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Photos by Andy Tullis / The Bulletin

Director Clyde Thompson leads the 40-voice Central

Oregon Mastersingers during last Sunday’s rehearsal

Local voicesCentral Oregon Mastersingers begins its 7th season

By David Jasper / The Bulletin

Published: October 21. 2011 4:00AM PST

The 40-piece Central Oregon Mastersingers will kick off its

seventh season tonight at First Presbyterian Church in

Bend (see “If you go”) with what director Clyde Thompson

promises will be “a big concert.”

Thompson is referring to Morten Lauridsen’s “Lux

Aeterna” and Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms,”

two pieces that he says are widely considered to be

among the greatest choral works by American composers.

“They are certainly two of the most popular,” he said.

They’re part of a program that also includes choral works

by Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Pavel Tschesnokoff and

others.

All in all, the concert has been a “pretty big undertaking,”

Thompson said last week, adding with a chuckle, “It’s a

little bigger even than I realized when we started off.”

Since its premiere in 1997, “Lux Aeterna” has become oneof the most frequently performed choral works in the

world, according to Thompson.

“Lux Aeterna” means “Eternal Light,” he said, and “you

can hear the image of light pervading the whole 25-minute

piece — the textures that Lauridsen creates for the choir 

 just seem to shimmer. The music has a sort of translucent

quality. It’s a gorgeous work.”

Lauridsen was awarded the National Medal of Arts in a

White House ceremony in 2007, and according to

Thompson, musicologist and conductor Nick Strimple has

called him “the only American composer in history who

can be called a mystic, (whose) probing, serene work

contains an elusive and indefinable ingredient which

leaves the impression that all the questions have been

answered.”

The inimitable Leonard Bernstein composed “Chichester 

Psalms” in 1965 for the annual music festival at England’s

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for this weekend’s concert, featuring popular choral

works by American composers Morten Lauridsen and

Leonard Bernstein.

If you go

What: Central Oregon MastersingersWhen: 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday

Where: First Presbyterian Church, 230 N.E. Ninth St.,

Bend

Cost: $15, available in advance at www.co-

mastersingers.com or 541-385-7229 or through Visit

Bend (541-382-8048)

Contact: 541-385-7229 or www.co-mastersingers.com

Chichester Cathedral. “The infectious rhythms and heart-

catching melodies in this three-movement setting of psalm

texts has made it a perennial favorite with both singers

and audiences, and one of Bernstein’s most beloved

compositions,” Thompson wrote in a press release for the

event.

“His music is so passionate and visceral in every way —

melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic — it makes this piece a

great joy to sing as well as to listen to,” Thompson said.

“We’ll be performing it with two pianos and two

percussionists, and a whole battery of percussion

instruments, so it will be quite exciting. James Knox

(director of the Cascade Chorale) will be singing the

countertenor solo in the piece.”

Thompson said the program will be rounded out by other 

classics in the choral repertoire: “Works by Vaughan-

Williams, Tschesnokoff, Randall Thompson, Franz Biebl’s great setting of ‘Ave Maria,’ settings of old American hymns byRobert Shaw and Alice Parker and a spiritual by Moses Hogan.

“It’s just gorgeous, gorgeous choral music,” he said of this weekend’s program. “They’re all really standard pieces in the

repertoire, most of them.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com

Published Daily in Bend Oregon by Western Communications, Inc. © 2011

www.bendbulletin.com