Two unique masters of choral and organ music will be featured during the Empire City Men’s Chorus Spring 2009 Concert. The concert will be held this year at St. Bartholomew’s Church, on Friday, June 5, 2009, at 8:00 pm.
The 200th anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn’s birth is being celebrated this spring season by the Empire City Men’s Chorus. Mendelssohn’s work includes symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano and chamber music. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and anti-Semitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality is now being recognized and re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic Era.
Especially of interest to the New York community is the music of the late Calvin Hampton whose choral and organ compositions are often hailed as some of the most important musical contributions of the 20th century. This year marks the 25th anniversary of his death. His “Fridays at Midnight” organ recital series, running from 1974 to 1983, was one of the most famous and popular organ recital series in American history.
The Empire City Men’s Chorus will be joined by guest organist William Trafka, organist and choir master of St. Bartholomew’s. In one of the great music venues in New York City, St. Bartholomew’s Aeolian-Skinner organ is the largest pipe organ in New York City, with 11 divisions, 168 stops, 225 ranks and 12,422 pipes. Considered the last of the great “American classic” organs by the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, it contains pipes from the original organ in the Madison Avenue building, and some as recent as the early 1970s. It is played from a five-manual console in the chancel, controlling pipes in the chancel galleries, the dome (110 feet above the nave floor) and the west end.