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Oct 24
Now in its 74th season, The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus is celebrated for its versatility and refined musicianship, appearing regularly with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance and Blossom Music Center. As one of the few all-volunteer, professionally trained choruses affiliated with a major American orchestra, it received the 2019–20 Distinguished Service Award, recognizing extraordinary service to the Orchestra.
Visit cochorus.com for more information on the Chorus and auditions.
Director of Choruses
Lisa Wong, a distinguished choral conductor and educator, serves as Director of Choruses for The Cleveland Orchestra. Her work has been described as “nuanced” (The New York Times) and “sensitive, yet powerful” (Cleveland Classical). She has prepared The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and The Blossom Festival Chorus for acclaimed performances under conductors Franz Welser-Möst, Klaus Mäkelä, John Adams, Jane Glover, Susanna Mälkki, Eric Whitacre, and many others.
Lisa served for sixteen years as the Olive Williams Kettering Professor of Music at The College of Wooster. As Director of the award-winning Wooster Chorus, she elevated the ensemble to national prominence through annual domestic tours, performances at state and regional conferences, and the premiere performances of fifteen new works. Her expertise in music education is informed by thirty-two years of classroom experience and extensive work as a clinician, adjudicator, and guest conductor. She has successfully directed choirs at all levels, from elementary and secondary schools to universities and professional community organizations.
A sought-after leader in the field, Lisa has shared her expertise internationally through engagements in Kenya and Singapore. She has served numerous times as a grant panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and Chorus America, and has presented at state and national conferences on varied topics including choral repertoire, rehearsal techniques, and women in leadership. She is beginning her term as President-Elect of the Ohio Choral Directors Association, and has served as the Repertoire and Resource Chair for World Music and Cultures and on the Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Ohio Music Education Association.
With degrees from West Chester University and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Lisa’s academic foundation is complemented by a rich career dedicated to inspiring and nurturing musicians of all ages. Her contributions to both the professional and academic spheres have significantly impacted the choral landscape.
I first encountered Dylan Thomas’s work in 1959, my last undergraduate year at Columbia College. It was a revelation. Both the sound and structures of Thomas’s words were astonishingly musical. Not by accident, either: “What the words meant was of secondary importance; what matters was the sound of them … these words were as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments,” he wrote in his Poetic Manifesto of 1951. I was irresistibly drawn to translate his music into mine.
One poem captivated me: “Fern Hill,” about the poet’s “young and easy” summers at his family’s farm of the same name. I wanted to write this work as a gift for my high school music teacher, Mrs. Bella Tillis, who first encouraged my musical ambitions. She introduced “Fern Hill” with piano accompanying her (and, once, my) school choir.
“Fern Hill” is a blithe poem, yet touched by darkness; time finally holds the poet “green and dying,” but the poem itself, formally just an A–B–A song extended into a wide arch, sings joyously of youth and its keen perceptions. I set it for mezzo-soprano solo, chorus, and orchestra, aiming to match the forthright lyricism of the text. (The direction “with simplicity” is everywhere in the printed score.)
— John Corigliano
Fern Hillby John CoriglianoText by Dylan Thomas (“Fern Hill,” 1945)
CHORUSNow as I was young and easy under the apple boughsAbout the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes,And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple townsAnd once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light.
CHORUS & SOLO QUARTETAnd as I was green and carefree, famous among the barnsAbout the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means,And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calvesSang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams.
MEZZO-SOPRANOAll the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hayFields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple starsAs I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark.
MEZZO-SOPRANO & CHORUSAnd then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer whiteWith the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day.So it must have been after the birth of the simple lightIn the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise.
CHORUSAnd honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay houseUnder the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hayAnd nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allowsIn all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace,
CHORUS & SOLO QUARTETNothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take meUp to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fieldsAnd wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
conductor
For years and years, I’ve been transfixed by [William Blake’s] text: what I felt I was seeing in the music beneath Blake’s words was a kind of longing for the present. It’s almost a road map that he created for how to be truly in the moment. And it starts with that opening line: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand.” Blake, in his ever-mystical way, invites the reader to enter into the infinite world of a grain of sand. Even there, in the smallest, most insignificant thing, lies our entire experience. This displays a deep understanding of the dense, fractal, ephemeral world that exists at every level of our known universe.
I decided to take those four lines and then see if I could create an hour-long piece that was, in a way, a journey deeper and deeper into that grain of sand. And hopefully find at the end of it that there is an essential magnificence that is as grand and beautiful as anything large or seemingly phenomenal. Even in the simple, there is perfection.
— Eric Whitacre
Eternity in an Hourby Eric WhitacreText by William Blake (“Auguries of Innocence,” c. 1803)
I. To see a WorldTo see a World in a Grain of SandAnd a Heaven in a Wild Flower,Hold Infinity in the palm of your handAnd Eternity in an hour.
II. In a Grain of SandIn a Grain of Sand
III. And a HeavenAnd a Heaven
IV. In a Wild FlowerIn a Wild Flower
V. Hold InfinityHold Infinity
VI. In the palm of your handIn the palm of your hand
VII. And Eternity[Wordless]
VIII. In an hourTo see a World in a Grain of SandAnd a Heaven in a Wild Flower,Hold Infinity in the palm of your handAnd Eternity in an hour.
The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus marks its 75th season with a special concert celebrating the rich legacy and vibrant future of this all-volunteer ensemble. Director of Choruses Lisa Wong opens the evening with the Dylan Thomas–inspired Fern Hill by John Corigliano. Following this, Grammy Award–winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre leads the US premiere of his Eternity in an Hour, an expansive meditation on the first four lines of William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence.”
Eternity in an Hour is a US Premiere and TCO Co-Commission.
Support for The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus is provided by:
The Shari Bierman Singer Family
Charles M. Hoppel and Marianne Karwowski Hoppel
Wesley Family Foundation
We offer a variety of concessions before the concert, as well as during intermission.
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