Make Our Garden Grow

Contra Costa Chorale Spring 2024 Concert

Over the years the Contra Costa Chorale has performed concerts highlighting choral music specific to minority representations. “Amazing Grace” followed the development of Black music from its origins in Africa, to the music of enslaved people, which ultimately led to jazz, blues, and gospel music. “Out of the Shadows” was a concert consisting totally of women composers from the medieval and Renaissance periods to the 21stcentury.

Even though progress has been made in including underrepresented groups of composers, we must take the responsibility through our performances to do whatever is possible to have equal footing in programming with the white male composers who have dominated the world of Western Music. 

Our Spring concert, “Make Our Garden Grow,” will bring together music written by Blacks, women, Indigenous peoples, and the LGBTQ+ community to make our audiences aware of, not only the inequities in programming, but also the amazingly beautiful music that too often is not given the status it deserves, overtaken by the dominance of the traditional white male in Western Music. 

The highlight of the concert will be a commissioned piece by Joan Szymko, widely regarded as an outstanding composer of choral music in America today. Her piece, “Seed,” is based on a poem “Declaration” by Elsa Gidlow, best known for writing On a Grey Thread, the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry published in North America. We are honored that Ms. Szymko has taken on this commission in celebration of Cindy Beitmen’s 12th anniversary directing the Chorale, and we will be very excited to present it for the first time at our spring concert.

This concert showcases guest artists Rev. Carolyn Anderson and the Gathering Desire Community Fellowship singing gospel presentations of the historical ‘Spirituals’ in addition to joining the Chorale in singing Let Everything That Hath Breath, a gospel piece by composer Jeffery Ames.

We celebrate the diversity of choral music, bringing together composers who may have been previously marginalized or overlooked. We also rejoice in this opportunity to make a place at our table for guest artists with a variety of perspectives, cultures, musical styles, gender expressions, and lived experiences historical and contemporary. We invite you to recognized with us that music becomes all–especially music that comes from with ourselves, sung by and for all of us.

The Chorale will present two live performances:

May 11, 5:00pm PDT
Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley
1 Lawson Road, Kensington
(livestream also provided)

May 12, 5:00pm PDT
Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church,
1801 Lacassie Avenue, Walnut Creek

Contra Costa Chorale

Fall 2023 Concert

HEADLINES FROM VIENNA, AUSTRIA!

Savvy reporters have uncovered the somewhat well-kept secret that Mozart only wrote about one half to two thirds of his famed Requiem before he died! Even though the entire work is attributed to our darling savant, Wolfgang, the last three movements were written by, shall we say, lesser composers, since he did not survive to finish it in its entirety.

On December 2nd and 3rd, the Contra Costa Chorale performed the newly published 2022 Bärenreiter edition of the Mozart “Requiem,” which was completed and edited by Michael Ostrzyga. Mozart died before the completion of the “Requiem,” and thus various composers, most outstanding of whom was Franz Süssmayr, one of Mozart’s students, finished about one third of the total “Requiem.” There has been much controversy over the years concerning Süssmayr’s completion and therefore since 1941 there have been 4 partial completions, and no less than 16 full completions from various composers.

What may set this edition apart is that Ostrzyga has done an enormous amount of historical research in considering valid possibilities for the last three movements for which Mozart left no sketches. As Ostrzyga states, “I do not see my edition as being a substitute for Süssmayr’s completion, but rather as an alternative as perhaps Mozart could have composed in 1791.” Although any of these 16 completions in the last 82 years may be valid in one way or another, Ostrzyga comes to his completion with much historical evidence to back up his musical decisions.

We presented Mozart’s “Requiem” from a fresh perspective that, nonetheless, is closely tied to the “Requiem” you have always known through the years as a masterpiece in choral literature.

Accompanying the singers were two pianists, Martin Morley (the Chorale’s regular accompanist) and Chun Mei Wilson, and a  string chamber orchestra. The soloists were Rita Lilly, soprano; Gabriela Estephanie Solis, alto; Mitch Ashley, tenor; and Liam Daley, bass.


Would you like to hear us right now? Click on the audio files below to experience works from our past concerts:

Ain’ a that good news – arr. William Dawson

Bonse aba – arr. Andrew Fisher

Agnus Dei from Lux Aeterna – Morten Lauridsen

Chichester Psalms_Mvt 1 – Leonard Bernstein

Who is Silvia – George Shearing