CHAPEL HILL, NC — Posted Jan. 20, 2009
Two long-established community music ensembles will combine forces for a concert of choral and orchestral music in UNC’s Hill Hall on Sunday afternoon, February 22, 2009, at 3 p.m. The Chapel Hill Philharmonia, now in its 26th season, and members of the Chapel Hill Community Chorus, now in its 28th season, will perform Schubert’s “Mass in G” and an assortment of operatic arias. In addition, the CHP will present Griffes’ “Tone Poem for Flute and Orchestra” featuring Denise Bevington.
The performing groups have agreed to lend their support to another Chapel Hill community endeavor with donations gathered at the concert. Suggested donations of $10 per person collected at the door will benefit the Inter-Faith Council of Chapel Hill on Columbia Street. The Inter-Faith Council, founded in 1963, is a caring organization that assists and supports people in need through staff-volunteer partnerships, congregations, individuals, and community coalitions.
Conductors Don Oehler and Sue Klausmeyer, both members of the UNC faculty, serve as the directors of these groups and began discussing a possible collaboration last summer. The two ensembles have provided a much-needed outlet for instrumentalists and singers in Chapel Hill for many years, and the conductors thought that a joint presentation was long overdue. This concert will bring together 36 singers from CHCC’s symphonic chorus, CHCC’s 24-member vocal ensemble Cantari, and the Chapel Hill Philharmonia’s orchestra of about 80 members.
The Chapel Hill Community Chorus, originally an open-membership group, is now a robust 140-member auditioned symphonic chorus offering two concerts with orchestra each season. Ticket sales, membership dues, program ad sales, grants, and donations fund their varied programs. Cantari performs largely a cappella repertoire and gives four ticketed concerts each season. Chapel Hill Philharmonia is a community orchestra of serious amateur players from the Triangle Region who play for the love of classical music. Originally ‘The Village Orchestra,’ a recreational orchestra begun by Joel Carter and Ed Jackson, the group has grown in size and expertise, progressing from “open rehearsals for friends and family” to about 80 members offering four concerts per year.
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