The Santa Barbara Music Club's next free concert will take place at 3 p.m. Saturday in the Faulkner Gallery of the Santa Barbara Public Library, 40 E. Anapamu St.
The featured performers will be Grey Brothers and the Westmont Chamber Singers, and we will also be treated to performances by pianist Donna Massello-Chiacos, and by soprano Rachelle Woolston with pianist Coleen Thatcher.
The afternoon will begin with Brothers and his Westmont group performing Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's "Missa Brevis (1570)"; Roderick Williams' "Let Nothing Trouble You" (2011); Howard Helvey's reworking of the beautiful folk song "Shenandoah" (2001); "The Ol’ Chisolm Trail" (arranged by Larsen); and Louisiana composer Robert MacGimsey's "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" (1934). Then Massello-Chiacos will play Franz Schubert's Piano Sonata in A-Minor, D. 784 (1823).
The concert will conclude with Woolston singing three of Richard Strauss' "Six Songs After Poems by Clemens Brentano, Opus 68 (1918)" with the able collaboration of Thatcher.
Here is a program that begins with vocal music from the late 16th century and ends with vocal music from the early 20th. The Palestrina mass must be much more brevis than usual, since it's hard to figure how they'll shoehorn all this music into their customary hour program. The Palestrina lasts about 22 minutes; the Schubert about 25. That doesn't leave much time for the Strauss and the folksongs.
Oh, well, I'm sure it will work out, and be wonderful.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at [email protected]. The opinions expressed are his own.
