Sunday, April 10 at 3:00 p.m. Itasca Community Chorus will present Faure's Requiem & Spring Songs at St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Grand Rapids. To complement organist Gwen Degner's accompaniment, director Cheri Troumbly has assembled a small orchestra.
Mary LaPlant, known for her virtuoso violin performances will be doubling on the viola. Add Deena and Olivia Skaja (French horn& violin). Trumpet Mike Wourms is reknowned for his soaring notes as is soprano soloist Jennifer Graupmann. Bill Schnell's baritone and Becky Loomis's mellow cello tugs at the heart.
Gabriel Fauré composed the Requiem, following the deaths of his father and mother. The transcendent joy of the requiem is tribute to the cathartic value of music. Faure was interviewed by Louis Aguettant on July 12, 1902. The following excerpt on the Requiem was originally published in Comoedia (1954, p. 6). The English translation is taken from Robert Orledge's biography: "It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience... perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different."
To complement the Requiem, Director Troumbly has chosen water songs. Like the spring thaw these choral settings bring us "Down to the River to Pray" and send us on our way singing like "A flat Crickets and BFlat Frogs."
Thanks to supporting grants form Operation RoundUp (Lake Country Power) and ARAC/McKnight grants funded by MN legacy dollars, tickets are free for students and only $5 for adults.
