Friday, November 24, 2017

ABS Begins 29th Season Next Month at Grace

Interior of Grace Cathedral (photograph by Daderot, from Wikimedia Commons, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

The 2017–2018 season for American Bach Soloists (ABS) will officially get under way next month with its twentieth consecutive year of Christmas performances of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 56 oratorio Messiah. Since 1998 ABS has presented this work in Grace Cathedral to more than 40,000 attendees. Next month’s performances will feature three ABS debut appearances by soprano Suzanne Karpov, countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, and baritone Hadleigh Adams. They will be joined by tenor Zachary Wilder. Both Cohen and Adams are former Merolini. Adams was an Adler Fellow with the San Francisco Opera and Cohen is a member of the "incoming class" of Adler Fellows for 2018, who were named earlier this week. Karpov, in turn, is an alumna of the ABS Academy, as is Cohen. Artistic Director Jeffrey Thomas will conduct the leading period-instrumentalists of the ABS ensemble, joined by the historically informed singers of the American Bach Choir.

All performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 13. Thursday, December 14, and Friday, December 15, respectively. Grace Cathedral is located at the top of Nob Hill at 1100 California Street, between Taylor Street and Jones Street. Ticket prices range between $20 and $125. Tickets for any of the performances may be purchased from a single Web page on the ABS Web site. Each of the three performance dates has a hyperlink showing the different areas in the Grace sanctuary corresponding to the different price levels. Mousing over any of these areas shows which seats are available for sale. Tickets may also be purchased by calling 800-595-4849 (4TIX).

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