Prof. Avner Dorman honors the Battle of Gettysburg with choral concert at the Chapel
Gettysburg College’s Sunderman Conservatory of Music Prof. Avner Dorman will receive its world premiere on April 13. (Photo courtesy of GCC&M)
Courtesy of GCC&M
The newest work by Gettysburg College’s Sunderman Conservatory of Music Prof. Avner Dorman will receive its world premiere on April 13 at 8 p.m. in Gettysburg College’s Christ Chapel, located at the intersection of North Washington and West Stevens Streets.
“Letters from Gettysburg” will feature the 120-voice Gettysburg College Choir and Concert Choir, baritone soloist Matthew Carlson, and the Sunderman Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, conducted by Prof. Robert Natter. Tickets are $5 for adults; children under 18, students, faculty and staff with Gettysburg College ID are admitted free of charge.
Written to commemorate the 150 anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the “Letters from Gettysburg” work was commissioned by the Gettysburg College American Civil War Sesquicentennial Planning Committee. The concert also features Jeffrey Van’s “A Procession Winding Around Me” for mixed choir and guitar (to text of Walt Whitman) and Elizabeth Alexander’s “Reasons for the Perpetuation of Slavery,” a work whose subject is slavery in the modern world.
Regarding “Letters from Gettysburg,” Dorman writes, “Most of the text for this work comes from letters written by 1st Lieutenant Rush P. Cady – Co. K, 97th New York Infantry, who was fatally wounded during the Battle of Gettysburg and died a few days later. The first and last movements are based on a letter written by his mother at his death bed.”
Hailed as a “brilliant young Israeli composer” by Stephen Brookes in The Washington Post, Dorman, a professor of composition at Gettysburg College’s Sunderman Conservatory of Music, has quickly risen to become one of the leading composers of his generation. His music “works its magic by melding far-flung influences and making them sound natural together,” wrote Allan Kozinn in a feature article in “The New York Times.”
Dorman’s unique approach to rhythm and timbre has attracted some of the world’s most notable conductors to bring his music to audiences of the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and more.
Dorman completed his doctoral degree as a C.V. Starr fellow at The Juilliard School and his Master’s degree at Tel Aviv University. He was a composition fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and served as composer in residence for the Stockton Symphony, the Alabama Symphony and the Israel Camerata. He was the youngest composer to win Israel’s prestigious Prime Minister’s Award for his Ellef Symphony.
