The Between Two Colleges area will be chock full of music for the thirty days that begin this Thursday at Cal Poly. The list below has ten events in Pomona, Walnut, Claremont and Ontario featuring local chorales, college choirs, community orchestras and our area’s own opera company.
Curiouser and curiouser…as though a memo went out to local music people last year with a concert series theme, three of the groups in the upcoming concerts below seem to be part of a game of musical tag that began with the 17 February benefit concert, ‘If Music Be the Food Of Love.’ The Chaffey College choirs were ‘it’ next, in a concert of the same name, singing the piece by Dickau, ‘If Music Be The Food of Love,’ this time with text from Heveningham, not Shakespeare.
The Dickau piece and the same text set by Gwyneth Walker appear on the Claremont Chorale program about appetites that includes a popular paean to the pleasures of coffee drinking, and Verdi’s best known song about drinking stronger stuff. Meanwhile, the Cal Poly choirs will sing this coffee drinker’s favorite and more music on drinking in a program of common vices.
The last group to be ‘it’ in this mostly accidental concert series would be the Repertory Opera Company. (on 22, 26 & 28 June) as it presents the opera from which Verdi’s Brindisi comes, La Traviata. The ROC is sharing not only this song, but as circumstances have developed, sharing the stage with the Claremont Chorale, as its soloists join with the Chorale as it sings the music of Verdi on June 8.
Here’s to coincidence!
Choral Concerts and more, 30 May to 28 June
Thursday, 30 May, 8:00 p.m., Cal Poly Pomona Kellogg Chamber Singers and Concert Choir, in “The Usual Vices,” from drinking and dancing to desire.
Friday, 31 May, 8:00 p.m., Mount San Antonio College Chamber Singers and Concert Choir, ‘Spring Celebration of Choral Music,’ no program information available.
Saturday, 1 June, 8:00 p.m., Mount San Antonio College Chamber Singers and Concert Choir ‘Spring Celebration of Choral Music,’ no program information available.
Saturday, 8 June, 3:00 p.m., The Claremont Chorale, Claremont. “Thirsting to Sing,” including music by Pinkham, Rutter, Verdi, Walker, Dickau, Petker, and others.
Sunday, 9 June, 3:30 p.m., The Mountainside Master Chorale, Claremont, “Sure on This Shining Night: Music by American Composers” with music by Lauridsen, Whitacre, Houston, Thompson, Stroope, and others.
Sunday, 9 June, 3:30 p.m., The Claremont Symphony Orchestra, Fundraising concert with the Spectrum quartet, Claremont
Saturday, 22 June, 2 p.m., Repertory Opera Company, La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, in Pomona
Wednesday, 26 June, 7:30 p.m., Repertory Opera Company, La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, in Pomona
Sunday, 23 June, 7 p.m., Southland Symphony Orchestra, “Spirit of America” with music of Copland, Gould, Sousa, Berlin, and others, in Ontario
Friday, 28 June, 7:30 p.m., Repertory Opera Company, La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, in Pomona