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The annual Madeleine Festival of the Arts and Humanities focuses on music this year, with peace and hope as an underlying theme. And it's a good year for lovers of J.S. Bach's music, which shows up on three of the seven Sunday night concerts.
Salt Lake Community College's 40-voice Chamber Choir opens the series on April 15, singing René Clausen's profound "Memorial" as the centerpiece of a program that includes music of Mozart, Eric Whitacre and Mack Wilberg.
"Memorial" was commissioned in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, tragedy in New York City. "It is a response to that dark day, but it's about hope for healing and peace," said SLCC choral director Lyle Archibald, who will conduct the program. The text includes the prayer "O God, shine your light upon us, and we shall be saved," sung in English, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic.
"It's truly a work that goes from darkness to light, and goes from tension into hope," Archibald said. "The concert that we've built around this is about hope, healing and peace, whether in a person's journey, a family's journey or our national journey."
Similar themes arise from other concerts on the series, which continues on Sunday evenings through June 3.
On April 29, the Salt Lake Choral Artists will perform Ernest Bloch's "Sacred Service," written as an expression of religious devotion when Bloch reconnected with his Jewish heritage, but universal in its expression of faith.
Salt Lake City folk ensemble Red Rock Rondo will perform Phillip Bimstein's "A Secret Gift," about one man's story of lifting hearts and lives during the Great Depression with anonymous gifts of cash. The Choir of the Cathedral of the Madeleine will perform Benjamin Britten's life-affirming cantata "The Company of Heaven" on May 20. The venerable Oratorio Society of Utah, which has been singing since 1915 but hasn't been heard as much in recent years, will sing Beethoven's "Choral Fantasy" and Duruflé's hopeful Requiem on June 3.
Music of Bach will be heard on the Utah Valley University Master Chorale's April 22 concert and on the Cathedral Choir's concert.
The largest showcase of Bach's music will also be the most unusual, though: an all-Bach piano recital by Evan Shinners on May 6. Shinners was a boy soprano soloist with the Madeleine Choir in the late 1990s as a junior-high student, when he was already deeply involved in piano study.
"I practiced about eight hours a day," Shinners said. "It was insane. I was like a robot or some sort of machine I don't know if I would advocate that."
The musical results were good. Shinners earned a place at New York's Juilliard School, where he studied with master pianist and teacher Jerome Lowenthal.
Along the way, he became intensely interested in the music of Bach, which he plays with a facility and sense of unconventionality that reminds some critics of the talented, eccentric Bach interpreter Glenn Gould. Critic Laurence Vittes, for example, wrote on Huffington Post that Shinners' CD "Coloring Bach" is "one of the brattiest Bach recordings to come along since Glenn Gould himself."
Shinners said singing in the Madeleine Choir as a boy was "a great addition to my musical brain." "My Bach fascination may have come from the choir."
He remembers singing the soprano solos in the virtuosic Magnificat at age 13, as well as many other works of Bach. "Those were my favorite days, when we performed Bach," he said. "How many other 13-year-olds in all America have that chance? It was pretty wild."
Today, Shinners takes an unorthodox approach to Bach. He compares the German master's music to a modern art canvas filled with pure color and claims to play it more like jazzman Thelonious Monk would than classicist András Schiff. In keeping with that philosophy, he often plays Bach in places where people don't expect to hear it, such as New York City nightclubs.
Shinners' Utah performance is part of a personal project he calls "Bach-upy America," which has him playing Bach in all 50 states. He's not ready to say what works of Bach will be on the program in Salt Lake City, but said the recital will unfold spontaneously and likely include some stories. "I expect people to be laughing, and clapping between the movements, because I want them to," he said. "It's a ridiculous tradition how people attend classical music concerts like they attend funerals. It's dreary, and I can't deal with it."
So yes, Shinners is unconventional. He gets away with it because he can really play Bach, as few others can. A listen to one of his YouTube performances proves the point. It's safe to say that his performance of Bach's music will provide an interesting contrast to the choral works about peace and hope that fill the rest of the Madeleine Festival.
The Madeleine Festival of the Arts and Humanities
The Cathedral of the Madeleine's annual festival begins April 15.
When • Continues each Sunday through June 3. All events are at 8 p.m.
Where • Cathedral of the Madeleine, 331 E. South Temple, Salt Lake City.
Admission • Free. For information, call 801-328-8941.
April 15 • Salt Lake Community College Chamber Choir, conducted by Lyle Archibald, sings René Clausen's "Memorial" and other songs, featuring bass-baritone Gregory Pearson.
April 22 • Utah Valley Master Choral and the Utah Valley University Chamber Choir perform under the baton of Reed Criddle; music of Bach and Vaughan Williams is on the program.
April 29 • Salt Lake Choral Artists, directed by Brady Allred, perform Ernest Bloch's "Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service)"; baritone Tyler Oliphant is the soloist. There will be a 7 p.m. preconcert lecture by Congregation Kol Ami cantor Laurence Loeb in the cathedral's Scanlan Hall (lower level).
May 6 • An all-Bach piano recital by Evan Shinners.
May 13 • Red Rock Rondo performs "A Secret Gift," by Utah composer Phillip Bimstein.
May 20 •The Choir of the Cathedral of the Madeleine performs music of John Tavener, J. S. Bach and Benjamin Britten.
June 3 • The Oratorio Society of Utah performs Maurice Duruflé's Requiem under the baton of Morris Lee.
Also • This year's Madeleine Award recipient will be Utah playwright and author David A. Kranes, a retired University of Utah professor. Details about the Madeleine Award Dinner in Kranes' honor are pending.