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UW Symphony and Combined University Choirs

$15 ($10 students/seniors), Notecard
Full orchestra

Geoffrey Boers conducts the University Symphony and combined UW Chamber Singers and University Chorale in a performance of works by Verdi, Bernstein, and Prokofiev.

PROGRAM DETAILS

Verdi:Stabat Mater

Bernstein:Chichester Psalms

Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky Cantata, Op. 78

CONDUCTOR BIO

Geoffrey Boers, choirs

Geoffrey Boers is Director of Choral Activities at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is the Mary K. Shepman Endowed Professor of Music. Under his direction, the choral program at the University of Washington has grown to include nearly twenty graduate choral conductors each year, as well as nine ensembles conducted by five faculty and many graduate students, with nearly 600 singers participating.

Geoffrey conducts the UW Chamber Singers, the university's premier ensemble of graduate and advanced singers. The Chamber Singers performs nationally and internationally, most recently having returned from Hungary for a concert tour. Last Spring, the choir performed Monteverdi's rarely heard masterpiece, 1610 Vespers. He also teaches graduate choral conducting and choral pedagogy, and serves as faculty advisor as part of the graduate choral curriculum. He is the recipient of the University of Washington's prestigious Royalty Research Foundation Grant, which allowed him to travel to the Baltic region and to establish the UW Baltic Choral Music Library, the first of its kind in the United States.

Geoffrey maintains an active conducting, teaching, workshop and clinic schedule. Recent engagements have taken him to Australia, mainland China, Thailand, Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall, and Kennedy Center, where he serves as Artistic Director for the Washington D.C. Choral Festival. He especially enjoys working with conductors and their choirs with focus on building communication through gesture and expressivity, and building community within the ensemble. Geoffrey is also exploring the idea spirare, or the connection between breath and spirit, in disciplines as far reaching as Yoga , Tai Chi and world faith systems. This study is leading to evolving thoughts of gesture as it relates to breath, evocation of sound, and touching the heart.

In addition to his position at the UW, Boers is the conductor of the Tacoma Symphony Chorus and will conduct the Tacoma Symphony in numerous performances this season.

 

David Alexander Rahbee, UW Symphony

Conductor David Alexander Rahbee is a native of Boston. He studied conducting at the New England Conservatory, Université de Montréal, Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna and at the Pierre Monteux School. He also studied violin and composition at Indiana University. He further refined his artistic training by participating in master-classes with Kurt Masur, Sir Colin Davis, Jorma Panula, Zdeněk Mácal, Peter Eötvös, Zoltán Peskó, Helmut Rilling and Otto-Werner Mueller.

In September 2013, he will become conductor of the orchestra at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he will work closely with Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot to build a new program for talented young conductors.

He was awarded the American-Austrian Foundation "Herbert von Karajan Fellowship" for young conductors in Salzburg (2003), as well as fellowships from International "Richard-Wagner-Verband-Stipend" in Bayreuth, Germany (2005), the Acanthes Centre in Paris (2007) and the Atlantic Music Festival in the USA (2010).

At the Salzburg Festival in 2003 he was assistant conductor of the International Attergau Institute Orchestra, where he also worked artistically with members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and guest conductors including Bobby McFerrin.

He has appeared in concert with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, l'Orchestre de la Francophonie, the Dresden Hochschule Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica de Loja (Ecuador), the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, "Cool Opera" of Norway (members of the Stavanger Symphony), the Savaria Symphony Orchestra, Schönbrunner Schloss Orchestra (Vienna), the Gächinger Kantorei, the Bach-Kollegium Stuttgart, the Kammerphilharmonie Berlin-Brandenburg and the Divertimento Ensemble of Milan.

In the genre of contemporary musical theatre, Rahbee lead a fully staged production of Bruno Maderna's chamber opera Satyricon with the Divertimento Ensemble. He also lead this ensemble in the Italian premiere of Helmut Lachenmann's Mouvement – vor der Erstarrung.

The first of his several ground-breaking articles on Gustav Mahler, “Gustave Charpentier’s Louise and Mahler’s Sixth Symphony” appears in the spring 2013 edition of the music journal Sonus.

His arrangement of the Overture to Rossini's Barber of Seville for trombone quartet has been recorded and released on CD by Summit Music, played by the quartet known as Four of a Kind, four of the world’s greatest trombonists. This arrangement, along with many others, is published by Warwick Music, England.

 

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