The choir has lifted its voice all around the world, including winning a prestigious competition in France. (Photo courtesy of Rilwan Hamzah)
The Batavia Madrigal Singers, an award-winning Indonesian choral group, will perform their second annual Sanguinis Choraliensis concert at Aula Simfonia concert hall in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, on Saturday.
With Sanguinis Choraliensis, which refers to the joy of choral singing, the group hopes to bring choral music to a wider audience and dispel the notion that it can only be enjoyed in a religious context.
The choir, which includes both Muslim and Christian performers, will sing through a repertoire spanning sacred music from the Renaissance all the way through secular modern compositions, including pop and folk songs.
Several sacral polyphonic compositions from the Renaissance and Baroque eras by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Heinrich Schutz and Henry Purcell will open the concert, followed by Romantic and modern pieces by Josef Rheinberger, Knut Nystedt and a composition by young local composer Ivan Yohan, a member of the choir who is currently pursuing his music studies in the Netherlands.
Love and natural beauty have always been sources of inspiration for composers, and these themes will be presented in compositions by Claude Debussy, Morten Lauridsen and Gabriel Faure.
And folk songs by Donald Patriquin, Michael McGlynn and Sam Pottle, given fresh new arrangements, will bring the concert to its conclusion.
The Batavia Madrigal Singers are one of the country’s most prominent vocal ensembles that has performed around the world, including in Japan, the Netherlands, Italy and Austria. In 2001 they won prestigious international choir competition Florilege Vocal de Tours in France, where they also received a special award from the nation’s Ministry of Culture for the best interpretation of a French composition. The choir’s success lead to an invitation to perform at the Polyfollia international choral festival in Normandy, France, in 2002. In 2009, the choir took second in the Maribor choir competition in Slovenia.
These triumphs can be attributed to the talent and passion of the singers, but credit is also due to the choir’s conductor and musical director, Avip Priatna, a young Muslim who fell in love with choral singing while studying architecture in Bandung.
After graduating, Avip traveled to Vienna to pursue a masters degree in choir and orchestra conducting. He founded the Batavia Madrigal Singers in 1996 with alumni from Parahyangan Catholic University, and in 2002 he founded the Jakarta Chamber Orchestra, which has become one of the most highly regarded in the nation.
Sanguinis Choraliensis
Saturday, April 17 , 7:30 p.m.
Aula Simfonia, Jl. Industri Blok B 14 Kav 1
Kemayoran, Central Jakarta
Tickets: 021 720 1918 or 0858 1414 2277
For me, joining Batavia Madrigal Singers has been an ultimate accomplishment of being a chorister. After years of vocal training and joining other choirs, BMS has become the right place where you can really have the real experience of working on a vaudeville of repertoires from a tremendously wide range. I really look forward to re-joining the choir after I finish my study and return to Indonesia in August. I sure miss singing... with Batavia Madrigal Singers....
ReplyDeleteHello ! I've just created the blog for Polyfollia festival : http://blogpolyfollia.wordpress.com. It is written in french, but there is a translation. Feel free to check it ! Greetings
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