University Chorus		Marika Kuzma, director
Description Rehearsal Information Audition Information Current Season Recent performances Department of Music University of California, Berkeley

Description

The University Chorus is a select ensemble of approximately eighty singers open to all musicians in the campus community: undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff, community members. Previous singing experience and some sight reading skills are highly recommended. Acceptance into the chorus is by audition.

Sponsored by the Music Department, the chorus performs literature from the standard choral-orchestral repertoire to contemporary music. Along with concerts on campus under its director Marika Kuzma, the chorus has been invited to perform with the Midsummer Mozart Festival under George Cleve (Beethoven Ninth Symphony), the Oakland-East Bay Symphony under Michael Morgan (Gershwin Porgy & Bess), and with the Berkeley Symphony under Kent Nagano (Vaughan Williams Flos campi). Its concerts have met with enthusiastic audiences and favorable reviews from the local press. The Montclarion has called its singing "resolute, pitch-perfect, clear in fugues, sweet in piano sections, and powerful at fortissimos..." Robert Commanday of the San Francisco Chronicle has written that the University Chorus is "very impressive in sonority, quality of tone and expressiveness."

The goal of the University Chorus is to provide our singers and our audiences with a stimulating musical experience. In any four-year cycle, singers can expect to perform repertoire in a several languages (English, German, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Church Slavonic, Russian, Hebrew, etc.) and in various musical styles (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Twentieth-Century, and premieres of music “hot off the press”). Each rehearsal involves a combination of vocal instruction, ensemble training and musical interpretation. Singers can expect to be challenged and enriched in many ways over the course of each year.

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Rehearsal Schedule

Tuesdays and Thursdays 5:00-6:30 (a change from last year) and an additional one-hour weekly sectional on Monday and Wednesday mid-afternoon.

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Current Season - 2008-09

Saturday November 8
8 PM, Hertz Hall
Zigeunerlieder music inspired by gypsy traditions
Selections by Brahms (sung by the University Chorus)
and Dvorak (sung by the Chamber Chorus)

Wednesday December 10 Holiday Noon Concert
12:15 PM, Hertz Hall
Handel Messiah (Part I)
University Chorus
University Chamber Chorus
Student soloists
With an orchestra of leading Bay Area Baroque musicians

Wednesday, February 11
8pm, Hertz Hall
Choral Love Songs for Valentine's Day
University Chorus
University Chamber Chorus
hosting other campus choirs including Perfect 5th, UC Jazz Choir, Noteworthy

Wednesday, April 22
8pm, Zellerbach Hall
Britten: War Requiem
Benjamin Britten, War Requiem
University Chorus & University Chamber Chorus, Marika Kuzma, director;
UC Alumni Chorus, Mark Sumner, director;
Piedmont Children's Choir,
with orchestra & soloists including acclaimed baritone Christòpheren Nomura.
This will be the first time Britten's epic work is performed on the UC Berkeley campus.

Sample of Recent Performances

2007-08 Season

Saturday, November 17, 2007
8pm, Hertz Hall

University Chorus
Aya Ueda, guest director

Mozart, Requiem in D minor, K.626

Holiday Choral Music, including Jan Sandström's Lo, How a Rose and contemporary settings of medieval carol texts.
Aya Ueda, guest director

Saturday, April 26, 8 PM
8pm, Hertz Hall

University Chorus
Aya Ueda, guest director

Macmillan, Cantos Sagrados
Bernstein, Chichester Psalms
Jack Lundquist, soloist

2006-07 Season

November 17, 8 PM Hertz Hall
November 19, 4 PM Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco
Mendelssohn Elijah (abbreviated version)
With orchestra and soloists
Bojan Knezevic, Elijah
Roslyn Barak/Clarissa Lyons, The Widow
Katherine Growdon, Jezebel
Jonathan Smucker, Obadiah
Henry Nelson, The Youth
Daniel Cawthon, Narration

December 6 Holiday Noon Concert
12:15, Hertz Hall
“A Child is Born"
Excerpts from Handel Messiah
Nin -Culmel, “La virgen lava pañales”
Whitacre, “Lux aurumque”

April 21, Hertz Hall, Time TBA (part of the Cal Day)
Student Songs
Orff, Carmina Burana
piano and percussion version
with children’s chorus from the Young Musicians Program
student and alumni soloists, Axel van Chee, Joannie Chiu, Gregory Fair, Dalia Sawaya, and Candace Johnson

May 4 & 5
Vaughan Williams Dona nobis pacem
with the University Symphony and soloists Elissa Johnston and Jeffrey Fields
conducted by David Milnes

2005-06 Season

October 21, 8 PM, Hertz Hall
Music Department Centennial Concert
Randall Thompson excerpts from his Requiem (a work composed for the University Chorus and premiered in Hertz Hall in the 1950s)

November 4 and 5
8 PM, Hertz Hall
“Lux aeterna”
Fauré, Requiem
Stravinsky Requiem Canticles
Tavener “Song for Athene”
Collaboration with the Chamber Chorus
With orchestra and alumni soloists Katherine Howell and Axel van Chee (Fauré), Tina Osinski and Andrew Chung (Stravinsky)

February 13
8 PM, Hertz Hall
Campus-wide Valentine’s Day Concert

March 19
5 PM, Hertz Hall
J.S. Bach, Matthäus-Passion
Collaboration with the Chamber Chorus
With period orchestra and guest soloists
Alan Bennett, Evangelist
Benjamin Park, Jesus (UCB Alumnus)
Other guest soloists Paul Flight, Jeremy Galyon Thomas Glenn, Katherine Growdon, Ann Moss, Richard Mix, Julia Ulehla, and UC alumni Andrew Chung, Natasha Keith, Jamie Magno, Daniel Trujillo

May 12
8 PM, Zellerbach Hall
Cal Performances Centennial Concert
Collaboration with internationally acclaimed artists
Excerpts from Boito Mefistofele and Wagner Meistersinger
With SF Opera Orchestra conducted by Robert Cole
Concert shared with internationally acclaimed artists Mark Morris Dance Group, Lisa Vroman and Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams and The Alarm will Sound

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2004-05 Season

Nov. 14th, 8 PM, Hertz Hall
Nov. 12th, 8 PM, Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension, Oakland
Rachmaninoff, Vsenoshchnoye bdenie [All-Night Vigil also known as Vespers]
Collaboration with the Oakland Symphony Chorus and Orthodox Chanters from the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin in San Francisco.

Dec. 8th, Hertz Hall Noon Concert
“Music for a Glorious Season”
Selections from the Vivaldi Gloria, Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil, Vaughan Williams Mass in G Minor

April 10th, 3 PM, Hertz Hall
“Poyte Pesni! Sing Songs!”
Stravinsky, Svadebka [Les Noces, or The Wedding] 4-Piano and Percussion version
(This concert was part of the Cal Performances Series "Ballet and Music in Russian History and Culture" and the final event of the Department of Music conference "Glinka and His Legacies")

May 6th and 7th, 8 PM, Hertz Hall
Haydn, Mass in the Time of War
Collaboration with the University Symphony

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Other Recent Performances:

Handel Messiah Spring 2004
Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem Spring 2003
In Memoriam, September 11, 2002 (Part of campus-wide commemoration): selections in Latin, Hebrew, Church Slavonic, Arabic, and English by various composers
Hindemith Requiem for those We Love (California premiere of this American classic), Spring 2002
With guest artists Christopheren Nomura and Jennifer Lane
Valentines Noon Concert, Spring 2002: combined concert with the Chamber Chorus and the UC Men's and Women's Chorales
Dvorák Stabat Mater, (Paul Flight, visiting director) Spring 2001
Holiday Noon Concert "A Star in the East," Fall 2001
Verdi Requiem, Spring, 1999

For further information, you may contact Professor Kuzma at (510) 642-5519 or mkuzma@berkeley.edu

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Updated 7/22/2008

For information about this website please e-mail: music@berkeley.edu