2020 Winter and Spring Season Announcement

Join us for our third season!
January 26th, 2020, 2pm: Song of Songs with Karim Sulayman, tenor; Aurelien Pederzoli, viola; and Dan O’Connell, french horn

March 22nd, 2020, 2pm: Half the Sky with Emily Birsan, soprano

May 7, 2020, 7pm: Empowered with Emily Pogorelc, soprano

All concerts are held at Bethany United Church of Christ, 4250 N. Paulina St. Chicago, IL 60613
Announcing our Winter and Spring 2020 season!

It’s almost turkey time, a time for sharing, and we here at Chamber Music at Bethany are ready to share with YOU the details of our upcoming season: three incredible concerts, January through May, joined by world-class artists to explore rarely heard vocal and chamber music repertoire in a beautiful, intimate setting. 

Our January 26th concert features 2019 Grammy Award-winning tenor Karim Sulayman, acclaimed violist Aurelien Pederzoli, and Dan O’Connell on french horn in a program focusing on one of the most intimate and sensual poems of all time, the Song of Songs. This erotic love poetry at the end of the both the Jewish and Christian Bible (seriously though, what is it doing there? Go check it out!) has inspired centuries of composers from the middle ages to today, and we’ll offer works from Caccini to Britten exploring this unabashedly lush text.

Our March 22nd concert, Half the Sky, features female composers at the dawn of the 20th century, still overlooked and undervalued compared to their male contemporaries. Featuring soprano Emily Birsan, the concert highlights unheard and overlooked masterpieces of vocal and chamber music by Cecile Chaminade, Rebecca Clarke, and Pauline Viardot, among others.

Our last concert on May 7, Empowered, will feature soprano Emily Pogorelc in chamber music inspired by strong female characters. This concert will feature John Harbison’s Mirabai Songs–Mirabai, a 16th-century Hindu mystic poet, was 27 when her husband was killed in a war. She refused to die on her husband’s funeral pyre, as was the custom, and instead left her family compound, wrote poems to Krishna, and sang and danced them in the streets. 

Please save the date and mark your calendar! We look forward to seeing you!