The Cornerstone Chorale

Repertoire

Photo: Regina Gradess

The 1998-99 season was very active, including two performances of Brahms' Requiem (at Grace Church and the Cornerstone Center) with the Third Street Orchestra, recording incidental music for the play The Wind of Heaven and concluding with the final project Carmina Burana, with a children's chorus drawn from the immediate neighborhood. The Chorale reprised excerpts of Carmina Burana at the Festival of Creative Communities at the World Trade Center in 2000.
In 1999-2000, in addition to music of the German, Spanish, and New World renaissance (with period instruments), the Chorale performed Handel's Messiah. A fund-raising cabaret evening of music and merriment, the Café Concert, brought out a very different side of the group's members. A performance of Bach's Mass in B Minor was a milestone for this organization — a most challenging and rewarding project, in the year of the 250th anniversary of the death of Bach.
Also during the 1999-2000 concert season, the Cornerstone Chorale performed with the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble and the John P. Stevens High School Chorus. In 2001, the chorale reached another high point in a performance of Mozart's Mass in C minor.
In the spring of 2002, the Chorale performed the Fauré's beautiful Requiem and Cantique de Jean Racine at Good Shepherd Church in Inwood. Later in 2002, Respighi's Laud to the Nativity, and Ramirez' Misa Criolla were also performed at Good Shepherd Church.
In May of 2003, the Cornerstone Chorale presented Mozart's Requiem, one of the best-loved and most well-known works in choral literature. In the fall of that year, the Chorale featured Saint-Saëns' Christmas Oratorio, and Britten's Missa Brevis in D at Holyrood Church in Washington Heights.
In the spring of 2004, the Cornerstone Chorale cemented its reputation for presenting exciting choral works with a performance of Beethoven's Mass in C, and the Alto Rhapsody of Brahms.
Later in 2004, the Cornerstone Chorale presented Handel's Dixit Dominus and the seldom heard Bach motet der Gerechte kommt um with orchestra, in addition to Daniel Pinkham's The Lament of David.
The Chorale presented Vaughan Williams' Dona nobis pacem in 2005, along with Donald Grantham's setting of the Mark Twain poem The War Prayer (NY premiere) and Barber's Agnus dei (choral version of the Adagio for Strings), featuring Charlie Baad, baritone, and Adrienne Patino, soprano.
In January of 2006 the Cornerstone Chorale surveyed five centuries of choral music, with the Missa Secunda of Hans Leo Hassler, and works of Johannes Ockeghem, Orlando di Lasso, William Byrd, Salamone Rossi, George Friedric Handel, Johannes Brahms, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Houston Bright, Maurice Duruflé, Benjamin Britten, and Williametta Spencer.
Later in the spring, the Chorale performed the Requiem of John Rutter, also featuring the Gregorian chant Victimae paschali laudes, the Ave Maria of Victoria, Duruflé’s Tota pulchra es, and Lux aurumque of Eric Whitacre, at Good Shepherd Church.
Music of American choral composers was featured at Holyrood Church in the fall of 2006; and in the spring of 2007, the Cornerstone Chorale performed Bach Cantatas, featuring BWV 131 Aus der Tiefen and the well-loved BWV 140, Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme with orchestra and soloists. The fall of 2007 saw the reprise performance of the Duruflé Requiem.