Bach Chamber Choir: Memento William Shakespeare
Pius XI High School Performing Arts Center
135 N. 76th Street; 3 p.m., Sunday, April 24
St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church
7845 N. River Road; 3 p.m., Sunday, May 1
Milwaukee’s Bach Chamber Choir commemorates the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death in a fascinating way with “The Bard in Spring”: They’ve assembled a program of works by composers ranging from the Renaissance to today who used The Bard’s immortal words as their musical inspiration. Featured composers include England’s Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), madrigalist Thomas Morley (1557-1602), Franz Schubert and Ralph Vaughan Williams. A highlight is Britain’s John Rutter (b. 1945), whose Shakespeare settings hearken back to the age of lute and madrigal, but infuse these traditional elements with jazz-like buoyancy and rhythm. (John Jahn)
Racine Symphony Orchestra: Racine’s Young Talent at Center Stage
Racine Theatre Guild
2519 Northwestern Ave., Racine
7:30 p.m., Saturday, April 23
The Racine Symphony Orchestra wraps up their season with a Masterworks Concert that focuses on the city’s budding Classical instrumentalists. The winner of the RSO’s Young Artists’ Competition will perform a solo encore, and several young members of the orchestra’s Side-by-Side Youth Invitational will share the stage alongside their adult musical mentors. A good portion of the program will consist of Johannes Brahms’ Serenade No. 1 in D Major, Op. 11 (1859). This sweetly bucolic, six-movement work was the composer’s first published orchestral piece, a feat accomplished with considerable effort at the urging of Brahms’ own mentor (and most ardent champion) Robert Schumann. (John Jahn)
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