Coro Allegro, Boston’s award-winning LGBTQ+ and allied classical chorus, kicks off its centennial celebration of Daniel Pinkham on March 12 with performances of the late local composer’s fanfares and works for double choir, brass quartet, and organ. The celebration culminates with a performance of Pinkham’s “The White Raven,” a Coro Allegro commission, on May 7.
“Daniel perfectly exemplified the spirit of Coro Allegro,” said Artistic Director David Hodgkins, who marks 30 years with the ensemble in the 2022-2023 season. “He was an elegant composer and musician whose humanity deepened the musical and personal lives of everyone around him. Through his life and legacy, Daniel echoed our mission to use music to build bridges between Boston’s communities and to elevate the voices of underrepresented artists.”
Coro Allegro enjoyed a close relationship with Daniel Pinkham, an out gay man born into the rigid social constraints of the Greatest Generation. The prolific composer, harpsichordist, and organist was a faculty member at New England Conservatory and the music director of Kings Chapel for over four decades. In 2008, Coro Allegro established the Daniel Pinkham Award in his honor to recognize outstanding contributions to classical choral music and the LGBTQ+ community.
Coro Allegro’s March 12 performance, Fanfares, will herald the beginning of its Daniel Pinkham celebration with the composer’s exuberant four-movement work of the same name, featuring tenor Matthew DiBatistta alongside brass and percussion instrumentalists and organist Heinrich Christensen, who inherited Pinkham’s role as music director of Kings Chapel.
Next on the program is Ralph Vaugh Williams’ exquisite Mass in G minor. Coro Allegro brings audiences the uplifting sacred double choir work in the composer’s 150th anniversary year.
Coro Allegro will also present the Boston premiere of Paradise, A Motet for 12 Voices, by award-winning composer Shawn Crouch, who trained at New England Conservatory. The work is based on the visceral and powerful war poems of American Iraq War veteran Brian Turner. Through arching and layered musical lines, Turner’s vivid poetry is juxtaposed with poems by 14th Century Persian poet Hāfez, selected, reinterpreted, and translated by contemporary Iranian poet Sholeh Wolpé.
The concert concludes with a performance of Daniel Pinkham’s most widely known work, Christmas Cantata, written for chorus, brass quartet, and organ.
— from a Coro Allegro press release
More: coroallegro.org
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