Category: News

The choir will be bringing our 2018/19 season to an end with a performance at 8pm on Saturday evening 29 June at St. Finian’s Lutheran Church, Adelaide Road, Dublin 2, adjacent to our rehearsal venue at the Lutherhaus.  This will be a concert featuring the works of female composers covering a range of styles and periods, from the 12th century Germany of Hildegard of Bingen and the Renaissance Italy of Vittoria Aleotti through to the 20th and 21st century Ireland of Ina Boyle and Mary Kelly.  In addition to the choir, the concert will feature soprano Elisabeth Goell and alto Katie Richardson McCrea along with harpist Anne-Marie O’Farrell and Wolfgang Marx on the organ. Admission is free but there will be a collection in aid of the church roof fund.

The choir is delighted to have the opportunity to assist in the fund raising and to be able to show our appreciation of the use of the church facilities for our rehearsal venue during the year.  The evening also gives current and former choir members and also supporters of the choir the opportunity to bring the 2018/19 to a successful and social conclusion and to assist with this, wine and light refreshments will be available to the choir and audience members in the Lutherhaus after the concert.  So come along and join us on 29th June for our final performance of the season and help us celebrate another successful year’s music-making by the Goethe Choir.

 

Continuing with the varied and innovative nature of our concert programming over the last few months, the Goethe Choir will be ending the 2018/19 season with a performance of works by female composers at St. Finian’s Lutheran Church, Adelaide Road, Dublin 2.  This takes place at 8pm on Saturday 29 June 2019.

The pieces to be performed are all by female composers from various countries and periods, and include compositions from Hildegard of Bingen and Vittoria Aleotti through Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger and others to Irish composers Ina Boyle and Mary Kelly.   The concert features a number of soloists in addition to the choir, which will be conducted by our music director John Dexter with instrumental accompaniment conducted by Werner Blau.

Entry is free but there will be a collection in aid of the church roof fund.  Go to the choir events page for more information.

Following our previous three concerts which featured one of JS Bach’s sacred choral works (Christmas concert 2018), a Monteverdi opera (Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo) and John Williams’ film music (We were not alone) the Goethe Choir once again demonstrated the variety of its programming and its ability to tackle a wide range of musical styles with a performance of Will Todd’s exciting jazz-inspired Mass in Blue at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin last Saturday evening, 25 May.

This was a repeat performance of the same work given by the choir in June 2018 in St. Ann’s Church in Dawson Street in Dublin and once again featured instrumental accompaniment by the composer and his band, this time with soprano soloist Hilary Cronin, all under the expert control of the choir’s musical director and conductor for the evening, John Dexter.  While the larger-scale performance area and acoustic created a different and possibly less intimate experience than the earlier performance, Will Todd’s jazz piano playing once again exhilarated a capacity audience and inspired the choir to create another moving and memorable evening’s music making.

Here’s a very short clip of Will Todd and the choir during the concert:

If you weren’t able to be there but would like to hear the choir singing the whole of the Mass in Blue with accompaniment from Will Todd and the band, click here to hear a recording of the choir’s performance in St. Ann’s in 2018.

The Goethe Choir’s next concert will be a performance of Will Todd’s Mass in Blue at 8pm on Saturday 25 May in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.   The concert will be in aid of Carmichael Ireland.    The choir will be accompanied by the Will Todd Ensemble, featuring the composer himself on piano and Hilary Cronin as soprano soloist.

This work was first sung by the choir in St. Ann’s Church, Dublin, on 2 June 2018 and was received with critical acclaim.   This is another opportunity to hear a performance in Dublin of this dynamic, uplifting, and highly popular jazz setting of the Latin mass.  Go to the Events page on the choir website for details of how to order tickets online. And to get you in the mood, you can also listen on that web page to a recording of last year’s performance of the work by the choir.

The choir notched up another successful appearance at the National Concert Hall in Dublin last night (Friday 3 May) when we took part with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra in a concert performance of Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. This involved the film being shown on a large cinema screen suspended in front of the organ and central choir stalls, with the film’s dialogue being relayed to the audience via the speaker system, and also displayed via subtitles on the film, and the accompanying soundtrack being performed by orchestra and choir, members of the choir sitting in the remaining choir stalls at either side of the screen.

While we had no difficulty with the words (chiefly because there weren’t any), fitting the oohs and aahs and various sound effects in at the right time required a great deal of concentration and counting. Fortunately we were ably assisted by the conductor Ernst van Tiel who provided the necessary direction to orchestra and choir, synchronised exactly to the action on the screen with the assistance of his own monitor. Everything worked perfectly on the night resulting in a very exciting and atmospheric performance which was hugely enjoyed by the large audience, who showed their appreciation at the end with a standing ovation.

Another of the varied musical experiences which we all enjoy as members of the Goethe Choir. Thanks to all the singers who took part in this memorable evening and a special thanks to our choir director John Dexter in successfully preparing us for this somewhat different musical assignment.

Following our successful and innovative performance of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” to a sell-out audience at the Freemasons’ Hall in Dublin on 23 March, the Goethe Choir’s next performance will be on Friday 3 May 2019 with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra in the National Concert Hall, Dublin in a presentation with live music of Steven Spielberg’s 1977 masterpiece “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.  The film features a groundbreaking and magnificent score written by John Williams, which will be performed live and in sync with the film.   The choir is honoured to be asked to participate in this popular presentation.

Tickets are available from the National Concert Hall and may be booked online at www.nch.ie.

We have now added a facility on the choir website to issue a newsletter email each time a news item is added to the site.  This will allow subscribers to be kept automatically up to date on choir news and activities.

Anyone may subscribe to the newsletter by entering their name and email address on the website at http://goethechoir.ie/index.php/about-us/newsletter.  Existing and new choir members will be automatically subscribed to the newsletter.  Subscriptions to the newsletter are created under the terms of the choir Privacy Policy and may be cancelled at any time via the link at the bottom of each newsletter.

For our next concert we will be presenting a concert performance of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at the Freemason’s Hall, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2 on Saturday 23 March, starting at 8pm.    Written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua, L’Orfeo is the earliest surviving opera that is still regularly performed.

Tickets cost €27.50 each and may be booked online via Eventbrite

The performance will feature the following artists:

Matthew Long — Orfeo
Sharon Carty — Euridice
John Elwes — Apollo
Sylvia O’Brien — Soprano
Brendan Collins — Bass

Siobhán Armstrong — Harp

Paul Herriott  – Narrator

with the Goethe Choir & Goethe Ensemble conducted by John Dexter.

For more details go to http://goethechoir.ie/index.php/events

 

Welcome to the new Goethe Choir website at goethechoir.ie.   Following the decision of the choir to change its name from the Goethe-Institut Choir we have now launched a new website with a complete redesign and a change of content, including an expanded members’ area.

We hope you like it – let us know what you think!

Following a meeting of members in early February 2019, the choir decided to change its name from the Goethe-Institut Choir to the Goethe Choir.  Although originally founded in 1965 under the auspices of the Goethe-Institut in Dublin and rehearsing for many years at the Institut’s main building in Merrion Square, the choir has had no direct relationship with the Goethe-Institut for a number of years, and now rehearses weekly in the Lutherhaus, St. Finian’s Church, Adelaide Road, Dublin 2.

In view of these circumstances, it was felt that this was an opportune moment for the choir to establish its own identity, separate from that of the Goethe-Institut.  With over 50 years of successful singing in Dublin and elsewhere behind it, the choir now looks forward to an equally successful and lengthy future with its new identity.