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Cappella Romana appears with Anonymous 4, Concord Ensemble at Pepperdine University in Malibu
Cappella Romana has been invited to perform as one of three headliner groups in the festival "The Ascending Voice" this June at Pepperdine University, an international symposium of sacred a cappella music. Representing the Orthodox a cappella tradition in Byzantine chant, Cappella Romana will be featured alongside Concord Ensemble (singing Latin polyphony) and Anonymous 4 (singing Southern Protestant and Shape-note hymnody). Cappella Romana's concert will be held on Tuesday evening, June 5, at 7:30pm. The ensemble will perform its program Mt. Sinai: Frontier of Byzantium. Learn about the conference here. |
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Cappella Romana on tour in Santa Barbara prior to The Ascending Voice
Just prior to the conference at Pepperdine, Cappella Romana returns to Santa Barbara to perform its program Mt. Sinai: Frontier of Byzantium. Its first performance in Santa Barbara since 2001, Alexander Lingas will direct the singers in a program of virtuoso medieval Byzantine chant from ancient manuscripts at St. Catherine's Monastery, Mt. Sinai, Egypt. Cappella Romana's concert in Santa Barbara will be held on Sunday afternoon, June 3rd, at 3:30pm, among the mosaic icons of St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church, Santa Barbara. Pre-concert talk at 3:00pm. More information about the concert. Tickets at the door, 805/683-4492 or 685-8982. |
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RADIANT CLOUD
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Cappella Romana tours the East Coast this April This April, just after Easter (Pascha) and before its series concerts in Portland and Seattle, Cappella Romana will appear at Princeton and Yale Universities in a program called "Hellenes and the Music of the Renaissance." Founding artistic director Alexander Lingas leads Cappella Romana in a program of works in Greek, Latin, and French born from meetings between East and West during the 15th and 16th centuries, including music by Manuel Gazes, John Plousiadenos, Guillaume Du Fay, and the Cretan Franghiskos Leontaritis (1518?-1572?), the son of a Greek mother and Italian father who eventually sang in Venice under Willaert in San Marco and in Munich under Lassus. (Photo: Piazza di San Marco, Venice) For more information: Princeton Hellenic Studies: Friday, April 13, 2007 Yale Institute of Sacred Music: Saturday, April 14, 2007 |
Princeton and Yale present Cappella Romana in "Hellenes and Music of the Renaissance"| Happy New Year! Cappella Romana brings "Mt. Sinai" to the Northwest in January
"robust and intriguing music" --The Washington Post, 2 Dec. 06 "sung with such strength and commitment" --Los Angeles Times, 12 Dec. 06 Sound Sample from the live concert in Washington, DC This January Cappella Romana sings MT. SINAI: FRONTIER OF BYZANTIUM with music from Egypt's Mt. Sinai, revered for centuries by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim pilgrims alike.
This program also appeared to a sold-out crowd in the "Bibles before the Year 1000" exhibition in the Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution on November 30. Northwest audiences will hear medieval Byzantine music not heard in over 500 years from manuscripts at St. Catherine's Monastery, Mt. Sinai, Egypt, including chants in honor of St. Catherine and from the Service of the Furnace, Byzantium's only liturgical drama. Free pre-concert talk at 7 p.m. For this program Cappella Romana will be presented as a men's ensemble, featuring a selection of notable Greek Orthodox cantors. Click here for the full press release. Portland: Fri, Jan 12, 2007, Cappella Romana's "Mt. Sinai" program reviewed: Past concerts of this program: Washington, DC: Thu, Nov 30, 2006, Irvine, CA: Sat, Dec 9, 2006, MOUNT SINAI: THE FRONTIER OF BYZANTIUM
"The Fall of Constantinople" in Salem, Oregon, Sunday, January 7 Cappella Romana will sing evensong and a concert at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Salem, Oregon, on Sunday, January 7, 2007, at 4:00 pm. St. Paul' s Episcopal Church invites the public to an Evensong Service and concert presented by Cappella Romana, on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 4:00 pm. Directed by Dr. Alexander Lingas, Cappella Romana will present music from eastern and western Europe in the program "The Fall of Constantinople" and will sing the Service of Evensong.
Tickets are selling fast: Order here. For the first time ever, Portland's two largest period-performance ensembles, Portland Baroque Orchestra and Cappella Romana, are joining forces in four performances of The Messiah by G.F. Handel (shown here) and the Magnificat by J.S. Bach. From December 15 to 18, patrons may choose from four performances: two complete performances of Messiah or two performances of Highlights from Messiah plus the Bach Magnificat with Christmas movements. All four performances feature world-class soloists and will be directed by Stephen Stubbs, Grammy nominee and an artistic director of the Boston Early Music Festival. More information about these performances may be found at www.pbo.org. Tchaikovsky concerts receive critical acclaim "pure, sumptuous pleasure" From the Oregonian, Monday, November 6, 2006 Music review: Cappella Romana gives a glimpse of its softer, gentler side Leaving austerity aside briefly, the Portland vocal ensemble offers some little-known gems JAMES McQUILLEN The Portland vocal ensemble Cappella Romana is an unusually scholarly choir -- unsurprising, given that founder and artistic director Alexander Lingas is not just a conductor, composer and singer but also a prominent expert in the field of Eastern Orthodox music. A sense of academic rigor has been integral to many of its programs, ranging from austere explorations of early Byzantine chant to potentially challenging collections of modern works in the Orthodox tradition. But not all Cappella concerts are so demanding of the choir's large and devoted following. Sometimes, as in the Russian Orthodox choral program performed at St. Mary's Cathedral on Friday night, they're pure, sumptuous pleasure. To the extent that Russian music has a reputation for power, density and dark-hued harmonies, for much of the evening the choir sang against type. The "Cherubic Hymn" of the early 20th-century composer Nikolai Kedrov Sr. was fittingly soft and gentle, and guest conductor Mark Bailey, a colleague of Lingas, who directs the Yale Russian Chorus, gave it room to flow easily with broad tempos and calm dynamics. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's short "Thy Bridal Chamber" was similarly tender and thoughtful, and even a setting of a Kievan chant by Kedrov's contemporary Pavel Chesnokov came across with finesse and clarity despite its Mahlerian richness. The concert's first half comprised these and other little-known gems, including an anonymous early 17th-century hymn and excerpts from the English-language Vespers by the present-day composer Sergei Glagolev. The second half consisted of selections from Tchaikovsky's "Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom," in which Tchaikovsky built on the 19th-century choral concerto model with his own gifts for color and dramatic flair. Repeated harmonic patterns, as well as familiarity with the composer, lent a feeling of predictability, but if this portion of the performance lacked the variety of the first half, it had all of the intensity. The singers, among the Northwest's finest, created a round, unified sound -- apart from a few passages in the Tchaikovsky where the sopranos had to reach uncomfortably high -- and their diction was just relaxed enough to soften the abundant consonant clusters of the Russian texts. With just 16 voices, they fit the venue perfectly: Cappella is one of few chamber choirs that can consistently fill the cathedral both with listeners and with sound.
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Cappella Romana to perform Handel's Messiah and the Bach Magnificat with Portland Baroque Orchestra|
Cappella Romana appears in August at the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies, London
The splendid chapel of King's College London, built in the 19th century with Byzantine influences (pictured here), served as the venue for the London concerts. On this occasion, Cappella Romana consisted of Alexander Lingas, John M. Boyer, Mark Powell, and a new singer to Cappella Romana's ranks, Archileus Chaldaeakes, director of the Byzantine choir The Maistores of Psaltic Art. In concerts given jointly with the English Chamber Choir (ECC), directed by Guy Protheroe of the Byzantine Festival in London, Cappella Romana presented selections of medieval and contemporary-practice Byzantine chant in Greek. The two groups together also performed the work "Anastasis" by the Greco-Albanian composer from Sicily, Tonin Tarnaku, in which the ECC sang in Greek and the members of Cappella Romana sang in Albanian. Cappella Romana's singers had heard the world premiere of this work during Byzantine Music Festival in Sicily in May, 2006, at a concert given prior to their own two performances in the festival. |
At the Victoria/Port Angeles tour a success
Above photograph taken in a photo session in Victoria. High-resolution version available. Credit: Rob d'Estrubé. Led by artistic director Alexander Lingas, Cappella Romana performed its "Fall of Constantinople" program to capacity audiences in Port Angeles, Washington and Victoria, British Columbia on March 10 and 11. The Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts in Port Angeles presented the program to nearly 200 people at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. Considering Port Angeles has a population of about 20,000, the ensemble was thrilled with the large and enthusiastic audience. The ensemble's appearance in Victoria was in the concert series of the Early Music Society of the Islands, which has featured such prominent early music ensembles as Anonymous 4, the Baltimore Consort, Camerata Koeln, Monica Huggett (of Portland Baroque Orchestra), Ton Koopman, La Venexiana, London Baroque, the Orlando Consort, Andrew Manze, Tafelmusik and many others. Performing to over 360 in Alix Goolden Hall of the Victoria Conservatory of Music, the audience was treated to one of Cappella Romana's best performances of the program, featuring the striking combination of motets by Dufay and Byzantine chant. This program will be performed in Portland, Seattle, Bainbridge Island, and Eugene in May 2006. This long-overdue tour was the result of a planned performance in Victoria in January 2005, which in the end had to be rescheduled because of ice storms and freezing fog. Read the dramatic account from last year's press release here. |
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Ivan Moody conducts Balkan Epiphany The public responded in particular to three works by contemporary Serbian composer Rajko Maksimovic, whose music on the program attested passionately to the recent tragic history in the Balkans. Click here to read the concert program (PDF). The concerts received national recognition in the Wall Street Journal, featured with other world music events around the country. Photo montage: Cappella Romana in rehearsal for "Balkan Epiphany." L-R, Ivan Moody (IM); Wendy Steele, Shaelyn Schneider, Virginia Hancock, Les Green; David Krueger, IM, John Vergin; Paul Sadilek, David Krueger, David Stutz; IM; Maria Karlin, LeaAnne DenBeste, Stephanie Kramer, Amy Russell Cathey. Credit: Paige Baker. |
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Greek Byzantine Choir Breaks New Ground in Seattle and Portland These concerts were made possible by the generous support of donors in both cities and the Greek Orthodox parishes of Holy Trinity in Portland and St. Demetrios in Seattle. Their first appearance on the west coast, the choir sang a spectacular collection of virtuosic hymns, including rousing psalmody from Mt. Athos and ecstatic communion verses. A recording of their concert in Seattle will be featured on the program "The Old Country" on KBCS radio (public radio in Bellevue, Washington) in January 2006. |
"Women in Byzantium" sells out in Portland; Seattle and Portland concerts win critical acclaim SEATTLE, Washington. The center of the vast St. Mark's Cathedral was full for Seattle's performance of "Women in Byzantium. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a very favorable review: Rod Parke of The Seattle Gay News ran a glowing review of the concert. "I am grateful to Cappella Romana for bringing this vocal treasure [Patricia Rozario] to Seattle, and for introducing me to early Byzantine music that I found immediately intoxicating." Click here for the full review.
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After many long hours of recording, at about 1 o'clock in the morning August 11, Cappella Romana completed the recording sessions for groundbreaking double-CD of the Divine Liturgy St. John Chrysostom in English, sung to Byzantine chant. The recording is scheduled for release in late 2006. This project is part of its three year initiative, "Excellence in Orthodox Church Music in English" supported by the Virginia H. Farah Foundation. Read the full press release. This program is supported in part by a leadership grant from the Virginia H. Farah Foundation, which covers about 42% of the $32,000 budget. To complete the project and release the CD by next spring, Cappella Romana is in the midst of a campaign to raise the needed funds. Individual donors are encouraged to add their support to this important project. "Every gift counts," explains executive director Mark Powell. "This project will have an impact for many years to come." MAKE A SPECIAL GIFT Photo credits: Steve Barnett (A), Mark Powell (B,C,D). |
You may also order tickets online by clicking here. All seating is reserved by row and seat order. Call or email your requests.
Concerts in Portland are presented in the radiant atmosphere of St. Mary's Cathedral (NW 18th & Couch); in Seattle, at Holy Rosary Catholic Church (42nd Ave SW & Genesee), whose brilliant acoustics are well worth the 15 minute drive from downtown.
Programs and dates subject to change.
