Come to Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, MA
Sunday, March 8 at 3:00 p.m.
to be inspired by great music performed by two acclaimed choral ensembles.
March will be abloom this year with beautiful music, as Zamir performs its spring concert two months earlier than usual. This year we have partnered with the Newton Choral Society to produce a program of musical masterworks, featuring a combined force of 120 voices.

There are four wonderful works on this concertincluding Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein; choral cycle Mo’adim (Festivals) by Mordecai Seter, and more.
Tickets can be ordered through the Zamir websitewww.zamir.org
or by calling 617-244-6333.

There are four wonderful works on this concert. Leonard Bernstein composed his Chichester Psalms in 1965. Dean Hussey, who commissioned the work, wrote “I think many of us would be very delighted if there was a hint of ‘West Side Story’ about the music.” He was not disappointed. In fact Bernstein included in the Psalms a chorus that was originally intended for West Side Story. Today Chichester Psalms is one of the most frequently performed twentieth-century choral works.

Mordecai Seter served for many years as professor of composition at the Rubin Academy of Tel Aviv University. His choral cycle Mo’adim (Festivals) was composed in 1946 and dedicated to the Tel Aviv Chamber Choir. Each of the movements is based on a melody traditionally sung by Babylonian Jews. Seter’s style as revealed in this work will remind our listeners of other neo-primitive works, such Orff’s Carmina Burana

Randall Thompson composed his Peaceable Kingdom in 1936, inspired by the words of the prophet Isaiah and a painting by the American artist Edwards Hicks. In a series of magnificent double choruses, Thompson interprets the words of the Hebrew prophet from warnings to destruction to promises of ultimate redemption.

An accomplished young composer, conductor and lecturer, Eric Whitacre has quickly become one of the most popular and most widely performed composers of his generation. In the spring of 1996 the Israeli soprano Hila Plitmann (now Whitacre’s wife) gave her boyfriend five short poems in Hebrew to be set to music. The result was Five Hebrew Love Songs, a luscious romantic musical ode.