Another fabulous performance from @cincinnatifusionensemble under founder and principal conductor Howard Helvey and pianist Brad Caldwell. Much of their repertoire for this evening’s performance included music that had previously been performed, largely works by Helvey, Marianne Forman and Elaine Hagenberg. These included Helvey’s Canticles in B-Flat and Set Me as a Seal, Hagenberg’s O Love and William Henry Smith’s arrangement of the spiritual Ride the Chariot. All of these works received high-spirited and luminous performances from the ensemble, as expected. These works were also sung as part of an ongoing professional recording project that will carry over into next spring.
Newer repertoire featured included recently-composed settings of the texts For the Facing of this Hour and In Bright Mansions Above, which demonstrate Helvey’s masterful facility with setting text to creative, yet inviting melodies.
Guest organist Chase Loomer, associate Director of Music at the Cathedral of St Phillip in Atlanta, took the solo spotlight in repertoire by Florence Price, William Grant Still, Herbert Howells, Maurice Ravel (Loomer’s own transcription of a movement from Le Tombeau de Couperin) and a recently-composed Toccata Française by Atlanta-based organist Raymond Chenault which put Calvary Episcopal Church’s Skinner organ through its paces in every sense of the word.
Wonderful contributions were also provided by the Colerain High School Chamber Choir under Audrey Weber in works by Bach and Kinley Lange. While the choir was very well prepared, a larger number of singers would have helped round out their sound but it was enjoyable all the same. The final two combined works on the program by Mack Wilberg, settings of Peace Like a River and It Is Well with My Soul, most definitely raised the roof. This concert has once again proved that Cincinnati Fusion Ensemble is a shining jewel of choral singers in the Queen City, and I certainly their upcoming recording project will expose this group to a much wider audience.
Bravi!
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