Performances for
     the 2007-2008 Season

In our 41st season it is a pleasure to bring you four concerts that include a wide variety of choral works performed in several different venues.

Our Fall concert includes pieces a capella, as well as accompanied by organ and piano. The First Presbyterian Church on Park Street is our host, providing an intimate setting with marvelous acoustics. Barbara Taylor Moore returns to accompany the group on the magnificent Casavant organ - one of Charlottesville's finest instruments. With a group numbering 100 plus, the sanctuary fills with rich overtones, highlighting the full spectrum of vocal production.

The Paramount, located on the Downtown Mall, is the venue for our Christmas concert. This season we have scheduled the concert for December 21 - close to Christmas, at a time when traffic will be lighter and parking easier for the local community. From the quiet to the festive, sacred to secular, the Society will perform selections to get everyone into the holiday spirit.  Be uplifted by Bach's Cantata 191 and delight in the crowd favorite, A Musicological Journey Through the Twelve Days of Christmas. Be sure to get your tickets early - this performance sold out last year!  The concert is generously sponsored by the Virginia Financial Group: Planters Bank, Second Bank and Trust, and Virginia Commonwealth Trust Company.

On March 9, 2008, join the Oratorio Society for Charlottesville's first performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony, as the 100-voice chorus is matched by full orchestra. Vaughan Williams composed the work in the early twentieth century, using four movements to set to music the poetry from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. This magnificent symphony features soprano Amanda Balestrieri and baritone James Taylor as soloists. The performance will take place in the Dickinson Fine Arts Building at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

Our final concert of the season is on May 31, 2008, again at PVCC.  We gather on this Memorial Day weekend to celebrate American choral music, featuring works by Howard Hanson, Norman Dello Joio, Aaron Copland, and Randall Thompson.  The text that is set to music in these works is a product of American authors Thomas Jefferson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost. 

On the program for this spirited, patriotic performance is Randall Thompson's The Testament of Freedom, which was written while Thompson was Chairman of the Music Department at the University of Virginia.  In commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth, Thompson used Jefferson's own writings to affirm the concepts of life and liberty.  The work premiered on April 13, 1943, during the height of World War II, and was sung by the University Glee Club under the direction of Stephen Tuttle, with Randall Thompson at the piano. CBS broadcast the performance, and the Office of War Information taped the program for troops overseas.