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Melodia Women’s Choir Celebrates Girl Groups and Women Making Music from the 12th to the 21st Centuries, May 5


WEBWIRE

Melodia Women’s Choir of NYC will present Shout Sister Shout! Girl Groups from the 12th to 21st centuries, a celebration of women’s vocal ensembles through the ages. The concert is on Saturday May 5 at 8 pm at 346 West 20th Street (St. Peter’s Church) in Manhattan.

The 30 talented women singers of the choir have an “ethereal repertoire and ringing sound,” according to classical radio commentator Margaret Juntwait. The choir will be conducted by Cynthia Powell.

The concert will feature music by women’s ensembles, beginning with compositions of Hildegard von Bingen, and extending to music by famous groups such as The Andrews Sisters, the Bulgarian Women’s Choir, Sweet Honey in the Rock and The Dixie Chicks. One section includes glorious music composed for 18th century Venetian ospediali (hospital orphanages).

The concert will include a preview of a newly commissioned work by the rising young composer Becca Schack If You Came This Way, based on poems of T.S. Eliot, and a work by a renowned Azerbaijan composer Tofig Guliyev and arranged by Naila Aziz. Accompanying the choir will be Kyung-A Yoo, piano; Barbara Merjan, percussion; Linda May-Han Oh, bass; Pam Fleming, trumpet and Sheryl Bailey, guitar.

Melodia creates, discovers and performs works for women’s voices, and has rediscovered numerous neglected works, presenting U.S. and New York premiere performances of pieces by Jorge Córdoba, Peter Warlock, E.J. Moeran, and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel in celebration of her 200th birthday. Melodia’s November 2006 sold-out concert at Merkin Hall featured the World Premiere of Allison Sniffin’s Óyeme con los ojos (Hear Me With Your Eyes), based on poems of Sor Juana.

The group was founded in 2003 by Jennifer Clarke, a choral singer and an arts consultant who has worked with London’s Royal Festival Hall, Royal Court Theatre and several companies in New York. Cynthia Powell, Melodia’s conductor since its inception, also serves as Artistic Director of Stonewall Chorale, has directed the choral program of Sarah Lawrence College and was a guest conductor in Havana, Cuba. A pianist and organist, she has toured Meredith Monk’s opera, Atlas and Celebration Service to Europe, Spoleto, Lincoln Center and elsewhere.


Tickets for Shout Sister Shout! Girl Groups from the 12th to 21st centuries are $20 in advance, $25 at the door -- available at the Melodia Women’s Choir web site: www.melodiawomenschoir.org and at (212)-252-4134.



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