Mt. Airy-based Network for New Music has announced a series of concerts to open the new year. The first is set for Saturday, Jan. 27. It will feature Daniel Asia’s “Breath in a Ram’s Horn” for voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. The program also includes Judith Shatin’s “Elijah’s Chariot” for string quartet and electronics as well as works by other local composers. Gary White, the music director of the Philadelphia Sinfonia, will conduct.

The season continues Feb. 17 in the ICEBOX Project Space with Natacha Diels’ “Somewhere Beautiful;” April 21 in the Haverford College Arboretum with “A Murmur in the Trees;” and May 5 at Settlement Music School with “Unbreakable Beauty.”

The “Settlement connection” also marked the opening of Network’s 2023-24 season Oct. 21 & 23, 2023, with a tribute to the late Robert Capanna. He was the executive director/president of Settlement Music School for more than two decades. The concert featured his work for solo flute, “Stria,” which was performed by Ed Schultz.

Susanna Loewy is the newly named executive director of Network for New Music. A flutist and well-established teacher on the faculties of Haverford College and Rowan University, she has been on post since September 2023.

For ticket information visit www.networkfornewmusic.org.

The Hill Alive with Singing

Chestnut Hill was alive with the sound of singing the weekend of Jan. 13 & 14. The Academy of Vocal Arts paid a visit to the Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Saturday afternoon, the Choir of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Whitemarsh, stopped by to sing at the Woodmere Art Museum Saturday evening, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church marked the conclusion of Christmastide with an Epiphany Lessons & Carols late Sunday afternoon.

In a sign of the depth and breadth of local support for great music beautifully sung, all three events were exceedingly well-attended.

Although most performances of Franz Schubert’s song cycle, “Winterreise,” feature only one singer (usually a baritone), AVA vocal coach and pianist Luke Housner took advantage of the school’s bevy of fantastic young vocalists to assign four individuals the task of communicating the composer’s bleak view of young love turned sour.

Tenor Luke Norvell sang the first six songs, mezzo-soprano Alla Yarosh sang numbers seven through twelve, bass-baritone Dylan Gregg essayed 13 through 17, and baritone Benjamin Dickerson interpreted the final six.

Norvell and Dickerson were particular standouts, the former catching those fleeting glimmers of optimism the poet has not yet abandoned, the latter delineating the burned-out embers of love when all hope has been discarded. Norvell sang with a gently glowing warmth of tone while Dickerson stripped his resonant voice of all color.

Housner accompanied his singers with consummate artistry and pianistic virtuosity, eliciting a kaleidoscope of timbers from the limited tonal arsenal of the church’s piano.

Woodmere

Michael Smith led the Choir of St. Thomas’ Church in a program of choral music based upon the artworks of Barbara Bullock currently on display at Woodmere. In music reaching back to the 16th century as well as scores from our own time, the choir sang with impressive power, excellent diction, seamless blend and balance, and a potent projection of the inner meaning of the texts set to music.

Most impressive were the interpretations given the music that comprised the concert’s second segment, “Most Precious Blood.” Best of these was the rendition of William Byrd’s “Ave, verum corpus” (“Hail, true Body”). The score’s immaculate polyphony delineating its chaste Latin text glows with inner conviction of the truth of the old faith, and Smith and his choristers sang Byrd’s sublime music with passion and polish.  

Lessons & Carols

St. Paul’s director of music, Andrew Kotylo, conducted singers from his adult choir and treble choristers and organ scholar Andy Brown in an impressive roster of music late Sunday afternoon in a liturgy that spanned the entire season of Christmastide. Starting with the Old Testament prophesies of the coming of a Messiah and traveling through to the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ on the mountaintop, Kotylo and his musicians celebrated the connection between the Jewish and Christian faiths in music drawn from centuries ago through our own time.

His choice of scores was inspired by their appropriateness to the Lessons and the interpretations of them he elicited from his singers and Brown were no less memorable for their beauty and insight. Of all the characteristics of the many performances that struck me most powerfully was Kotylo’s ability to blend the potentially different timbers of adult female sopranos with those of childhood trebles, both boys and girls. They sang as one choral instrument whose whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Together, they joined with the choir’s altos, tenors and basses to proffer readings of broad-based emotional variety and focused projections of those feelings.

St. Paul’s Church will host a Choral Evensong for the Conversion of St. Paul Sunday, Jan. 28, at 5 p.m.

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net.