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

For the 2007-08 academic school year Marika Kuzma is on leave from the University. Guest Director Aya Ueda will lead the University Chorus during this season.

Description

The University Chorus is a select ensemble of approximately ninety singers open to all musicians in the campus community: undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff, community members. Previous singing experience or musicianship training is required. Singers may receive University credit for their participation (Music 144, 2 credit hours per semester), but enrollment in the course is not mandatory.

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 rich musical experience. In any four-year cycle, singers can expect to sing repertoire in a variety of 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”). Director Marika Kuzma aims to provide the singers with vocal and ensemble training that will stay with them their whole lives. Each rehearsal involves a combination of vocal instruction, ear-training, and language/diction instruction as well as basic score-learning 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 4:15-5:50 and an additional one-hour weekly sectional for Sopranos and Altos on Mondays from 5-6 PM in Hertz Hall and for Tenors and Basses on Wednesdays from 5-6 PM in room 124 Morrison.

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Current 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

Spring 2008

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

University Chorus
Aya Ueda, guest director

Macmillan, Cantos Sagrados
Bernstein, Chichester Psalms

2006-07 Season

November 17 + 19
Mendelssohn Elijah (abbreviated version)
With soloists, narrator, and full orchestra
November 17: 8 PM Hertz Hall
November 19: 4 PM Temple Emanu-el, San Francisco

December 6
Holiday Noon Concert; 12 Noon, Hertz Hall
“Winter Songs”
Featuring songs of the season from England, France, Germany, Japan, Ukraine, and the United States

April 21, Hertz Hall, Time TBA (part of the Cal Day)
Student Songs
Excerpts from Carl Orff, Carmina Burana
piano and percussion version
with alumni soloists
This music is Carl Orff's re-imagining of medieval poetry and music performed by students in the 13th Century.
The concert will also include the UC Chamber Chorus singing excerpts from the original medieval version. The audience will learn one of the medieval songs to sing with the students in closing.

May 4 & 5
Vaughan Williams Dona nobis pacem
World premiere by local composer, TBA
with University Symphony and guest soloists

2005-06 Season (Last Year)

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

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

March 19, 5 PM, Hertz Hall
J.S. Bach, St. Matthew Passion
Collaboration with the Chamber Chorus
With period orchestra and guest soloists
Alan Bennett, Evangelist
Benjamin Park, Jesus
Other guest soloists

May 12, 8 PM, Zellerbach Hall
Cal Performances Centennial Concert
Collaboration with internationally acclaimed artists
Excerpts from Boito Mefistofele and Wagner Meistersinger
With orchestra conducted by Robert Cole

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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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Sample of Recent Performances

Handel Messiah Spring 2004
Brahms 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@socrates.berkeley.edu

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Updated 1/9/2008

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