Antioch announces two new concerts this season

Antioch is pleased to have been invited to sing a Holiday program at the spectacular EMPAC at RPI in Troy, NY on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 7pm.  Repertoire will include Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, Lauridsen’s Mid-Winter Songs and Whitacre’s Hebrew Love Songs.  See http://empac.rpi.edu for more information about this impressive new space.

Antioch will sing their Piccolo Preview concert at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Princeton Junction, NJ on Sunday, May 2, 2010.  New works by Eric Whitacre and R. Douglas Helvering will be showcased.

Please see our concerts page of our website for the most up to date information.

Antioch announces exciting 2009-2010 season

The 2009-2010 season is slated to be a pivotal year for the Antioch Chamber Ensemble. Our second CD, “Live from Piccolo Spoleto“, will be released on MSR Classics. Combining the best of our most recent three performances at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, we aim to have the disk on sale by the Holiday season. More specific track information, as well as availability, will be updated in this space, so please check back!

The Concert Page of our website has the most up to date information for tickets and performances.

Our concert season starts with a local performance in Ringwood, NJ for the Ringwood Friends of Music on Sunday, October 18, 2009 at 7pm at the Community Presbyterian Church, 145 Carletondale Rd., Ringwood, NJ.

In May of 2010, Antioch will return to the Southeast for two concerts. On Thursday, May 27, 2010, Antioch will sing a preview of their Piccolo performance for the Williamsburg Baptist Church in Williamsburg, VA. On Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 3pm, Antioch will sing it’s ninth consecutive performance at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC as part of the Spotlight Concert Series.  Antioch is honored to receive a special invitation for this series.

In July of 2010, as a result of our wins in the Tolosa International Choral Competition in the Fall of 2008, Antioch returns to Europe for a two week tour of France in conjunction with the Musique en Morvin Festival and the Festival des Choeurs Laureats in Vaison. Stay tuned for more specific performance information.

Thank you for your support of Antioch!

Antioch at Piccolo 2009 and other news

Antioch peformed at the 2009 Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC at St. Philip’s Church for the 8th consecutive season.  The concert was very well attended.  We are so happy to have this “home-away-from-home.” Two clips from our concert can be found below:

and…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKYYFC-lzaM&fmt=18

In addition to our concert, we spent several hours working on our upcoming recording.  We are pleased to announce that we will be signing our newest release with MSR Classics in the Fall of 2009.  This recording will be a combination of performances and takes from our last three visits to the Piccolo Spoleto Festival.

Antioch is now busy planning a tour to France in the summer of 2010 where we have been invited to participate in two festivals.  Stay tuned as we plan our 2009-2010 season!

Antioch and Voces8 Concert Wrap-Up and Videos

Antioch and Voces8 performed together on Sunday, 3.9.09 at 4pm.

Videos from the concert may be viewed below and on Antioch’s YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/antiochonline.  Please visit our videos, rate them and forward to all your friends!

It was a wonderful experience having the wonderful English group, Voces8 visit with us for the weekend.  Voces8 was at the end of a 4 week American Tour.  They stayed with some very generous folks from Calvary who agreed to host them for the weekend.  A special thank you to the Calvary Community for all their work in making this concert possible!

We opened the concert with a combined performance of Orlando Gibbon’s O Clap Your Hands Together:

The embedded video below is Antioch’s performance of Eric Whitacre’s Five Hebrew Love Songs:

We ended the concert with a combined rendition of Eric Whitacre’s Sleep:

Antioch’s next concert is in Charleston, SC for the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. This is our eighth consecutive year traveling to this festival and can hardly wait for the warm weather! We also hope to finish our long awaited second recording there this year. Stay tuned!

Antioch joins with Voces8 for a combined concert of Tolosa Winners!

Chamber Ensemble

Special Combined Concert with NJ’s Antioch & England’s Voces8! Sunday, March 8, 2009 ~ 4pm Calvary Episcopal Church, Summit, NJ Tickets are $20 ($15 student/seniors) and will be available at the door.

Join us for this one-of-a kind concert, featuring former and current First Place Winners from the Tolosa International Choral Competition! Voces8 of England Summit, NJ – Antioch is partnering with Voces8, an internationally acclaimed vocal ensemble from England, and previous Tolosa winner, to present a concert at Calvary Episcopal Church in Summit, NJ on Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 4pm. The program will include Antioch performing Eric Whitacre’s “Five Hebrew Love Songs,” Morten Lauridsen’s “Les Chansons des Roses,” as well as works by Jean Belmont-Ford, John Sheppard and Basque composer Xabier Sarasola.  Voces8 will be performing repertoire from their recent CD, “Evensong” as well as selections from their current US tour. “This presents a tremendous, high-caliber musical opportunity to the local community,” says the group’s Artistic Director, Joshua Copeland.  “Not only will you be able to hear Antioch, who swept first place at this year’s Tolosa competition, but you will also hear Voces8, an amazing vocal ensemble from England that accomplished the same feat in Tolosa only 3 years ago.” The Antioch Chamber Ensemble, currently celebrating its 10th Anniversary Season, recently became the first place winners in both the Sacred Music and Secular Music categories at the Tolosa International Choral Competition in Spain.   To learn more about our trip to Spain, we encourage you to visit our website and blog: http://antiochonline.wordpress.com. “Voces8 is an international award winning a cappella octet founded in 2003 by ex-choristers of Westminster Abbey. With a repertoire ranging from 13th century polyphony to unique jazz and popular arrangements, Voces8 has entertained audiences across Europe and the UK. The group has been praised for “stunning performance”, “exquisite singing” and “a sound that spans the entire range of vocal colour”. When not on the concert platform, Voces8 spends much of its time leading workshops and masterclasses around the world. Voces8 performs widely in the UK, Europe and the USA. Recent highlights include opening the National Choral Competition in Spain, appearances on Austrian and Slovenian television, a concert at Wartburg Castle for Deutschlandradio Kultur and a guest appearance for the International Federation of Choral Music in Belgium.”  Visit Voces8 beautiful website at: www.voces8.com. This will be Voces8 only East Coast performance during their 2009 USA Concert Tour, as well as Antioch’s only local concert this season!  You do not want to miss this! Tickets for the event are $20 ( $15 student/seniors) and will be available at the door. Please visit Antioch’s website for more information.

Press from Tolosa

Now that we have safely returned to the US, we can begin the process of wading through the press and invitations that we have received as a result of our win.

The day of the awards ceremony, we received two invitations to European Festivals in 2010.  The first, the Musique en Morvan festival, takes place in France in July of 2010.  They will package our participation in that festival with another French festival, the Vaison Festival.

We have also received an invitation to a festival in Bavaria in May of 2010.

We will be uploading our own video takes to YouTube, but the Tolosa Festival just uploaded our version of “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” this morning. The sound quality is very poor, so please wait until we’ve uploaded our own takes for a better look at how we did. (if you get the common error message “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available”, simply refresh the page and try again.)

The most current press from Spain can be found through Google News.  These are all in Spanish and Basque, so you may need to run it through a translator (google toolbar, if you have that installed in your browser, will translate automatically if you right click on the page and select “page information”).  In a few of the articles, the headlines are for the Cantemus Choir from Hungary.  They are mentioned as the main winners of the festival because they are the highest scoring amateur choir, which is automatically invited to the Choral Grand Prix.  We are not eligible for that festival because we are a professional choir.

We are in the process of sending out press releases to American newspapers and websites.  If you have any connections with media outlets and would be willing to give us contact information, we would love to hear from you.  Simply email stephen (at) antiochonline.com with the contact information and we will send a press release right away.  The more press we get at home, the better!

Thank you all for your help!  More videos and pictures are on the way!

Antioch Sweeps 1st Place for Vocal Groups

It is the best news possible.  Antioch swept first place in both the sacred and secular vocal groups for the 40th Annual Tolosa Choral Festival.  We could not be more excited or pleased.

At midnight, the lights to the large auditorium dimmed and they began announcing the winners of each of the categories.  They began with the “audience favorite”, followed by the childrens choirs.  Then, they announced the sacred category vocal groups.  When Antioch was announced as First Prize, we were all very happy and made all sorts of noise!  When they began announcing the 3rd place and 2nd place for the secular category, we became a bit nervous that we had not placed at all.  However, when they announced that we had won first prize, looks of shock and happiness were all around.

We received many compliments from the international panel of judges and festival organizers.  It appears we will be getting many more invitations for huge international festivals.

The bus ride home was filled with tears of joy and fun stories.  We shared the bus ride back to the hotel with the Cuban group, Exaudi.  They were extremely gracious and offered many congratulations.

It is now about 2am and we leave at 10am to sing for the finale as the winners of our categories.  After the Festival Final Concert and lunch in Tolosa, we will go to San Sebastian for our last concert in Spain.  We leave first thing on Monday morning and will be back in the states Monday afternoon.

Thank you all so much for following our blog throughout this trip.  We will update again soon when we have more pictures as well as some edited video from our trip.

Spain – Day 8 – Side Trip

Today was SUNNY, warm and beautiful. We had the entire day off, so many of us decided to take the 3.5km hike along the coast to the neighboring town of Getaria. We did some sight-seeing, had a great lunch, and got to sing a bit in the local cathedral. Because of the beautiful weather and scenery, pictures were plentiful today. So, I’ll let them do the talking from here:

Spain – Day 8

We leave at 8:30 this evening to go back to Tolosa for a gala reception and dinner for the choirs. After which, we will find out the results of our competitions. More later!

Spain – Day 7 – Competition Day

Today we sang for the Tolosa Choral Competition against some amazing competition. We rehearsed a bit this morning and left for Tolosa shortly after lunch. Upon arriving we were led to a room off of the main church and waited for about 90 minutes as other groups performed before us. The sacred set went extremely well. Other than a slight pitch bobble in one of the pieces, it was very tight. Here is a picture of us following the sacred set:

Following the sacred competition, we got a bite to eat at a local restaurant and waited until around 9:30 to sing for our secular set. The set went well, but we feel our sacred set was better overall. At this point, it is in the judges hands!

Tomorrow is a relatively free day until we return to Tolosa in the late evening. The remainder of the competitions finish around 10pm. All of the 19 participating choirs will gather at 10pm for a reception. At 12am, the festival will announce the winners. We will post the results as soon as we get back!

Look for a bit of video tomorrow (providing I can get the camcorder and laptop to play nicely together).

Concert Review and Pictures

Here is a link to a review of our first concert last Sunday in Arrasate. It is in Basque, but the pictures are nice!

Here are a few pictures from yesterday:

Spain – Day 6

We leave after lunch for our competition. More when we get back!