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May 26, 2010

Adelfos will once again be performing as part of the I Madonnari Italian street art festival. Come hear a preview of our spring program "The Music of the Three Romes," as well as some old favorites, inside the Old Mission Santa Barbara at 6:00p on Sunday, May 30.

November 28, 2009

Once again, Adelfos Ensemble will be presenting our holiday concert at the Old Mission Santa Barbara, 2201 Laguna Street in Santa Barbara, on Saturday, December 12, 2009 at 8:00p.

Our program will include sacred music of Advent spanning the centuries, as well as traditional holiday songs and carols in both familiar and new arrangements. Please join us for this special evening of a cappella music in a most splendid setting.

December 9, 2008 - Santa Barbara News-Press

In splendid Mission setting, Adelfos Ensemble plays to space, time

by Josef Woodard, News-Press Correspondent

As tradition would have it, Christmastime is a ripe occasion for choral music in the public sphere. Santa Barbara has heard plenty in recent weeks, various ensembles in various settings.

So far, we have heard the Santa Barbara Master Chorale's Bach Christmas Oratorio, at First Presbyterian Church, and the 60-year-old Santa Barbara Choral Society's take on Handel's "Messiah," at The Granada over the weekend. Coming up on Dec. 19 and 20 at St. Anthony's Seminary chapel is another impressive local group, Quire of Voyces.

Not to be overlooked, from yet another corner, is noteworthy newcomer, Adelfos Ensemble. Founded in 2004, the eight-man a cappella group presented a fascinating, history- and culture-hopping concert at the Santa Barbara Mission on Friday night, further asserting the group's solid footing in the vocal scene here.

Yes, the choir did acknowledge the sounds of the season upon us, with "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," the French carol "March of the Kings" and the lesser-known English carol "On Christmas Day." And the concert-attired singers and ruffian public alike sang carols outside the Mission at a post-concert reception.

More to the point, however, was the aplomb of the ensemble's work and the intrigue of its varied programming. Inside the splendor of the MIssion, Friday night's concert won high marks for ambience, as well, given the mostly sacred nature of the music. The Adelfos seemed to be playing to the time and space of the occasion on a few levels.

The concert included a fair measure of ancient liturgical works, from the 7th century Latin hymn "Te lucis ante terminum" to the hypnotic Gregorian chant "Christus natus est nobis, attentions also shifted to other sources. American composer Jacob Kimball's 1793 hymn "Good News" opened the concert, and Lynette Johnson's "Hodie: Plainchant for Two Voices" was another winning piece.

From the deep English choral resources, the Adelfos pulled out Renaissance composer Robert Wylkynson's hypnotic "Jesus autem transiens/Credo in Deum," a woozy web of overlapping parts in mad canon form. We also heard acclaimed contemporary British composer John Tavener's "The Lamb," circa 1979, with subtle points of dissonance salting an otherwise consonant concoction.

Some of the most compelling music of the program, in fact, came from sources east of the usual European repertoire. Two of the most captivating pieces of the concert came from terrain once part of the USSR. Possibly the jewel of this program, the Adelfos' performance of the 12th century Georgian Orthodox hymn "Shen Khar Venakhi" beguiled with its chaste, sonorous beauty.

Closer to historical home, the great living Estonian composer Arvo Pärt - sometimes dubbed, along with Tavener, one of the "holy Minimalists" - was represented, if all too briefly, by his 1991-penned "O Adonai (Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen, No. 2)." It ends on a note of subdued jubilation, characteristic of Mr. Pärt's innate ability to mete out sublimity with a touch of post-Modern remove.

Capping off the musical journey with Italian music of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Adelfos Ensemble left a strong impression on this night. To be sure, the aura of the context helped, but it was the assured delivery and strategic planning of the music that did the real bidding for hearts and minds.

October 31, 2008

Adelfos Ensemble is pleased to announce that our Christmas concert, entitled Sing We Noel!, will take place on Friday, December 5, 2008 at 7:30 PM at Old Mission Santa Barbara, 2201 Laguna Street in Santa Barbara.

The first Christmas concert by an outside performing group at the Old Mission in over ten years, Adelfos Ensemble will present works of sacred Christmas music spanning nine centuries. The program will feature pieces by Tavener, Parker & Shaw, Part, Wylkynson, local composer Lynette Johnson, and arrangements by our own Michael Eglin and Temmo Korisheli.

Tickets are $20, students and seniors $15 and are available online at adelfosensemble.com, from your friendly neighborhood Adelfos Ensemble singer or Board member, or at the door. Seating is limited, so be sure to purchase your tickets early for this unique event.

Come and hear what the Santa Barbara News-Press called "a taut, seamlessly textured ensemble sound." We look forward to seeing you there on Friday, December 5 at 7:30 PM.

December 3, 2007 - Santa Barbara News-Press

Adelfos Ensemble calls out to ye faithful - New 10-voice men's choir shows considerable merit in concert

by Josef Woodard, News-Press Correspondent

Among other things, December 'tis the season for voices to rise and congregate in choral forces, reminding us of the healthy choral scene in the area. On Saturday nigh at St. Anthony's Seminary chapel, a young upstart on the local choral scene was demonstrating its impressive wares.

Launched in 2005, the Adelfos Ensemble is a 10-voice male choir of a high caliber, capable of taking on a range of repertoire. This weekend, it traversed a diverse but wholly accessible sweep of music. It lent a taut, seamlessly textured ensemble sound on pieces from the Renaissance through work by contemporary composers, spirituals -- "Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Childe" and "Deep River" -- and the obligatory musical yule tidings.

In a sense, the ensemble began at the beginning, chronologically, with the Renaissance pieces by Josquin Desprez (1455-1521) and Jacob Gallus-Handl (1550-1591). Jumping ahead to the late 20th century, yet still with a strong thematic tether to "early music" influences, the Ensemble performed short works by the great Estonian composer Arvo Part and British "sacred minimalist" John Tavener.

Both composers have established strong international reputations by grafting modernist ideals with sonorities not entirely divorced from medieval traditions. Part's "Ikos," a brief and mesmerizing segment from his larger 1997 work "Kanon Pokajonen," was the most compelling piece on the program. Our musical appetites were whetted to get a larger portion of Part, especially in this accommodating, reverberant and spiritual space. For some reason, Part hasn't been performed much in Santa Barbara, a cultural lack deserving redress.

Tavener is another story, more easily digestible than Part in many ways, as heard in the Ensemble's lucid readings of "The Lord's Prayer" and "The Lamb."

Even in the Christmas music category, the Ensemble managed to veer away from just the obvious fare. While arrangements of "I Wonder As I Wander" and Michael Eglin's arrangement of "The First Noel" bore a faithful, Adam Phillips rewire of "Silent Night" was sufficiently unusual to make it an intriguing anomaly, and another concert highlight.

Closing the concert on a traditional note, with an audience-participatory run-through "Adeste Fideles" (aka "Come All Ye Faithful"), the Ensemble paid heed to the spirit of the season in a warm, no-nonsense way.

And yet what makes this group interesting is a willingness to move left and right of center in the choral tradition. Long may they congregate in song.

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