In this issue:
MCC Performs New Musical: GOLDEN GATE Holmdel Native to Direct Golden Gate Write a Review May 3rd Benefit and Silent Auction Featuring Jo Ellen Miller Scholarship Winners Fun Stuff Welcome to the "April 2008" issue of ECHOES, designed for fans and audience of the Monmouth Civic Chorus. Look for an issue of ECHOES in your e-mail before each of our upcoming concerts.
MCC Performs New Musical: GOLDEN GATE
A new musical comes to New Jersey with the Monmouth Civic Chorus production of Golden Gate. Set in San Francisco in the 1930’s, Golden Gate tells the story of a family traveling to the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge on a journey of discovery and reawakened hope.
The music of Golden Gate is a road trip from retro to pop, with sounds of the Jazz Age and 1990's Broadway. With music by Richard Pearson Thomas and book by Joe Calarco, the show won the Michael Stewart Musical Theater Development Award, named for the librettist of Hello, Dolly! and Bye Bye Birdie.
New York City-based composer and pianist Richard Pearson Thomas has had works performed by the Boston Pops, Covent Garden Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Banff Centre, Skylight Opera Theatre, and Riverside Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. His songs have been sung in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Joe’s Pub, and before the U.S. Congress by artists such as Audra McDonald, Sanford Sylvan, Lauren Flanagan and Kurt Ollmann. He is a recipient of an American Composers’ Forum Continental Harmony commission for the Alabama Tri-State Orchestra. His work Race for the Sky, commissioned as a commemoration of the events of 9/11, has been performed by the Westchester Philharmonic Orchestra and in recitals nationwide.
He is currently on the faculty at Teachers College/Columbia University, and is composer-in-residence of the Gold Opera Project, Young Audiences/New York. In that capacity, he has composed more than 80 operas with students in New York City public schools.
The world premiere of this concert version of Golden Gate, led by Dr. Mark Shapiro with the composer on piano, will be performed at 3:00 and 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 31, 2008 at the Middletown Arts Center, 36 Church Street, Middletown, New Jersey. Tickets are $25 regular, $22 seniors, $20 groups, $5 students. Call (732) 933-9333 or visit www.monmouthcivicchorus.org.
Composer Chat after the 3:00 performance. Holmdel Native to Direct Golden Gate
Monmouth Civic Chorus is proud to have Holmdel native Eric Einhorn as the stage director of our production of Golden Gate. Mr. Einhorn has served on the directing staff of the Metropolitan Opera since 2005, working on numerous new productions, including two world premieres: An American Tragedy and The First Emperor. He recently made his Glimmerglass Opera debut with a production of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld. From 2002-2004, he was the resident stage director for Great Music for a Great City at the City University of New York Graduate Center where he staged Brundibar and The Medium.
A proponent of Holocaust art, Mr. Einhorn has directed several pieces on the subject, including Korczak’s Orphans (co-director of the world premiere staging) with Real Time Opera, a reading of While Childhood Slept with the Holmdel Theatre Company, and Der Kaiser von Atlantis at Oberlin College. In addition, he has served as resident stage director for the Music at Hillwood concert series at the Tilles Center of Long Island University. Upcoming engagements include a production of Alcina for Wolf Trap Opera, Don Pasquale for the Pittsburgh Opera Center, and Dialogues des Carmélites for Austin Lyric Opera.
Mr. Einhorn holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Opera Directing & Voice Performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He is a graduate of Holmdel High School and a 1998 honorable mention recipient in the Monmouth Civic Chorus vocal scholarship competition. He was a winner of the 1999 MCC poetry contest with his poem Anonymous Prayer, set to music by composer Tom Cipullo and performed in the MCC commissioned work Voices of the Young.
Write a Review
We’d love to know what you think about our upcoming Golden Gate show. Why not write a review? You can send it in, share it with your friends, and see what other listeners have to say. Visit www.monmouthcivicchorus.org after the concert for this new interactive feature.
May 3 Benefit Recital and Silent Auction – Join Us!
 Monmouth Civic Chorus is planning a very special evening on Saturday, May 3 at 7:00 p.m. Soprano Jo Ellen Miller (daughter of MCC soprano Pat Miller) will perform in recital at Monmouth Museum, located on the Brookdale Community College campus, 765 Newman Springs Road in Lincroft (Parking Lot #1). Valet parking will be provided. Accompanied on piano by Artistic Director Mark Shapiro, Jo Ellen will present Songs Among the Planets, with the program including works by Grieg and Debussy, as well as favorite show tunes.
Reservations are $80 per person, and attire is semi formal. Call (732) 933-9333 or visit www.monmouthcivicchorus.org to make your reservation. Please join us in support of MCC’s primary fundraising event of the season. If you’re unable to attend, we are gratefully accepting financial donations; all donors will be listed in the benefit program.
The reception, catered by Falco’s Catering, will be held in the Museum’s Nilson Gallery and showcase “Watercolors” by Michalyn Tarantino, part of the NJ Emerging Artists Series. Hors d’oeuvres and champagne will be served before the recital and desserts and coffee served afterward. The evening will also feature a Silent Auction; items include box seat tickets to a Yankee game, a fishing expedition, a gourmet dinner, and a week in a Florida resort. We’re still accepting donations for the auction; please email subscriptions@monmouthcivicchorus.org if you have any suggestions.
Featuring Our Benefit Recital Soloist
 Jo Ellen Miller was a 1999 recipient of the Monmouth Civic Chorus scholarship award, followed by recent appearances with MCC as soloist in Handel's Messiah, Faure's Requiem and J.S. Bach’s Cantata #51. A graduate of Middletown High School South, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Michigan, she has spent the last several years working professionally in the operatic, oratorio, and contemporary music worlds. She has sung with the Boston Pops, Opera Theatre of Pittsburgh, Opera New Jersey, Sarasota Opera, Mark Morris Dance Group, New Jersey State Youth Orchestra, Opera Company of Brooklyn, Tanglewood Music Center, and the Ravinia Festival, among others. She was a winner of the 2004 National Opera Association scholarship, and the Grace B. Jackson Prize for Vocal Fellows from Tanglewood Music Center. Equally at home on the musical theater stage, she appeared in 2006 as Abigail Adams in 1776 with Phoenix Productions. Monmouth Civic Chorus is delighted to have Jo Ellen return as our Benefit guest soloist.
Monmouth Museum’s BEYOND Exhibit: Visions of Planetary Landscapes
 Monmouth Civic Chorus is pleased to be presenting our Spring Benefit Concert at Monmouth Museum, where Jo Ellen Miller will be performing in the Main Gallery amidst images from the Solar System. May 3 is the last night to see spectacular images from a new Smithsonian Traveling exhibition "Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes." Award-winning film-maker, photographer, and journalist Michael Benson spent years searching the archives of NASA and the European Space Agency to find imagery for this incredible collection of prints. Featuring 35 large-scale (ranging from 3 feet to 5 feet in width) framed prints containing 59 individual photographs, all digitally processed by Benson, the exhibition made its national touring debut at Monmouth Museum. After it closes, the exhibit will continue on a national tour through 2010, traveling to cities such as Tucson, Cleveland, Santa Barbara and Chicago.
Artist Benson mined planetary databases for his source material; then, using various techniques, including mosaics and collages, he pulled together images to create seamless photographs of unprecedented clarity and realism. The exhibition is divided into sections, including the Inner Solar System, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Compositions include rare pictures of the sand dunes on Mars, storms on Neptune, and the fiery eruptions of the sun. Many of the photographic images were taken by robots that have traveled to nearly every planet in the solar system during 40 years of robotic space missions.
Scholarship Winners
We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 MCC Vocal Scholarship Competition.
Fun Stuff ... Golden Gate Bridge Trivia
Trivia Answers
1. C 2. B 3. True 4. A 5. C 6. True 7. A 8. Smaller 9. C 10. B 11. B 12. C 13. True 14. B 15. C 16. C
"Planets" in Songs
We thought it would be fun to do a Google search on Art Songs with “planets” in their lyrics. Below are just a few samples found on “The Lied and Art Song Texts Page.” Match the letter of the lyrics to the corresponding Song Title, Author, and Composer. The “Lied and Art Song Texts Page” is an archive of 27,973 texts used in Lieder and other classical Art Songs as well as in many choral works and other types of classical vocal pieces. The collection currently includes 43,655 settings and 6,372 translations to English, Italian, Dutch, German, Spanish, French, and other languages.
Answer Key
Word Search
Please find the following words pertaining to San Francisco in the word search puzzle below.
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