Joining Hearts, Joining Voices:
A Choral Celebration
GONDWANA CHORALE: THE NATIONAL YOUTH CHOIR OF AUSTRALIA
NEW YORK CITY CHILDREN'S CHORUS
THE WESTMINSTER CHOIR
Monday, February 3, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
921 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021
Program
I. NEW YORK CITY CHILDREN’S CHORUS
Music to be selected from the following
Bonse Aba Traditional Zambian arr. Victor Johnson
Humbly I Adore Thee K. Scott Warren
Excerpts from Oratorio de Noel, Op. 12: Camille Saint-Saens
Recitative: Et Pastores erant - Gloria in altissimis Deo
Quare fremuerunt gentes
Tollite hostias
If Ye Love Me
Cantique de Jean Racine
Ave Verum Corpus
How Can I Keep from Singing?
Thomas Tallis
Gabriel Faure
W.A. Mozart
American Hymn arr. Robert Lowry
Non Nobis, Domine Rosephayne Powell
Steal Away Traditional Spiritual arr. Michael Tippett
The Word was God Rosephayne Powell
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Daniel Elder
Skylark arr. John Rutter
Blackbird Lennon & McCartney arr. Mark Brymer
Blue Moon
Richard Rodgers arr. Roger Emerson
II. GONDWANA CHORALE
Music to be selected from the following
Red (from Spectrum)
Café on the Terrace
Sally Whitwell
Carl Crossin
Church at Auvers Luke Byrne
Chatterbox Naomi Crellin
Butterflies Dance Matthew Orlovich
The Phoenix (from Written in the Stars) Sally Whitwell
Bound for South Australia
Trad. arr. Carl Crossin
Snow Dance for the Dead Sean Doherty
Resonance
Sally Greenaway
Smoking Can Kill Jaakko Mäntyjärvi
III. WESTMINSTER CHOIR
Music to be selected from the following
Funeral Ikos
Democracy
O nata lux
John Tavener
Robert Maggio
Christian Gray Johnson, graduate assistant conductor
Morten Lauridsen
Her beacon-hand beckons, from To the Hands
Maxwell Brey, graduate assistant conductor
IV. COMBINED CHOIRS
We Walk in Love
Love Is Love Is Love Is Love
Rise
Caroline Shaw
Deanna Witkowski and Lemuel Colon
Abbie Betinis
Arianne Abela
About the Artists
GONDWANA CHORALE – AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL YOUTH CHOIR
Australia’s national youth choir, Gondwana Chorale, was established in 2008. Its members come from throughout Australia and range in age from 17 – 26. They perform music that is close to their hearts: new Australian works which capture the mystery and grandeur of our land and display the cultural diversity of the Australian people. The work of the choir is a powerful expression of the determination of young Australians to work together to create extraordinary musical ensembles.
The sound of Gondwana Chorale is vibrant and energetic, indicative of their intensive rehearsal process and the joy of being together. The choir has performed nationally in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Tasmania. International tours have included New Zealand (2011 & 2023) and UK and France (2013). In 2015 the choir formed the Gondwana Centenary Chorale with young singers from Turkey, France and New Zealand to commemorate the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign, giving the world premiere of James Ledger’s War Music with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
In 2017 Gondwana Chorale toured the USA for the first time, collaborating and performing with host choirs USC Chamber Singers, Redlands Chapel Singers, Stanford Chamber Chorale, Temple University Concert Choir and Boston City Singers. In 2019, the choir toured to England, presenting a recital in the Chapel of Trinity College Cambridge and to the Baltic States, collaborating with E Stuudio in Estonia, Koris Maska in Riga and Choras Ažuoliukas in Vilnius. In 2022, the choir appeared at Festival of Voices in Hobart to present a program of Australian works.
SOPRANO
Amy Andresson
Ashlin Cork
Ali Hardy
Alexia Leake
Leila Norman
Kezia Schuitemaker
Gemma Bailey
Anna Bridge
Amira Hibberd
Stephanie Johnston
Sophia Lauber
Katy Lovegrove
Mia Mead
ALTO
Lucy Cantrill
Eleanor Edwards
Sophia Gyger
Gracie Middleton
Hope Sawers
Maxience Williams
Nicola Allen
Jo Craddy
Gemma Golding
Eleanor Labi
Evangeline Masel
Gabrielle Utian
Jedda Thorley
TENOR
Sebastian Allen
James Brew
Lindsay Cooper
Ben Sweeney
Sam Borgert
Ezekiel Weedon
Josh White
BASS
Willow Barrett
Xavier Browne
Jonathan Bruhl
Gabriel Fenwick-Kearns
Ezra Hersch
Felix Hruby
Davis Dingle
Jonathon Kelley
Caleb McKay
Seb Tan
NEW YORK CITY CHILDREN'S CHORUS
The New York City Children’s Chorus is a graded choral program for 200 children in the metropolitan NYC area who receive training in the art of singing in a rigorous and rewarding choral environment. Founded in 2012 by Mary Huff, the New York City Children’s Chorus (NYCCC) enables choristers, through hard work and dedication, to develop a passionate commitment to excellence through the choral art, to learn discipline and self-confidence, and to give back to their community through the gift of music. Highlights of the 2024-25 season include Vaughan Williams’ Hodie with the Saint Andrew Music Chorale and Orchestra, performances at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. John the Divine, and collaborations with Westminster Choir College and the Gondwana Choir from Sydney, Australia.
In 2021, the NYCCC won The American Prize’s Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music for their recording of Randall Thompson’s “The Place of the Blest,” the first recording of the chamber orchestra version of this masterwork for treble voices. In addition to winning this top award, their album, Christmas in New York, won 3rd place for the American Prize in Choral Performance. The 2023-24 season included performances of Tippett’s A Child of Our Time with the Saint Andrew Chorale and Orchestra and a world premiere of composer David Briggs’ transcription of Vaughan Williams’ Hodie for organ and chamber ensemble. The season concluded with a concert tour of Paris and Normandy in June and July 2024, including a July 4th performance at La Madeleine in Paris celebrating the friendship between the US and France.
In 2015, NYCCC choristers made their European concert debut while on tour to Austria and Germany at the Votivkirke in Vienna, Melk Abbey, and Salzburg Cathedral. The NYCCC made its Broadway debut in The Man Who Came to Dinner with Nathan Lane at Roundabout Theatre. The advanced performing ensembles have graced the stages of New York’s most prestigious venues including Carnegie, Hall, Radio City Music Hall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and Town Hall.
In previous seasons, the NYCCC has performed Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Duruflé’s Requiem, Benjamin Britten’s Saint Nicolas, Fauré’s Requiem, Vaughan Williams’ Sancta Civitas, and they have shared the stage with the American Classical Orchestra, the Monica Barnes Dance Company, and toured France, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Boston, Washington, D.C., Toronto, Philadelphia and Nashville. Television appearances include Saturday Night Live, Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Apple TV’s City on Fire, NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC Sports, and FOX. The Choir’s first album, Simple Gifts, a collection of American and British Art songs from the 20th Century, was released by MSR Classics in the fall of 2015. Fanfare Magazine wrote, “The recording is outstanding … the achievement is, even more importantly, artistic. This is a heart-warming program of charming but substantial material.” Please visit www.nycchildrenschorus.org for more information.
Lavanya Bist
Julia Bregman
Billie Brown
Emily Butkow
Keyla Camilo
Clelia Caputo
Colin Caputo
Victoria Cerda
Chelsea Chang
Charlie Davis
Julia Demopoulos
Clarisa Dominguez
Sophia Dornfeld
Isabel Emrich
Fiona Exley
Terence Flanagan
Miguel Florez
Surya Fraser
Grace Geren
Aitan Greene-Houvras
Ameilia Hacker
Samuel Hacker
Asher Hassan
Parker Havlan
Christian Henderson
Maïa Huré
Vaughn Ibrahim
Mira Iyer
Carly Kade
Paul Kopman
Charal Krishnan
Grace Krueger
Wyatt Krueger
Rachel Leibow
Lucia Lovallo
Dashiell Messinger
Caroline Mignone
Laura Morgan
Tumi Olojugba
Sofia Pai
Rafael Pamoukian
Sinae Park
Caroline Piccolo
Sofia Pogacnik
Esteban Ramos
Joshua Randall
Shreya Ranjan
Penelope Richards
Sienna Riopel
Nishtha Roy
Esperanza
Santelices-Godwin
George Sarosi
Lila Seltzer
Radha Shenoy
Coco Soh
Lucas Soh
Maddie Soh
Auden Sorensen
Sylvia Stoyanov
Valli Subramanian
Elisa
Strauchen-Scherer
Raana Thacker
Charlotte Toole
Lara Veedon
Benjamin Webster
Evie Winckler
THE WESTMINSTER CHOIR
“The Gold standard...”- American Record Guide
Setting the standard for choral excellence since 1920, the Westminster Choir is composed of students at Westminster Choir College of Rider University.
The ensemble's 2024-2025 season includes performances with the International Contemporary Ensemble strings in works of David Lang and Caroline Shaw; with the Gondwana Chorale and the New York City Children's Chorus in New York; of Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil with the Bach Choir of Bethlehem in Philadelphia and Bethlehem, PA; and of Brahms' Schicksalslied with the Princeton Symphony.
Recent seasons included concert performances in Washington, DC, New York, and Connecticut, including the premiere of the James Whitbourn Requiem at Carnegie Hall; a concert tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania including a performance at the Dayton Westminster Presbyterian Church, birthplace of the choir; performances of the Mozart Requiem with the Pittsburgh Symphony; the release of the album A Serenity of Soul on the GIA Choral Works label; and Christmas at Westminster: An Evening of Readings and Carols, seen by public television audiences nationwide in 2023 and 2024. Other recent seasons have included concert tours in Beijing, China and Spain, as well as participation in the World Symposium on Choral Music in Barcelona.
Praised by The New York Times for its “full-bodied, incisive singing,” the Westminster Choir forms the core of the Westminster Symphonic Choir, which has performed and recorded with nearly all of the leading conductors of our time, including Masur, Muti, Walter, Toscanni, Bernstein, Abbado, Mehta, Sawallisch, Shaw, Nézet-Séguin, and the orchestras of Philadelphia, New York, Vienna, Leipzig, Berlin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Cleveland.
The Westminster Choir has performed and recorded choral masterworks for more than a century, led by an illustrious list of conductors, most recently Joseph Flummerfelt, Joe Miller, and James Jordan. Of its recording of the Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir, American Record Guide wrote, “This is gorgeous singing…with perfect blend, intonation, diction, ensemble and musicality.” Noël, a collection of French Christmas music and sacred works, featuring Westminster alumna Jennifer Larmore, mezzo-soprano, and organist Ken Cowan, was the centerpiece of the PRI Radio broadcast Noël – A Christmas from Paris, hosted by Bill McGlaughlin. The choir’s recording Flower of Beauty received four stars from Choir & Organ magazine and earned critical praise from American Record Guide, which described the Westminster Choir as “the gold standard for academic choirs in America."
Donald Nally, conductor
Christian Gray Johnson and Maxwell Brey, graduate assistant conductors
Eric Plutz, collaborative keyboardist
Nidhi Advani, Columbus, NJ
Nathan Anderson, Dickson, TN
Emilie Beals, Carlisle, PA
Mackenzie Berry, Frederick, MD
Maxwell Brey, Tallahassee, FL
Kevin Catalon, Fords, NJ
Emma Clark, Danville, PA
Grace Comeau, Bristow, VA
Maya Cooper, Fairfax, VA
Skylar Derthick, Camas, WA
Olivia Dixon, Woodbury, NJ
Alexa Farah, Northvale, NJ
Claire Fritz, Elizabethtown, PA
Emily Huguenin, Howell, NJ
Grisha P. Ivanov, Brooklyn, NY
Christian Gray Johnson, Covington, GA
Ben Kirk, Lumberton, NJ
Duomi Liu, Beijing, China
Annie McCasland, Potomac, MD
James Moyer, Yardley, PA
Daniel J. Piver, East Hampton, NY
Juliana Rappaport, Frederick, MD
Katelyn Reinhard, Fort Wayne, IN
Abby Rose, Perkasie, PA
Ricky Sazon Salazar, Queens, NY
Alastair Stewart, Quebec, Canada
Arseniy Vasilyev, Moscow, Russia
Sarah Vawdrey. Teaneck, NJ
Julia Wilder, Carmel, NY
About Rider University & Westminster Choir College
Located in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, Rider University is a private co-educational, student-centered university that emphasizes purposeful connections between academic study and real-world learning experience. Rider prepares graduates to thrive professionally, to be lifelong independent learners, and to be responsible citizens who embrace diversity, support the common good, and contribute meaningfully to the changing world in which they live and work.
The College of Arts and Sciences is dedicated to educating students for engaged citizenship, career success, and personal growth in a diverse and complex world. The college cultivates intellectual reflection, artistic creativity, and academic maturity by promoting both broad academic inquiry and in-depth disciplinary study, while nurturing effective and ethical applications of transferable critical skills. The College consists of four schools: the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the School of Communication, Media, and Performing Arts, the School of Science, Technology, and Mathematics, and Westminster Choir College.
Culturally vibrant and historically rich, Westminster Choir College has a legacy of preparing students for thriving careers as well-rounded performers and musical leaders on concert stages, in schools, universities, and churches, and in professional and community organizations worldwide. Renowned for its tradition of choral excellence, the college is home to internationally recognized ensembles, including the Westminster Symphonic Choir, which has performed and recorded with virtually all of the major orchestras and conductors of our time. In addition to its choral legacy, Westminster is known as a center for excellence in musical pedagogy and performance.
Upcoming Performances
CURTAIN UP
Saturday, February 22, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, February 23, 2 p.m.
Bart Luedeke Center Theater
INTO THE WOODS
Friday, February 28, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 1, 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 2, 2 p.m.
Yvonne Theater
LINDSEY CHRISTIANSEN ART SONG FESTIVAL
Saturday, March 1, 3 p.m.
Gill Chapel
WESTMINSTER FACULTY RECITAL SERIES: AMERICAN ART SONGS
Sunday, March 2, 3 p.m.
Gill Chapel
CELEBRATION OF BLACK MUSIC
Sunday March 2 – Sunday March 9
Gill Chapel + more
RIDER DANCES
Saturday, March 8, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 9, 2 p.m.
Bart Luedeke Center Theater
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON UPCOMING PERFORMANCES, SUBSCRIPTION AND PATRON PROGRAM OPTIONS, VISIT RIDER.EDU/ARTS.
