Antioch Chamber Ensemble - Living Music

The Antioch Chamber Ensemble returns to sing its third concert this season with Music in the Somerset Hills.  They have called it Antioch Ancient & Modern, and it will take place on Saturday, February 27 at 8 PM in the gorgeous acoustic of the church of St. John on the Mountain at 379 Harmony Road, Bernardsville.

The concert is “ancient and modern” because the Antioch singers will devote Part I to the music of Heinrich Schütz, probably the most important German composer before Bach, and Part II to the premières of five short works by living composers.  The five works by Schütz in Part I are all sacred pieces taken from his three books of Symphoniae Sacrae, all of them written for virtuoso voices accompanied by basso continuo.

By contrast, the five modern pieces in Part II are the result of a competition Antioch initiated last summer.  Composers were asked to submit a capella pieces that would fit Antioch’s particular “voicing”, which consists of 12 singers – 4 sopranos, 2 altos, 2 tenors and 4 basses.  Literally hundreds of entries were received from all over the world, and Antioch has chosen just five of them for this concert – byIvo Antognini, Zachary Wadsworth, Bruch Babcock, Matthew Brown and John Conahan.

Antioch Ancient & Modern is part of the concert season of Music in the Somerset Hills, a not-for-profit organization founded in 2010 by Stephen Sands.  Later in the season (on March 13), it will feature its own Somerset Hills Community Chorus in a concert called Music of the Movies, introduced by the film star Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), with his brother, Jonathan Dinklage (Hamilton) as concert master.  In addition to its concerts, Music in the Somerset Hills runs a very active educational program, featuring summer camps for children and teenagers, as well as early childhood Musikgarten courses and adult classes in guitar and yoga (www.musicSH.org).

Three of the singers associated with Music in the Somerset Hills are also members of the Antioch Ensemble.  They include the tenor Stephen Sands, who, as well as being Artistic Director of Music in the Somerset Hills, teaches in the Somerset Hills School District and is a member of the Trinity Wall Street Choir. 

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