Great Music for Great Cathedrals 2007

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JAMES SAVAGE, director w JEFF ROBBINS, lighting design

Narrator Dick Foley begins the program with an ode by Cathedral parishioner Tom Stratman: "Cathedral! Center of the city; hub of life!"

Organists Joseph Adam and Clint Kraus take us to the beginnings of Cathedral music, playing the medieval organ.

"Nostra phalans," a joyful procession in honor of St. James.

Following a medieval song in honor of St. James, the children spring into a rousing Easter song from Malawi in Central Africa: "Why are you looking for the living Christ where the dead do rest in the tomb? Christ is risen, now the tomb is empty!"

Howard Fankhauser is the medieval priest and mystic Abelard in "O Quanta Qualia." The angel is the work of Kitty Kavanaugh.

The great processional Feierlicher Einzug of Richard Strauss has been featured in every one of the twenty-one presentations of Great Music.

Cathedral servers give honor to the cathedra, the bishop's chair, in the narration at the conclusion of the great Strauss processional.

The Cathedral Brass join the choir in the North American premiere of Te Deum by Giuseppe Liberto, maestro of the Sistine Chapel. This piece was performed at the installation of Pope Benedict XVI in April, 2005.

A Great Music standard is Biebl's Ave Maria.

The young men of St. Edward's Vocal Ensemble joined the men of the Cathedral Choir in singing the Angelus.

Lighting designer Jeff Robbins provided a dramatic setting for the women of St. James Schola to sing a medieval praise song, "A Sancto Jacobo."

The finale of Act I is Parry's great antiphon I was glad.

The young women of Jubilate! become the maids of honor for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II a half-century ago.

The crown is the work of Cathedral parishioner and chorister Daniel C. Baker.

INTERMISSION

Benjamin Britten's Fanfare for St. Edmundsbury opens the second half of the program.

The women of St. James Schola take us back to Hagia Sofia, Constantinople in the 9th century.

17th century Paris: Francois Couperin's Office of Tenebrae.

Cathedral servers extinguish the candles of the beautiful Tenebrae candlestick one by one, leaving the Cathedral in darkness.

Giovanni Gabrieli was an organist and composer at San Marco in Venice during the high Renaissance. His "quadraphonic" style influenced church music for centuries.

Notre Dame, Paris, 15th century: Ockeghem's transcendent setting of Alma Redemptoris Mater.

Joseph Adam at the organ and the Cathedral brass present Naji Hakim's Hymn to the Sacred Heart for Seven Trumpets and Organ under the direction of Dr. Savage.

The historic image of Our Lady of Seattle is bathed in golden light as the women of the Cathedral Choir, the Women of St. James Schola, and Jubilate! Young Women's Ensemble join in Verdi's setting of a text by Dante, Laudi alla Vergine Maria.

The young men of St. Edward's Vocal Ensemble become angels in Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sancta Civitas (1925).

Audrey Djunaedi played the haunting violin solo.

The extraordinary lighting effects transform the Cathedral into a vision of the heavenly city.

Great Music for Great Cathedrals celebrates music, cathedrals, and the arts. It is the vision of Cathedral music director Dr. James Savage. The first Great Music was presented in 1986.

View photos of Great Music 2005 w 2004

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