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The KPAC Blog features classical music news, reviews, and analysis from South Texas and around the world.

Massive Choir To Take On Mozart Mass

Anne Schelleng
Gary Seighman conducting the 3 combined choirs in rehearsal

The Mozart Festival continues with another event coming up on Wednesday night.  An unusual choral partnership will give a different take on the festival. Here's Trinity University's Gary Seighman.

"We have about 200 singers combined between the San Antonio Choral Society, my singers from Trinity University, and St. Mark's Episcopal Church, under the direction of Joe Causby."

 

Also performing are various orchestral musicians, all told, 250 musicians on stage at once.

"And then we also have members of the San Antonio Symphony who will be performing with us as well, in addition to four world class soloists. It's going to be an epic sound. We're really looking forward to it."

What they're performing is Mozart's Great Mass in C-Minor, an unfinished work. Some think he didn't finish it because of the death of his son, but for whatever reason, their choirs are performing a re-constructed version, conducted consecutively by each choir's director.    

"It's unorthodox to have three different conductors doing a major work. But I think the fact that the work itself is so fragmented, I think that gives us a little leeway."

I noted that at the Tobin with its fine acoustics, people will get to hear everything. He agreed.

"You're going to hear everything," he said. "And to be there on stage for our dress rehearsal, for the first time, to hear it in that space, with the players, with the soloists tomorrow night, we're really looking forward to it."

You won't get a second chance to see it; this is a one-night event.

"It is Wednesday evening at 7:30 p.m., the H-E-B Performance Hall at the Tobin Center."

Seighman adds that "the work is essentially a symphony, an 18th century opera, and a large double choir work all rolled into one. It is highly virtuosic for all of the musicians involved." 

Find more on this event here.

Jack Morgan can be reached at jack@tpr.org and on Twitter at @JackMorganii