Joan Kirchner

Upcoming Events!

May 7th, 4 PM  "Vocal Reveries." Joan Kirchner, voice. Anne Franciose Perrault, piano. Orleans Historical Society, 3 River Road, Orleans. Songs from the Romantic Period by Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. Tickets $20 (discount for CHO members

Joan Kirchner Headlined Early Music Concert on November 19-20

On Sunday, November 20 at 4 pm, Church of the Messiah, 22 Church Street, Woods Hole, MA hosted Courante Cape Cod players Jan Elliott (recorder), Molly Johnston (viola da gamba), David Gable (violin), and Brittany Lord (harpsichord) in a concert titled "Music for a While." This outstanding Cape Cod group performed the same program on Saturday, November 19 at 3 pm at the Federated Church, 320 Main Street, Hyannis. Guest artist for both concerts will be soprano Joan Kirchner. Great performances, both!

Courante performs music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on period instruments. The group's name is taken from a popular baroque dance characterized by sprightly rhythms and triple meter. This concert's attendees will be treated to songs and dances by Henry Purcell, courante by Giovanni Battista Buonamente, songs by Claudio Monteverdi's Scherzi Musicali, and cantatas by Georg Philipp Telemann.

Joan Kirchner Gives Stunning Solo Performance in Chatham Chorale's 50th Anniversary Concerts

On Saturday and Sunday, April 30 and May 1, Music Director Joe Marchio led the Chatham Chorale, chamber ensemble, and guest artists in four concert performances celebrating the Chorale's 50^thanniversary. With Joan Kirchner as the featured soloist, and pianist Donald Enos, hornist Clark Matthews, and organist Julian Petrallia as guest artists, the concerts brought audiences to their feet time after time, with words of praise including "sublime," "inspiring," "a vision of perfection in imperfect times!" The concerts were held at Chatham's magnificent 300-year-old First Congregational Church.

The program’s centerpiece was Requiem for the Living, composed in 2013 by Dan Forrest. It was the Cape Cod premiere of this work, which has been praised as an important contribution to the literature of choral requiems. “We have performed shorter works by Dan Forrest, and our singers and audiences love his music,” said Marchio. “....As the title suggests, this is music to comfort and inspire the living. We’ve had so many occasions to mourn over the past two years, and great music is one thing that helps us go on, to keep celebrating life.”

Forrest ingeniously scored his Requiem for a chamber orchestra of strings, organ, harp, and percussion, which summons forth a surprisingly full sound. The musicians also accompanied soprano Joan Kirchner and the Chorale in Mozart’s much-loved Laudate Dominum from his Solemn Vespers of 1780. 

Individual guest artists stepped forward to perform additional works on the program. Pianist Donald Enos and French horn player Clark Matthews played a movement from Eric Ewazen’s Sonata for Piano and Horn (1992). And Chatham’s own Julian Petrallia, who holds degrees in organ performance from the Eastman School of Music and Southern Methodist University and was mentored on the organ by Marchio, capped the concerts with Louis Vierne’s thrilling Carillon de Westminster. Julian’s virtuosity was displayed on the church's resonant new organ installed in 2021.

Forrest’s requiem uses some of the traditional texts (Kyrie, Agnus Dei, Sanctus), but alters the sequence. Instead of the usual Dies Irae, his second movement sets biblical texts that speak to the turmoil and sorrow of human life to music that is alternately biting and lyrical. The expansive Sanctus offers glimpses of “heavens and earth, full of Thy glory” inspired by images of space from the Hubble Space Telescope. The work closes with a meditative setting of Lux Aeterna: eternal light, peace, and rest for both the dead and the living.