“Singing the Bard”, features settings of songs and sonnets by William Shakespeare, allowing us to pay tribute to the literary side of choral singing. Our composers include a few of Shakespeare’s contemporaries (Robert Johnson, Thomas Morley) and then skip ahead to settings by Franz Schubert, Amy Beach, Ralph Vaughan Williams before moving into more contemporary settings by George Shearing, Nils Lindberg, Emma Lou Diemer, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, and Matthew Harris. These contemporary settings exhibit the madrigal spirit of lively part-writing and extravagant word painting, while using a modern harmonic language and rhythmic freedom.
Maria Case will be conducting the read-through of these songs. She is a Toronto-based pianist, singer, choral conductor, composer, and teacher. She holds ARCT Performance Diplomas in Piano and Voice from the Royal Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the University of Toronto. Other studies include conducting, graduate studies in English literature, and jazz studies at Berklee College. Maria is active as an adjudicator at festivals and competitions and a lecturer on piano and theory pedagogy. She has a long association with The Royal Conservatory as a senior examiner of piano and theory, and served as Chief Examiner of Theoretical Subjects from 2007-2013. She is the Music Director of Glebe Road United Church in Toronto and the Artistic Director of The Annex Singers; many of her choral works have been premiered by these two choirs. As a composer, most of her work centers on the voice and is inspired by texts from a wide variety of sources and traditions. Her vocal works are published by Plangere.