John Corrie conducts the Bates College Choir.

Conducted by Lecturer in Music John Corrie, the Bates College Choir performs the second and third sections of Handel’s beloved oratorio Messiah at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 16-17, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The concerts are open to the public at no cost, but because of limited seating, tickets are required. For tickets and more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Written in just 24 days in 1741 and considered Georg Friedrich Handel’s masterpiece, Messiah draws from the Old and New Testaments to lay out the Christ story and its significance to humankind.

The oratorio’s debut, in Dublin in April 1742, “seems to have been one of those rare times in history when a transcendently great work is immediately perceived at its full value,” writes music historian Jan Swafford.

“There are so many breathtaking moments for both the vocal soloists and the chorus,” says choir director Corrie, a Lewiston resident who is also artistic director of the Maine Music Society. “So many familiar melodies and joyous sounds.”

While the piece is commonly associated with Christmas, its themes pertain to both Christmas and Easter. Because the entire work lasts about three hours, the choir performed the first part of the oratorio last December.

“Messiah is one of those milestones that every choral singer should know,” Corrie says. It’s important for singers to learn the entire piece, so by dividing it between two programs he enables them “to learn all of it, but spread out the effort over two semesters of work.”

John Corrie directs the Bates College Choir.

The Bates College Choir, directed by John Corrie, presents Part One of Handel’s popular oratorio Messiah in performances at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 2-3, in Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Concert admission is free, but tickets are required. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Written in just 24 days in 1741 and considered Georg Frideric Handel’s masterpiece, Messiah draws from the Old and New Testaments to lay out the Christ story and its significance to humankind. The oratorio’s debut, in Dublin in April 1742, “seems to have been one of those rare times in history when a transcendently great work is immediately perceived at its full value,” writes music historian Jan Swafford.

“There are so many breathtaking moments for both the vocal soloists and the chorus,” choir director Corrie said in 2007. “So many familiar melodies and joyous sounds.”

While the piece is commonly associated with Christmas, its themes pertain to both Christmas and Easter. Because the entire work lasts about three hours, the choir will perform the second and third of its three parts next spring.

“Messiah is one of those milestones that every choral singer should know,” Corrie said. It’s important for singers to learn the entire piece, so by dividing it between two programs he enables them “to learn all of it, but spread out the effort over two semesters of work.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem and other works will be performed by the Bates College Choir, directed by John Corrie, at 8 p.m. Friday, April 2, and Saturday, April 3, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall at Bates College, 75 Russell St.

Admission is free, but tickets are required. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Mozart was working his Requiem on his deathbed in 1791, leaving it for protégés to complete. A masterpiece of the choral repertoire, the work is “an unlikely but unforgettable alloy of ecclesiastical grandeur, Baroque fugue and the subtlest mood painting,” wrote a Portland Phoenix reviewer in 2001.

“Known for operatic music that can convey scene or character with a handful of notes, Mozart used that skill here to portray a believer facing death: feeling dread at the end of this life, anxiety at the prospect of judgment, abject yearning for forgiveness.”

The choir will be accompanied by an orchestra consisting of students and community members.

The event is sponsored by the Multifaith Chaplaincy, and admission is free. For more information, please call 207-786-8272.

Featuring the talents of many members of the college community, the event includes musical offerings from the Bates College Choir, the Bates Gospel Choir and five student a cappella groups: the Crosstones, the Deansmen, the Manic Optimists, the Merimanders and TakeNote (the latter being a new ensemble). Also performing will be keyboardist John Corrie, Bates lecturer in music and choir director.

Jason Tsichlis, a composer and Bates College senior, premieres his Mass in D-flat Major on May 21. The concert is open to the public at no cost.

A setting for sacred texts from the Liber Usualis, a collection of commonly used Gregorian chants, the mass is written for an unaccompanied mixed choir. Tsichlis will conduct the performance, making the event a double debut for this student from Winchester, Mass.

An art and visual culture major, Tsichlis composed the four-movement mass as an independent study, working with John Corrie, director of the Bates College Choir and artistic director of the Maine Music Society. “I naturally chose to write a mass because of the form’s important role in the history of Western choral music,” Tsichlis says.

Stylistically, the piece reflects specific composers more than any broad genre such as Romanticism. “I draw on composers such as the Renaissance masters Palestrina and Lasso, and then Mozart, Schubert, Liszt, Chopin, Debussy and Biebl,” he says. “Two specific pieces I found quite influential are Mozart’s Requiem in D minor and Schubert’s Mass in G major.”

The 18 singers will include members of the college choir and of three Bates a cappella groups, the Merimanders, the Deansmen and the Manic Optimists.

• Thursday, May 21, at 8:30 p.m.
• Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. FMI: 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu

Directed by John Corrie, the Bates College Choir performs Benjamin Britten’s popular Ceremony of Carols in concerts at 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 15 and 16, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission is free, but tickets are required. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Corrie is the artistic director of the Maine Music Society and a member of the college music faculty. He has directed the Bates choir since 1986.

The choir’s program also includes Vivaldi’s Gloria and Das Cartas, a piece by Hiroya Miura of the Bates music faculty.

An English composer and conductor, Britten wrote his paean to the Christmas season in March 1942, during a five-week voyage across the North Atlantic as he returned to England from America. He originally created the work as a series of unrelated songs and later organized it into the present 11-movement piece.

Set to a sparing musical fabric of harp and voices, the Middle English texts come from The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems and are, for the most part, of 15th- and 16th-century origin.

The work was first sung by the Morriston Boys’ Choir, conducted by Britten, in London in December 1943.

The Bates College Choir, accompanied by a 21-piece orchestra and directed by John Corrie, presents Part One of Handel’s popular oratorio Messiah in performances at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, in Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The ensemble will perform the popular “Hallelujah” chorus from Part Two as an encore. Concert admission is free, but tickets are required. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Written in just 24 days in 1741 and considered Georg Friedrich Handel’s masterpiece, Messiah draws from the Old and New Testaments to lay out the Christ story and its significance to humankind. The oratorio’s debut, in Dublin in April 1742, “seems to have been one of those rare times in history when a transcendently great work is immediately perceived at its full value,” writes music historian Jan Swafford.

“There are so many breathtaking moments for both the vocal soloists and the chorus,” says choir director Corrie, a Lewiston resident who is also artistic director of the Maine Music Society. “So many familiar melodies and joyous sounds.”

While the piece is commonly associated with Christmas, its themes pertain to both Christmas and Easter. Because the entire work lasts about three hours, the choir will perform the second and third of its three parts next spring.

“Messiah is one of those milestones that every choral singer should know,” Corrie says. It’s important for singers to learn the entire piece, so by dividing it between two programs he enables them “to learn all of it, but spread out the effort over two semesters of work.”

The choir will consist of some 60 voices, with 11 student soloists featured. The instrumentalists will be drawn from the Bates College Orchestra, the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra and the Maine Chamber Ensemble. Among the musicians is Scott Vaillancourt, music director and organist at Lewiston’s Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.

“We will be performing Handel’s orchestration,” Corrie notes. “Which means strings, oboes, bassoons, trumpets and timpani, plus organ and harpsichord.” While Mozart and others later expanded the orchestration, he says, “I think it is more important historically for the students to hear what Handel had in mind.”

In order to accompany the vocal soloists and in keeping with the practice of Handel’s time, Corrie will conduct the ensemble from the harpsichord.

The vocal soloists are: seniors Maura Beatty of Watertown, Mass.; Dana Burgard of Kinnelon, N.J.; Alexandra Conroy of Windham; Marshall Karpel of Northampton, Mass.; Joshua Olsen of Berkeley, Calif.; and Lucia Piacenza of Watertown, Conn.; juniors Stuart Ryan of London and Lisa McLellan of Glen Mills, Pa.; sophomores Tom Chapman of Gales Ferry, Conn., and Erica Rogoff of Carlisle, Mass.; and first-year student Blaise Thompson of Iowa City, Iowa.

In March, two Bates musical ensembles joined two community ensembles in a first-of-its-kind performance of Johannes Brahms’ masterful A German Requiem.

At 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 11, the stations of MPBN Radio will broadcast the concert on the MaineStage  program.

The landmark musical event on March 31 featured some 260 musicians performing at Lewiston’s Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The concert was the first collaboration between the Maine Music Society and the college, both notable presences in Maine music. The link is John Corrie, of Lewiston, who has directed the Bates College Choir since 1986 and became artistic director of the music society last year.

In addition to the college choir, performing were the Bates College Orchestra, the music society’s Androscoggin Chorale and Maine Chamber Ensemble, soprano Bonnie Scarpelli and baritone Peter Allen ’66. Hiroya Miura, of the Bates faculty, conducted the Requiem, and Corrie led the combined choirs, along with choral groups from local high schools, in two Brahms motets.

In a landmark musical event, Bates College and the Maine Music Society will muster some 260 musicians for an evening of music by Johannes Brahms, including his exquisite Deutsches Requiem, at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 31, in the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, 27 Bartlett St.

The concert is the first collaboration between the Maine Music Society and the college, both notable presences in Maine music. The link is John Corrie, of Lewiston, who has directed the Bates College Choir since 1986 and became artistic director of the music society last spring.

In addition, this is the first time in recent memory that Brahms’ Requiem has been sung in the Lewiston-Auburn region with full orchestra and in the original German. (The printed program will include a full translation.)

Choral groups from the high schools of Lewiston and Auburn will also perform. Maine Gov. John Baldacci and Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen are scheduled to make opening remarks at the event.

For the general public, tickets cost $17.50 at the door and $15 in advance, available through the L/A Arts box office at 207-782-7228. Admission is free to students with valid ID, but tickets are required and reservations are strongly recommended. To reserve student tickets or for general information about this event, please call Bates College at 207-786-6135.

To open the program, Corrie will lead four choirs in two motets by Brahms, Schaffe in mir Gott (Op. 29, No. 2) and Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Muhseligen? (Op. 74, No. 1). The choirs are the Bates College Choir, the Edward Little High School Chamber Choir, the Lewiston High School Concert Choir and the Androscoggin Chorale, one of the music society’s two performing ensembles.

The remainder of the program is Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem (Op. 45), sung by the Bates and Androscoggin choirs and soloists Bonnie Scarpelli, soprano, and Peter Allen, baritone, both well-known to Maine audiences. (Allen is a member of the Bates class of 1966.)

They will be accompanied by a 60-piece orchestra composed of the Bates College Orchestra and the Maine Chamber Ensemble, the other performing arm of the music society. Hiroya Miura, of the Bates faculty, will conduct.

First performed in its seven-movement entirety in 1869, Brahms’ requiem is a consistently popular entry in his catalog. In its sophistication and complexity, the music marked a turning point in 19th-century composition.

“It’s a massive piece, and it needs this many players in the orchestra and singers in the choirs,” Corrie explains. It’s also highly challenging, he notes, but very gratifying, especially for the singers — as he knows first hand. In addition to directing the choirs and coordinating all the performing organizations for the concert, Corrie is singing with the tenors in the work.

“It’s just a glorious piece with such spectacular melodies,” he says.

Miura, who in 2005 first suggested that the Bates ensembles join forces for the piece, says that the work speaks to him in both personal and musical terms. From the purely musical standpoint, Miura — a composer himself — is intrigued by the overtones of Beethoven in this early Brahms work, as well as by the composer’s use of dark string colors contrasted against bright timbres from harp, winds and soprano voices.

“What’s also fascinating is that he took more than 10 years to write this piece — and despite that, it sounds so coherent,” Miura says.

In a more personal sense, the conductor is drawn by the work’s moral themes. The texts, which Brahms chose from the Old and New Testaments in the Lutheran Bible, deal with loss, consolation and a transcendent hopefulness for humanity. Miura says that for him, the performance will honor the memories of three musician friends, now deceased, whom he knew from Montreal, where he worked as a church organist for several years.

The Maine Music Society was founded in 1991 to support the artistic and educational activities of the Androscoggin Chorale, formed in Lewiston in 1972 as a community chorus, and the Maine Chamber Ensemble, founded in the late 1980s to support the chorale.

The society has attained a solid reputation for artistic excellence. Notable achievements include a 1994 performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which drew nearly 2,000 concertgoers to Lewiston and Brunswick; a 1992 production of Amahl and the Night Visitors, a professionally staged, full-scale opera; and the consistently popular annual Christmas at St. Peter’s concerts. For more than a decade, the society has presented the annual a cappella showcase called Battle of the Blends, attracting top ensembles from all over New England.

Scarpelli, of Portland, has been described by a Boston Globe critic as a “versatile and gifted singer” and “a singer of exceptional beauty of tone and security of technique.” Well-known to Maine audiences, she has sung major operatic roles, solo works with orchestra, works with chorus and orchestra, and in chamber works ranging from early to contemporary music.

Scarpelli sang the Brahms requiem previously with the Portland Symphony Orchestra. She has sung with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, Portland Opera Repertory Theater, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, Choral Art Society, Maine Music Society and numerous community and collegiate choirs.

She was guest soloist with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra for Richard Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder, and has frequently performed with the Surry Opera Company in Maine, France and Russia.

Allen, of Gorham, has sung in recital, operatic, musical theater and symphonic settings. He previously worked with the Maine Music Society in such music as Bizet’s L’Enfance du Christ, Handel’s Belshazzar and Messiah, Gounod’s Mors et Vita and the requiems of Faure and Durufle.

With the Portland Opera Repertory Theatre, Allen has sung solo roles in Bizet’s Carmen and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. He has been a guest soloist with the Choral Art Society, Portland Symphony Orchestra, Saengerfest and Masterworks Chorale of Lexington, Mass., the Oratorio Chorale and the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra. He is a recipient of the Lillian Nordica Award and was a member of the Cornish Trio, a Renaissance a cappella group, and the Bel Canto Quartet.