Worship services at Community Unitarian Universalist Congregation in White Plains begin at 10 a.m. on Sunday mornings and generally conclude by about 11:15 a.m. Each week from the first Sunday after Labor Day to the 3rd Sunday of June, I present a program of solo piano or chamber music in coordination with the theme of worship. Twice a month, CUUC’s Choir performs, and the congregation participates in hymn singing as a regular part of worship. Below are downloadable links to musical selections at upcoming services along with brief overviews of musical programing.
Franz Schubert’s music complements November’s theme of Hospitality by virtue of the performance environment for which it was conceived. Schubert’s piano works were not destined for the public stage, but for intimate gatherings of the composer’s artistic friends known as Schubertiades. The Six “Moments Musicaux” and the two collections of Impromptus all date from Schubert’s final year. Click below for programming details.
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Join us this week for solo piano music by Unitarian composers. Several of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s Lyric Pieces are featured, including the festive “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.” Béla Bartók’s fascination with Eastern European folk idioms is represented by his “Rumanian Folk Dances”, and a charming, nostalgic “Romance” by Boston-based Arthur Foote, one of the original editors of the Unitarian Hymns of the Church Universal, opens the morning’s music.
If you’d like to hear more of this repertory performed by Adam Kent, and celebrate further the Unitarian musical heritage, consider attending the opening concert of this year’s Music at CUUC series on Sunday, November 8 at 1pm. More information is available at https://www.facebook.com/events/446400292229826/.
Click below for programming details.
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Music by music’s ultimate Wunderkind, Wolfgang Amadeus, is featured this Sunday morning at CUUC. The epitaph alludes to Mozart’s incomparable status as a child prodigy, but it might apply as well to his ability to draw forth a seemingly endless stream of invention from the simplest ideas. The CUUC Choir will also perform Andy Beck’s “Jazz Cantate” and “What Is Life?” by Greg Gilpin and Pamela Stewart. Click below for programming details.
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The intimate miniatures for solo piano of Catalan composer Federico Mompou are featured this Sunday morning at CUUC. In addition, CUUC’s Choir is on hand to perform the American classic “Ching-a-ring-Chaw” as well as the hymn-like “Closer to the Flame”. Read on for programming details, and visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOqY788C1qI to preview Music Director Adam Kent’s performances of Mompou’s music.
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September’s theme of Renewal is highlighted by Mozart’s joyous, life-affirming Sonata for Violin and Piano, K. 454. Musical guest violinist Elena Peres returns to CUUC, and participates in an informative discussion about playing together musically and socially in a special Music For All Ages. Consider arriving by 10am to hear this presentation. The morning ‘s Offertory commemorates the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, with Max Bruch’s setting of the Kol Nidre liturgical music. Click below for more details.
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CUUC’s annual Ingathering and Water Communion celebrations are marked by music with aqueous associations. The Choir is on hand with Andy Beck’s soulful, mysterious “In the Dark of Midnight” as well as a traditional American hymn. Music Director Adam Kent provides selections from a wide stylistic range, including an arrangement of the ubiquitous African-American Spiritual “Deep River”.Spirituality of a different source inspires Franz Liszt’s Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este, an evocation of the fountains at the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Italy, from the composer’s collection Years of Pilgrimage. In the midst of the score, Liszt interpolates the following quote from the Gospel of St. John: “But the water I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up in eternal life.” By contrast, Liszt’s Ballade No. 2 is said to derive from the Greek myth of Hero and Leander, and their ill-fated tryst across the stormy waters of the Dardanelles.
Elsewhere, titles are sufficiently evocative to suggest aquatic allusions. Click below for more programming specifics. and join us next week, when musical guest violinist Elena Peres returns to CUUC to perform Max Bruch’s Kol Nidre as well as works by Mozart. Consider arriving by 10am for a special family-friendly Music for All Ages with Ms. Peres and Adam Kent.
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For the concluding Sunday of the 2014-15 church year, Adam Kent features works by Unitarian composers Béla Bartók and Edvard Grieg during the Prelude. For information on Adam’s recording of Lyric Piece by Grieg, visit http://www.adamkentmusic.com/listen/. Religious Education at CUUC will also be honored by other musical selections performed by church youth who participated in last month’s Talent Show. Click below for details.
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Claude Debussy’s Asian-inflected creations and Unitarian composer Edvard Grieg’s communion with the natural world provide musical counterparts to Sunday’s sermon topic, the intersection of Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism. In addition, CUC’s Choir is on hand with joyous, celebratory selections to mark their final appearance of the 2014-15 year. Click below for more details.
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The intimate, exotic sound world of Catalan composer Federico Mompou (1893-1987) is featured in Sunday morning’s musical selections, excerpted from his delicately scored “Intimate Impressions”. Seating music includes two vibrantly romantic selections inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya by Enrique Granados (1867-1916). Works by Mompou and Granados introduced and performed by Adam Kent can be heard at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo2_GDC2lVU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdJzzvRPVzg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOqY788C1qI
Click below for programming details.
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Do composers reflect their sexual identities in the music they create? Come to CUC this Sunday May 17, and hear solo piano works by composers who would be defined as “gay” by today’s definitions, including Francis Poulenc, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Franz Schubert, and Aaron Copland. Click below for programming details.
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Join us this Sunday for a musical celebration of Mother’s Day. On the program are solo piano works by such female composers as the eighteenth-century Vienna-born Marianne von Martinez, Felix Mendelssohn’s older sister Fanny, and Robert Schumann beloved wife Clara. In addition, depictions of maternal love and tenderness are provided by Tchaikovsky and the African-American composer R. Nathaniel Dett. Read on for programming details. CUC’s Choir is also on hand to perform two uplifting and moving selections.
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This Sunday’s musical selections are sponsored by the Rocchi family, winners of the opportunity to plan music for a worship service at last fall’s Goods and Services Auction. Who better to represent the family’s musical tastes than daughter Catherine, flutist extraordinaire! Come hear Catherine Rocchi in music by Baroque composer Georg Philip Telemann, a charming transcription of a song by Franz Schubert, and an excerpt from French composer’s Gabriel Fauré’s elegant Pelléas et Mélisande. Seating music includes two movements from one of Beethoven’s most humorous and eccentric piano sonatas. Click below for programming details.
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This Sunday morning’s musical selections feature classics from the American concert literature, a repertory which often harkens back to an idealized past, or a simpler time. George Gershwin’s perennial Rhapsody in Blue is the Prelude, and charming miniatures from Edward MacDowell’s Woodland Sketches comprise the Offetory. In addition, CUC’s Choir will be on hand to perform moving meditations by Greg Gilpin and Amy Bernon. Click below for programming details.
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Transformations, renamings, old wine in new bottles—Sunday morning’s musical selections suggest musical counterparts through variation, mood change, and modulation. Mozart’s incomparably inventive Variations on a Theme by Gluck are featured in the Prelude, and Chopin’s exquisitely ornamental Nocturne in F Minor is the Offertory. Click below for programming specifics:
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Join us this Sunday at CUC for a special Easter Celebration in song and instrumental music. At 10am, Music Director Adam Kent provides a special presentation to children of all ages. “Welcome to Spring” will explore connections between music, emotion, and other sensory perceptions through a performance of Unitarian composer Edvard Grieg’s “To Spring”. CUC’s Choir will perform several joyous anthems, and a solo piano arrangement of Handel’s celebrated “Hallelujah Chorus” is featured as the Offertory. Come join us and sing, “Alleluia”!
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Sultry, evocative piano music from the Iberian peninsula will warm you up this chilly March morning at CUC. Enrique Granados’s romantic impressions of the world of Francisco Goya and Frederic Chopin are featured in the Prelude. Federico Mompou’s delicate Secreto, from the composer’s first published work, is also featured alongside Xavier Montsalvatge’s sensitive tribute to Spain’s vanished Caribbean empire, from his “Divertimentos on Themes by Forgotten Composers”. A depiction of Andalusia’s ancient Moorish stronghold Cordoba by Isaac Albéniz rounds out the morning’s musical programming. Read on for programming details, and check out this link to hear Music Director Adam Kent introduce and perform works by Granados at Le poisson rouge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo2_GDC2lVU
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CUC Choir Accompanist Georgianna Pappas treats us to a program of sensitive, introspective music from Johannes Brahms’s late years. She is joined in a special Interlude by CUC member Kim Force for a performance of Bobby McFerrin’s arrangement of the 23rd Psalm, printed as Hymn 1038 in Singing the Journey. Read on for programming details.
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The fragmentary melodic scraps Rachmaninoff uses to spin out his evocative etudes and preludes complement our monthly theme of Brokenness this Sunday morning. A tribute to the burgeoning vernal equinox by Unitarian composer Edvard Grieg is featured in the Offertory. CUC’s Choir will be on hand to perform a moving setting of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and to preview a number from the Rodgers and Hammerstein event on 3/22.
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Canvass Kick-off Sunday at CUC includes a musical extravaganza, in the words of Rev. Meredith Garmon. Musical guests violinist Elena Peres and cellist Michael Nicolas team up with Adam Kent in excerpts from Schubert’s Piano Trio in Eb Major, one of the masterworks of the chamber music repertory. The work can be enjoyed in its entirety at Sunday afternoon’s Music at CUC Chamber Music Gems concert at 3pm.
CUC’s Choir is also on hand, along with additional vocal selections by chorister Kim Force and CUC members Josie and Louisa Blatt. Read on for programming details.
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This Sunday, we welcome oboist Ian Shafer and bassoonist Leonard Hindell to CUC in Francis Poulenc’s charming Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano. Poulenc’s music illustrates the theme of Brokenness in a surprisingly positive, life-affirming way. The music seems to piece together fragments of popular tunes, military fanfares, children’s melodies, romantic excess and classical elegance in a kaleidoscopic array of changing perspectives.
Come at 10am to hear Music Director Adam Kent in a chat with Ian and Lenny about their respective musical instruments and the unique sound and expressive possibilities they offer. Also, consider attending and inviting your friends to the Chamber Music Gems concert at CUC on Sunday March 8 at 3pm to hear more from these marvelous musicians and their colleagues.Check out https://www.facebook.com/events/1544005835873160 for more information on the 3/8 event, and read on for programming details for 3/1.
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Sunday morning’s solo piano selections feature works by Unitarian composers. Several of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s Lyric Pieces and the opening movement of the Hungarian Béla Bartók’s Suite, Op. 14 comprise the Prelude. Arthur Foote served as organist of Boston’s First Unitarian Church for over 30 years, starting in 1878. The “Romance” from his Suite in d minor, Op. 15 is performed as the Offertory. In addition, CUC’s Choir will be on hand with selections by Ruth Elaine Schram and John David. Read on for more programming details.
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Hot, passionate music from Spain and Latin America will warm you on a chilly February morning in this Sunday’s belated Valentine’s Day celebration. Transcriptions from Manuel de Falla’s ballets El amor brujo (Love by Witchcraft) and The Three-Cornered Hat—tales of love run amok—will be included alongside a sensitive evocation of a “charming girl” (Danza de la moza donosa) by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera. In addition, Federico Mompou quotes a popular Catalan folk tune, which says “Whoever has love scorns it, whoever has it not craves it”, in his Canción y Danza No. 1. The Prelude opens with the brooding opening movement of Isaac Albéniz’s Iberia Suite, which can be previewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARDh-G45d_8. Click below for programming details.
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In honor of Black History Month, Sunday morning’s solo piano selections feature works by composers of African descent. The works performed range from R. Nathaniel Dett’s post-Romantic character pieces, to Hale Smith’s jazz-inflected pedagogical gems, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s rich arrangement of “Deep River”, and Artie Matthew’s exuberant take on ragtime. Read on for programming details. In addition, CUC’s Choir is on hand to perform a special Valentine’s Day selection as well as a celebratory Alleluia. Click below for programming details.
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This Sunday, musical guest Konrad Chan treats us to rarely heard music for harmonica. Consider arriving at 10sm for a special Music for All Ages at which Mr. Chan and Music Director Adam Kent will discuss the harmonica and its particular place in Hong Kong musical training. Click below for biographical and programming information.
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Join us this Sunday, when CUC’s Choir is on hand to perform seasonal music as well as traditional song from Ghana. In addition, Choir Accompanist Georgianna Pappas provides jazz-inflected arrangements and improvisations on standards and African-American spirituals. Click below for programming details.
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In honor of Martin Luther King Day and in keeping with the monthly theme of Justice, Sunday morning’s solo piano selections feature music by composers of African descent. CUC’s Choir will be on hand as well to offer a traditional South African song of freedom and a setting from the Old Testament dealing with peace and unity. Click below for programming details.
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Although widely welcome on the world’s concert stages as performers, women have only recently had widespread access to careers as composers. In recognition of our January theme of Justice, the work of female composers is featured in Sunday morning’s musical selections. Click below for more programming details.
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JANUARY 4, 2015
In keeping with the monthly theme of Justice, Sunday morning music for January at CUC features works by composers affected by struggles for social, political or professional equality. The music performed on January 4 is all by gay composers, who contended with personal discrimination and professional challenges because of their sexual orientation. Come at 10am for Music for All Ages, where we will discuss connections between personal identity and artistic creation.
Click below for programming details.
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This Sunday’s musical selections feature solo piano works, which capture traditional Christmas songs from different cultures. Spanish composer Joaquín Turina sprinkles the score of his Navidad: Milagro en dos cuadros, Op. 16 (Christmas: A Miracle in Two Pictures) with the following programmatic notes:
“A very narrow street onto which the doors of the Cathedral open. It is snowing heavily.
A popular carol is heard. A group of drunkards enters, crossing the scene in song; in their midst walks a little child who falls to the ground. The heavenly retinue appears. The song of the drunkards is heard from afar. An angel stumbles upon the child; the group pauses. The child sits up and beholds the Virgin extending Her arms. He rubs his eyes….he beholds the Child Jesus. He arises as if in a trance. Two angels take the child and bring him with the heavenly retinue. The scene grows totally dark. The celestial choir appears, full of poor people and beggars. Behind them, a great illuminated city.”
Unitarian composer Béla Bartók furnishes a set of ten diminutive arrangements of Christmas carols from Rumania, known as Colinde, and traditional Christmas carols from other European traditions make their way into Franz Liszt’s The Christmas Tree, composed for his granddaughter. Also included are an arrangement of Catalonia’s ubiquitous Christmas carol El cant dels ocells (The Song of the Birds), and a selection from Russian composer Vladimir Rebikov’s ballet The Christmas Tree.
Click below for more programming details:
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This Sunday, CUC’s Choir will be on hand to perform “Hope” by Greg Gilpin and an aria from Giancarlo Menotti’s Christmas-miracle opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, a work they will perform in its entirety at our special holiday concert next Sunday, December 21 at 1pm.
In addition, Spanish composer Joaquín Turina’s Danzas fantásticas, originally composed for piano and later orchestrated, express December’s theme of Hope in their numerous outbursts of joy of excitement, which seem to well up from evocations of mystery and despair. The composer prefaced each dance with a quote from the Spanish novelist José Mas as follows:
Exaltación: “It seemed as if the figures in that incomparable picture were moving within the calyx of a flower.”
Ensueño: “The strings of the guitar sounded like the lamentation of a soul that could no longer bear the weight of bitterness.”
Orgía: “The scent of flowers mixed with the aroma of Manzanilla, and from the bottom of the slender glasses, full of incomparable wine like an incense, joy arose.”
Click here to preview these piano works in a performance by CUC Music Director Adam Kent from Burgos, Spain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4d0a6aYJTQ. Click below for more program details.
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Join us on Sunday, December 7 at 10am for Music for All Ages, our monthly music appreciation forum including children from the Religious Education program. This week, “You’ve Got Rhythm!” will explore perceptions of time in music and in life. A performance of Ernesto Halffter’s “Dance of the Shepherdess” will be included (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4hq1Ps2GIM for a talk and performance of the piece by Adam Kent). CUC’s Choir is on hand as well with two inspirational anthems, and the morning’s Offertory music includes solo piano selections evocative of the animal world. Click the link below for programming details.
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In the waning days of autumn, Sunday morning’s musical selections include a seasonal work by Tchaikovsky, along with brooding, introspective inspirations by Schubert, MacDowell, and Rachmaninoff. Join us to embrace the darkening season through these timeless classics. Click below for program details.
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Gems of musical Americana, prefaced by a tender expression of gratitude by Unitarian composer Edvard Grieg, highlight our special Thanksgiving service at CUC this Sunday. CUC’s Choir will be on hand as well for this festive occasion. Click on the link below for specifics.
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This Sunday, legendary jazz pianist Valerie Capers and bassist/sopranino recorder player John Richardson are our musical guests. Click on the link below for program and biographical information, and please come with your friends to hear Valerie and her trio on Saturday, November 22 at 7pm, at our annual Jazzfest! event.
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Sunday morning’s musical selections highlight the tricentennial of the birth of Christophe Willibald Glück, the composer credited with bringing a new level of realism to musical drama in his operas. Although Glück did not compose for solo piano, his operatic airs and dance interludes provided great fodder for the musical imaginations of Mozart, Brahms, and Hans von Bülow. Offertory music is Frederic Chopin’s celebrated “Raindrop Prelude”, a work which contrasts serene lyricism with unsettled turbulence. The concluding tranquil mood following an agitated central episode may call to mind our monthly theme of forgiveness. Click below for details.
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Join us this Sunday for a musical celebration of the animal kingdom by CUC’s Choir directed by Lisa N. Meyer and accompanied by Georgianna Pappas in honor of our special Blessing of the Animals service. Consider arriving by 10am in order to hear a special Music for All Ages presentation by Lisa and the Choir, which will preview our December 21 production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s children’s opera Amahl and the Night Visitors. This work embodies our monthly themes of honesty, forgiveness, and love.
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In keeping with October’s theme of death and this Sunday’s sermon on El Día de los Muertos, music for October 26 will feature funeral marches from sonatas by Beethoven and Chopin, an Elegy by Unitarian composer Edvard Grieg, American composer William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost Rag, and Manuel de Falla’s Danza del Terror from the ballet El amor brujo. This last work relates a tale of about a young gypsy woman’s struggles to exorcize the ghost of her deceased lover.
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This Sunday, UU musical legend Jim Scott is our special musical guest. Read on for Jim’s bio and references to his special relationship with CUC.
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This Sunday, we feature guest musicians pianist Marie-Fatima Rudolf and bassist Alec Safy of the Marie-Fatima Rudolf Trio in jazz selections. On Saturday evening, November 22nd, the complete trio returns for our annual Jazzfest! concert at Music at CUC. Click below for performer bios and program:
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This Sunday morning’s musical programming kicks off with a special edition of Music for All Ages, with guest cellist Adrian Daurov. Adrian has performed at worship services and on our concert series in the past, and he returns on October 5 to perform music associated with Yom Kippur. In addition to Max Bruch’s celebrated setting of the holiday prayer Kol Nidre, Adrian and Adam Kent will also team up in works from Ernst Bloch’s Jewish Life cycle for cello and piano. At 10am, Adrian and Adam will offer a special presentation on the cello, its unique sound, and common playing techniques.
CUC’s Choir will also be on hand to perform Mi Yitneni Of, a traditional Jewish melody, and the popular Spiritual Keep Your Lamps.
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S.D.G. Soli Deo Gloria. To the Glory of God Alone. One of the five solae of the Protestant Reformation, the anagram appears on the manuscripts of all of J.S. Bach’s religious music and on many of his secular compositions as well. For Bach, artistic creation was an expression of absolute faith in a divine creator.
The keyboard works performed at this morning’s worship service include arrangements for piano of choral and organ works by J. S. Bach as well as several of his original keyboard pieces. CUC’s Choir also presents music of faith, including a lullaby from the Sephardic tradition in which a mother’s recitation of the Sh’ma lull a baby to sleep.
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At 10 a.m., we launch the first installment of Music for All Ages, a monthly music appreciation interactive presentation by Music Director Adam Kent. This week, the subject is Ludwig van Beethoven: Struggles and Transcendence, and will include performances of the composer’s piano music by Wesley Miller and Adam.
Other musical selections include seasonal works from Tchaikovsky’s Months of the Year cycle, written for the St. Petersburg music journal Nouvellist, and a piece celebrating the arrival of autumn from American composer Edward MacDowell’s Woodland Sketches.
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Music by Unitarian composers Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) and Béla Bartók (1881-1945) complements our service devoted to Unitarian Faith. Both composers were gifted pianists who created a substantial body of work for the instrument. In addition, the Norwegian Grieg and the Hungarian Bartók frequently sought inspiration in the folk music of their respective regions of Europe, casting an orally transmitted tradition in the harmonic and stylistic language of their eras.
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Sunday morning’s music features powerful expressions of Faith from CUC’s Choir, directed by Lisa N. Meyer and accompanied by Georgianna Pappas. These choral selections include a moving setting of words found inscribed on a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany, where Jews hid from the Nazis during the Second World War, and an appealing arrangement of the African-American Spiritual “Every Time I Feel the Spirit”.
To complement our annual Water Communion ceremony, Music Director Adam Kent rounds out Sunday morning’s musical fare with aqueous solo piano works. Claude Debussy’s Sunken Cathedral, Ondine, and Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest, Ernst Bloch’s At Sea, Edward MacDowell’s From the Depths, Franz Liszt’s Au lac de Wallenstadt, and an arrangement of the African-American Spiritual “Deep River” provide a musical overview of the myriad experiences evoked by the life-giving liquid.
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PHOTOGRAPHY
Formal Shots: Michael Dames and James Keyser
Candid Shots in Spain: Joel Weinberg
Candid Shots of Damocles Trio: Sibylle Johner
Carnegie Hall Shots: Young Jang
