2023-2024 Season “Simply the Best”
Prentice Concert Chorale, now in its 51st Season, has served the greater Tuscaloosa and West Alabama communities with a wide variety of choral music experiences. The Chorale’s recent concert programming includes: Let It Be.—A Beatles Tribute; G.F. Handel’s masterworks, Messiah and Judas Maccabaeus; and, in collaboration with the University of Alabama’s choirs and chamber orchestra, the 2019 Southeastern USA premiere of The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Jocelyn Hagen, composer. In spring of 2023 we premiered “Requiem of Hope”, commissioned in honor of Prentice Concert Chorale’s 50th anniversary season.
Named in memory and honor of the Frederick Prentice family, Prentice Concert Chorale is comprised of professional and amateur singers bound by one common theme: the joy of singing.
George Frideric Handel, Messiah
G.F. Handel’s Messiah is not only the most widely performed of Handel’s works but is arguably, “simply the best” in the entire oratorio genre. According to legend, upon reading the scriptures from the Old and New Testaments compiled by literary scholar Charles Jennens, Handel was overcome by their power and composed the complete work in a mere 24 days, often feeling close to seeing the face of God in the music. In symphonic celebration, Messiah recounts the life of Jesus from birth to crucifixion and finally resurrection, interweaving vocal and orchestral performance to create an uplifting, spiritual experience.
Prentice Concert Chorale’s December 17, 2023 concert includes all of Part One with selections, including “Hallelujah” and “Worthy Is the Lamb” from Parts Two and Three.
Performance:
Sunday, December 17, 2023 at 3:00 PM
Location: TBA
Tickets: A $20 donation per adult and $5 per student is requested. Seating is not reserved.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, “Requiem in d minor”
Even though Mozart’s “Requiem” had to be completed by his contemporaries, the circumstances of the composition, combined with Mozart’s genius, make it no ordinary piece of music. The “Requiem in D minor” was his final work.
Mozart set this liturgical text to music for a patron who had lost his young wife to illness earlier that year. But after his own death, his widow, Constanze, claimed that throughout Mozart’s last painful days he believed he was writing the Requiem for his own funeral. And he was. Mozart willed his last creation into life with his final breaths.
In the words of Thornton Wilder: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love.” From the long-distant past Mozart built a musical bridge, inspired by love. His most religious work is actually his most human. His Requiem reminds us, as great art can, that both before and after death, we forever belong to each other.
This concert is presented in collaboration with First Presbyterian Church, Tuscaloosa’s adult choir; Marjorie Johnston, Music Director.
Performance:
Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 3:00 pm
Location: First Presbyterian Church, 900 Greensboro Avenue, Tuscaloosa, AL 35401
Tickets: A $20 donation per adult and $5 per student is requested. Seating is not reserved.
Simply the Best…of Stage, Studio, and Broadway
What do you consider the very best of Popular music? Is it Patsy Cline’s “I Go Walkin’ After Midnight,” or Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody?” Of Broadway? Maybe it’s the title number from Oklahoma or “Do You Hear the People Sing,” Les Miserable? Of the recording studio? “The Lion Sleeps Tonight?” “Bridge Over Troubled Water?” “Luck Be a Lady Tonight?” “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” “What’d I Say?”
Watch for updates for what will be a worthy sequel to Prentice Chorale’s sold-out January, 2023, “Let It Be” Beatles’ Concerts.
Performances:
Date and Time: TBA
Location: Grace Presbyterian Church, 113 Hargrove Road, Tuscaloosa, AL 35401