Brian Thorsett to Give Next Candlelight Concert

Tenor Brian Thorsett (from the Facebook Events Web page for this concert)

The next event in the 2018–2019 Candlelight Concert Series at The Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin will be an evening of art song featuring tenor Brian Thorsett. His accompanist will be Eric Choate, Director of Music at the Church and organizer of the concert series. Choate will also be one of the composers on the program, since Thorsett will be singing some of his latest art songs.

The program will also include Robert Schumann’s Opus 48 song cycle Dichterliebe (a poet’s love), setting texts from the Lyrisches Intermezzo by Heinrich Heine. This will be followed by Samuel Barber’s Opus 24, “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” which remains one of the most accomplished settings of prose text in the vocal repertoire. The author is James Agee, who wrote the text in 1938. After Agee’s death in 1955, when David McDowell was editing the manuscript for Agee’s autobiographical novel A Death in the Family for publication, he decided to add “Knoxville” as a preamble, even though there was no indication that Agee would have done this. Nevertheless, it is through its incorporation into A Death in the Family that the text is now best known.

This concert will begin at 5 p.m. on Saturday, November 10. The church is located in Cow Hollow at 2325 Union Street. Thanks to the generosity of many donors, all of the concerts in this series are offered without charge. Nevertheless, there will be a request for free-will donations, all of which, regardless of size, are gladly received and are tax-deductible.