DAVE
BRUBECK MEMORIAL TRIBUTE!
BUY TICKETS BELOW!
Join us this July for the thirteenth annual Saratoga Choral Festival. Singers will meet for rehearsals over a three-week period in Saratoga Springs beginning Tuesday, July 9th, and will
perform in a concert open to the public at the
SPA LITTLE THEATER on Sunday, July 28th, at
3:00 p.m. This summer's concert will feature the choral music of Dave Brubeck, including the popular Pange Lingua Variations, and the unpublished Canticles
of Mary.
Dave Brubeck passed away on December
5, 2012, one day before his 92nd birthday. A jazz pianist noted for his improvisational skills, Dave Brubeck
was also a composer of many fully notated compositions. These include choral pieces, hymns, orchestral works, chamber music,
ballet suites, a string quartet, solo pieces for piano, violin and voice, and large-scale works for chorus and orchestra.
Among other achievements, he is known for the legendary song “Take Five” and the album “Time Out”
which was the first jazz album to sell over a million copies. Aside from his groundbreaking musical compositions and recordings,
he played a major role in breaking racial barriers in the mid 20th-century. Throughout his long career as both a performing artist and composer,
Brubeck received many honors in America and abroad. President Clinton awarded him with the Presidential Medal of the Arts
and a similar arts medal was presented to him by Austria. He has a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for his jazz contribution,
and in 2007 the London Symphony Orchestra with a lifetime achievement award honored him. In 2003 he was elected into the American
Classical Music Hall of Fame. He has been designated a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress and a "Jazz
Master" by the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2009.
Special
guests for the 2013 Festival will be jazz pianist and Brubeck protegee Eldar Djangirov and his jazz trio. Praised as
“a genius beyond most young people I've heard” by Brubeck, Djangriov’s talents have garnered him a nomination for a Grammy in 2008 for his album "Re-imagination"
as well as featured appearances in venues ranging from the Hollywood Bowl to Carnegie Hall and has played at the most notable
jazz festivals across the world. Born in the former Soviet Union in 1987, Eldar came to the U.S. from when he was ten, and
has captured accolades from jazz audiences ever since. Downbeat magazine stated,
"His command of his instrument is beyond staggering."
The Saratoga Choral Festival began in the summer
of 2001. Previous seasons have featured the requiems by Fauré, Duruflé, and Mozart (repeated in October 2001
as a benefit for the Red Cross and victims of 9/11), Bach’s Magnificat (featuring members of the Philadelphia
Orchestra), Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, Handel’s Dixit Dominus, Rutter
Gloria, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, a premiere of a new edition of Gretchaninov’s Liturgia Domestica,
the Bloch Sacred Service with Cantor Robert Abelson in 2011 and the music of Karl Jenkins in 2012. In August of
2004, the chorus finally realized its dream of performing with the Philadelphia orchestra in a critically acclaimed performance
of the Mahler 3rd Symphony with the Harlem Boys Choir under the direction of Charles Dutoit at SPAC. This is the
eighth season of performances at the Little Theater located in the heart of SPA State Park. The Festival joins the list of
illustrious performances presented there during the summer such as Opera Saratoga and the Saratoga Chamber Music Festival.
