Steeple Concerts at St. Paul's announces 2019-2020 season lineup
Steeple Concerts at St. Paul’s is proud to announce its program for the 2019-2020 season. The season includes five concerts that feature a mix of instrumental and vocal music for all tastes. All concerts are scheduled on Sunday afternoons at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 414 East Broad Street, Westfield, NJ.
The season opens on Sunday, September 22, with the Argus Quartet, a string quartet which has quickly acquired an impressive reputation since its founding in Los Angeles in 2013. The group is dedicated to celebrating the artistic landscape of our time by drawing unexpected connections across styles and centuries in order to foster community amongst performers, audiences, and composers alike. They have performed at many prestigious venues, including Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Halls, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, and the Ravinia Festival. Highlights of the 2019-20 season include debut performances for Washington Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series.
Lara St. John, violinist, will perform a varied program of traditional classical as well as folk-inspired music on November 17, with Matt Herskowitz at the piano. Canadian-born St. John has been described as a “high-powered soloist” by The New York Times. She has performed as soloist with the orchestras of Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle, as well as the Boston Pops and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, among others. Her 2008 world premiere recording of Matthew Hindson’s Violin Concerto prompted Gramophone to write: “It’s the sort of work that should get audiences running, not walking, back to concert halls on new-music nights.” Her 2016 release of re-imagined folk music with pianist Matt Herskowitz received a five-star review from All About Jazz.
The concert on January 26 features a change of pace with the Canadian Guitar Quartet. Founded in 1999, the Quartet has performed at the 92nd Street Y, among other venues, and has been broadcast on the CBC and Radio-Canada. Their most recent album, Mappa Mundi, includes works ranging from an arrangement of a Vivaldi concerto for two cellos for guitar quartet to a work paying homage to the traditional and modern tango of Argentina.
March 26 brings The Westerlies, a brass quartet, to Westfield. Based in New York, the group is made up of four childhood friends from Seattle and features music for two trumpets and two trombones. Their programs explore jazz, roots and chamber music influences to create the rarest of hybrids: music that is both "folk-like and composerly, lovely and intellectually rigorous” (NPR Music). The Westerlies navigate a wide array of venues and projects with the precision of a string quartet, the audacity of a rock band, and the charm of a family sing-along.
The season concludes with the traditional Masterworks Concert featuring the choir of St. Paul’s Church with orchestra. This year’s concert, “Beethoven & Dvořák”, features Antonin Dvořák’s “Mass in D” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasy”. The Dvořák Mass exhibits the influence of Czech folk music while scholars have noted similarities between the Beethoven Fantasy and his later Ninth Symphony.
Season subscriptions, as well as tickets to individual concerts, are available on the Steeple Concerts website at www.steepleconcerts.org. Adult subscriptions to the full season are priced at $100, with student subscriptions at $40. Individual tickets to the first four concerts are $25 for adults and $10 for students, with tickets for the Masterworks Concert priced at $35 for adults and $15 for students.