The program features two favorite works by major composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Johannes Brahms.  REGISTER HERE for free event.

To begin, a smaller group of ten singers from the UMD Chamber Singers will perform the chorale motet by Bach, Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 225, with an accompanying ensemble of strings and organ. This large scale motet is symmetrically structured in eleven movements with the central sixth movement fugue acting as the pillar for the entire work. Jesu, meine Freude contains some of Bach’s most musically expressive and rhetorically demonstrative vocal writing.

After the Bach, the entire ensemble will perform the cheerful and charming Ziguenerlieder, Op. 103, by Brahms. Although composed late in his life, this group of eleven separate songs contains music that is youthfully exuberant and energetic, as well as poignant and expressive, as it depicts love and loss through the language of Hungarian harmonies and dance rhythms. The pianist for this performance is Rhys Burgess.