Home Page

  Concert Dates

  Conductor

  Accompanists & Soloists

  About Us

  Support Us

  Recent Performances

  Privacy Policy

Next Up: Members of DES and other area choristers perform Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Bowdoin International Music Festival orchestra on July 4 in Brunswick.

2007 - 2008 Season

This is our 28th year of bringing outstanding, affordable, live choral performances to regional audiences. Down East Singers (DES) continues to combine the familiar with the unfamiliar, programming new repertoire as well as perennial favorites within what has become our traditional framework of December, spring-tour and Memorial Day concerts.

Our December Feast Music concerts featured Ottorino Resphigi's Laud to the Nativity and included a happy collaboration with singers from Riley School and Ashwood Waldorf School. Due to wintry weather, one of the scheduled December concerts became instead a Twelfth Night performance, sparking the idea for what will now become a tradition.

In February, many Down Easters traveled to Hartford, Connecticut, to take part in director Anthony Antolini's lecture/demonstration on Greek-American composers at the American Choral Directors Association Eastern Division convention.

In March, DES joined together with Bowdoin College choristers as the Rachmaninoff Festival Choir for performances of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in Saco, Maine, and in Cambridge and Haverhill, Massachusetts, where we enjoyed the hospitality of our warm hosts in the Greek and Serbian communities. This spring tour began with a "hometown" performance of the Liturgy at Watts Hall in Thomaston, Maine.

The 2007-2008 season concludes with the performance of our annual Memorial Day concert in Rockland and, the following weekend, in Blue Hill; this year the performance will feature Luigi Cherubini's Requiem in C minor. Commissioned by the French government in 1815 to commemorate the execution of King Louis XVI by the revolutionaries, the Cherubini Requiem was instantly successful. Beethoven made the oft-quoted assessment, "If I were to write a Requiem, Cherubini's would be my only model." In fact, this was the Requiem performed at Beethoven's own funeral. Schumann stated that it was "... without equal in the world," and Brahms called it "marvelous."

On July 4, members of DES will have the opportunity to perform Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Bowdoin International Music Festival (BIMF). Anthony Antolini will rehearse singers from several area choral groups for the performance with the Music Festival orchestra under the direction of Lewis Kaplan. Experienced singers interested in participating in this performance should contact Antolini at 207-725-3347.

Looking Ahead

DES will perform the Bach Magnificat next winter and Schubert's Mass in G for Memorial Day 2009. We are looking forward to a concert tour of Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece in July 2009.

For information on membership in Down East Singers, please refer to the About Us page of this site.

For further information about Down East Singers, you may call 207-273-2471 or email us.