composer, the lyrical crossover album Stone Rose, was followed by its 2012 sequel, Piano Improvisations. Many of Ola’s choral works are featured on Phoenix Chorale’s bestselling Northern Lights album, which is devoted entirely to his music for choir. All three albums are available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, etc.

Presently a full-time composer based in New York City, Ola is also very interested in film, and his music often draws inspiration from movies and cinematic music. He is currently composer-in-residence with Manhattan Chorale, a professional chamber choir led by Craig Arnold.

Sunrise is a symphonic mass for choir and string orchestra. It was commissioned in 2007 by the combined Majorstua and Nova Chamber Choirs and was first performed in Oslo on 2nd November 2008.

At first hearing, the music of Ola Gjeilo comes across as pleasant to the ear: simple, straightforward, easily evoking beautiful emotions. On further listening one hears the complexity and multiple dimensions of his writing. Philosophically, Gjeilo seems to desire to create an atmosphere in which the listener can experience music that is direct and pleasing.

Gjeilo considers himself a ‘symphonic’ composer in that he often aims for a lush orchestral sound, however small the performing ensembles are. In choral music, this also means that the music is 
ultimately 
more 
important 
to
 him 
than
 the
 text. 

However,
 he
 approaches 
his 
craft
 from 
a
 spiritual
 perspective
 and
 wants
 to
 share
 universal
 and
 humanistic 
experiences
 in
 the 
realm
 of 
his
 music.

 One 
needs
 to
 look
 no
 further
 than
 the
 names
 of
 each 
individual
 movement
 for
 an
 illustration
 of
 how
 spirituality 
plays
 a 
role 
in
 the 
work.

The
 text
 comes
 from
 the
 Ordinary
 of
 the
 Mass: 
Kyrie
–
The
 Spheres,
 Gloria
–
Sunrise,
 Credo
–
The
 City, 
Sanctus 
& 
Agnus 
Dei
–
Identity 
& 
The 
Ground. 

While 
Gjeilo 
set 
the 
meaning 
of 
the 
Latin 
text 
respectfully
 and
 observes 
the 
traditions 
that
 masses
 are
 expected 
to
 exhibit,
 his
 overall
 vision
 for
 the 
piece
 lies
 within 
the
 titles 
of 
the 
work, 
only
 loosely
 related 
to 
the
 meaning
 of
 the 
Latin.

 In
 so
 doing,
 he
 reveals
 a 
structure 
outside 
of 
the 
text; 
a 
metaphysical
 journey 
from
 the 
heavens 
to 
earth. 

The 
intent 
and
 the 
story
 in 
his 
Mass 
are
 expressed
 through 
the 
way 
in
 which 
the 
music 
comes 
across
 sonically.

After graduating from the Royal College of Music Richard Blackford was appointed Composer In Residence at Balliol College Oxford. His work is performed and broadcast all over the world and has been featured in the Adelaide, Cork, Montepulciano, Brighton, Cheltenham, Long Island and Berlin Festivals. Awards include First Prize at the Houston Film Festival, The Royal Television Society Award, the Mendelssohn Scholarship and the Tagore Gold Medal. In 2000 he wrote a four-hour choral and orchestral score for CNN/BBC Millennium, which won an Emmy Award for Best Title Sequence and for which Blackford was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Music. His collaborators include Ted Hughes, Maya Angelou, Tony Harrison and Alistair Beaton. In 2008 he became the first ever Composer in Association to the Brno Philharmonic.

Richard Blackford has devoted a large part of his career to dramatic music–opera, ballet, incidental music, and film scores–but he has also written a number of large scale choral works. Mirror of Perfection, for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra, uses texts by Saint Francis of Assisi. The composer has written that the simple lyricism of the music is intended to reflect the simplicity and directness of Francis’ life and faith. The seven movements are varied in their moods, with a delicate harmonic and melodic simplicity which echoes John Rutter. The fourth movement, which features the soprano soloist, is the most interesting, largely because it’s musically the most adventurous in its use of dissonance and an expanded harmonic and gestural vocabulary. The sixth movement, too, stands out because of its endearingly quirky rhythms. The movements are graceful and shapely, with some lovely sonorities, and the choral and orchestral writing is never less than elegant. The work is likely to be most attractive to fans of Rutter’s choral music.

iTunes download

The original live première recording of Sunrise Mass is available for purchase from iTunes store; please click here: Sunrise Mass at iTunes