by Daniel Hathaway
Fans of Quire Cleveland’s annual Carols for Quire performances know that the ensemble’s singers are adept at wrapping their tongues around any number of languages in the same program. But as co-founder and artistic director Ross W. Duffin notes, the forthcoming performances may well set a new record. In three performances next weekend, his nineteen professional vocalists will treat their audiences to carols in Finnish, Abenaki, Afro-Portuguese, Mohawk, and Wendat, as well as in English, Latin, and Spanish.
“I’m always challenging the singers, but I think they were looking askance at me this time just because of all the special requirements,” Duffin said in a telephone conversation from his office at the music department of Case Western Reserve University.
One of those special requirements centers around the longest work on this year’s program, an Ensalada or musical salad by the 16th century composer Bartolomé Carceres. [Read more…]
When you’ve presented a Christmas program every December for seven years, it could become a routine event — your institutional Nutcracker. Happily, Quire Cleveland has taken its “Carols for Quire” program in new directions and infused it with new twists every year. The 21-voice professional ensemble’s concert on Sunday afternoon in the chaste, Gothic space of St. Peter’s Church in downtown Cleveland just might have been its best edition yet.