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A Near Capacity Crowd Attends "Only Mozart"

April 8, 2017 - Flat Rock, NC
 

The Carolina Concert Choir’s Spring Concert, “Only Mozart” on April 8, 2017 was an enormous success. A near capacity crowd came together at the Thomas Auditorium at Blue Ridge Community College to enjoy Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus” and "Requiem Mass in D Minor" performed by the 53 person premiere choral ensemble of Western North Carolina, the Carolina Concert Choir, accompanied by a twenty-piece chamber orchestra.

Artistic Director and Conductor, Lawrence Doebler, was welcomed to the stage and gave a “Guided Tour of the Requiem” informing the audience about Mozart, the English meaning of the Latin text, and lent insight into each of the twelve sections. Doebler stated, “My philosophy in performing and preparing choral music is that the text and its meaning must be primary.” He educated the audience with choral and orchestral excerpts and touched on the many structural varieties within this well-known and cherished masterpiece. The audience was encouraged to think of people in their own lives who have passed away and to listen to the Requiem in joyful remembrance.  Doebler shared his own personal experience of performing “Requiem” in New York City with a 200+ person choir one year after the World Trade Center attacks. 

Ted McIrvine with Classical Voice of North Carolina provided a glowing and colorful choral music review: “The choir never sounded stretched, even at the top and bottom of their range. Their tone was focused and their emotions were intelligently rendered. There are just enough young student voices in the choir to keep the sound from being too “mature” and these singers, young and old, are fine musicians and had been well prepared. Attacks were consistently clean, dynamics well delivered and there simply aren’t enough good things to say about this performance by the choir. Carolina Concert Choir. “only Mozart.” An exciting and insightful program. Memorable.”

These talented and experienced choral singers, selected through auditions, rehearse and perform in Hendersonville, but travel from Asheville, Brevard, Cullowhee, Hendersonville, Saluda, Tryon, and upstate South Carolina. The choir began in 1979 as a small madrigal choir, expanded to thirty-five singers from 2002-2013, and stepped up its size of over fifty singers under current director, Lawrence Doebler. Maestro Doebler was previously Director of Choral Activities at Ithaca College for thirty-five years and retired to Hendersonville in 2013.

 

Professor Doebler has been invited to conduct Mozart’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall in New York City on May 26, 2018, with the New England Symphonic Ensemble and 125 auditioned singers including world-class soloists, members of the Carolina Concert Choir, and invited friends.

 

Carolina Concert Choir will be performing their Winter Concert, "Bach 'n Pops - Magnificat & Seasonal Treats" on December 1 and 2, and their Spring Concert, "Carmina Burana" in April 2018 at the Thomas Auditiorium, Blue Ridge Community College.

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