The Harvard University Choir gives a concert in Hallgrimskirkja Reykjavik Friday Januar 20th at 8 PM in cooperation with the Hallgrimskirkja’s Friends of the Arts Society, 35th season. On the program are  works by Byrd, J.S. Bach’s motet “Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf” and more.
Conductor is Edward Elwyn Jones, Choirmaster at Harvard University and Thomas Sheehan, the Associate University Organist, plays the great Klais organ.
Admission: 3000 ISK. Ticket sale is at the entrance one hour before the concert.

For over 175 years the Harvard University Choir has provided a unique opportunity for student singers to perform choral literature at the highest level, both in concert and during the services of the Memorial Church. Its program of daily choral services, broadcasts, tours, commissions, and recordings make it one of the premier college chapel ensembles in the United States, and each year the choir presents America’s longest-running Christmas Carol Services to packed congregations. Highlights of recent seasons include concert performances of J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion and Mass in B minor, C. P. E. Bach’s Die Israeliten in der Wüste, Glück’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Handel’s Athalia, Saul, and Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem and Mass in C minor (in completions by Harvard Professor Robert Levin), Roxanna Panufnik’s Westminster Mass, Alice Parker’s Melodious Accord, Stephen Paulus’s The Three Hermits, Benjamin Britten’s St. Nicolas, and the world premiere of composer-in-residence Carson Cooman’s The Acts of the Apostles. Committed to the presentation of new music, the choir has premiered works by today’s most prominent composers, including David Conte, Tarik O’Regan, Alice Parker, Daniel Pinkham, Craig Phillips, and John Rutter.

Visit memorialchurch.harvard.edu for more information and to download free recordings.

Edward Elwyn Jones is the Gund University Organist and Choirmaster at Harvard University, a post he has held since 2003. Mr. Jones directs the music program in the Memorial Church in the midst of Harvard Yard and leads the 180-year old Harvard University Choir in its daily choral services, broadcasts, tours, commissions, and recordings. Mr. Jones is also the Interim Director of Chapel Music at Harvard Divinity School, Music Director of the Harvard Radcliffe Chorus, the Lowell House Opera (New England’s longest-running opera company), and is a frequent collaborator with Yale’s Schola Cantorum. As a conductor, he has guested with such organizations as Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Grand Harmonie, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, Boston Camerata, Emmanuel Music (Boston), Longwood Symphony Orchestra, and the
Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra. He has led opera productions with Iceland’s Reykjavik Summer Opera Festival, New England’s Intermezzo Opera, Lowell House Opera, and the Harvard Early Music Society. Mr. Jones has worked alongside William Christie, Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan, and Gil Rose, and has served as continuo player and Assistant Conductor to Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists.
During his time at Harvard, Mr. Jones has overseen the publication of a new university hymnal, the installation of two new pipe organs in the Memorial Church, and has commissioned works from some of America’s most prominent contemporary composers, including Daniel Pinkham, Alice Parker, and David Conte. A native of Wales, Mr. Jones studied music at Cambridge University, where he was Organ Scholar of Emmanuel College, and served as conductor of three university orchestras. He received his Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting from Mannes College of Music in New York City, where he was the recipient of the Felix Salzer Memorial Award.

Thomas Sheehan is the Associate University Organist and Choirmaster in the Memorial Church and accompanist and teaching fellow for the Harvard Glee Club. Prior to these positions, he served on the music staff of Saint Mark’s Church in Philadelphia and Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton, New Jersey. Tom is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he received diplomas in organ and harpsichord, studying with Alan Morrison and Leon Schelhase. He received both the Master of Music and Bachelor of Music degrees from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, as a student of Ken Cowan. He has also studied improvisation with Matthew Glandorf, Ford Lallerstedt, and Bruce Neswick.
In 2016 he was named one of The Diapason’s “20 under 30,” a list of rising artists in the field of organ playing. In 2009 he was awarded first prize in both the Arthur Poister National Competition in Organ Playing and the AGO/Quimby Regional Competition for the Mid-Atlantic Region (Region III). In July 2010 Tom was a performer at the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Washington, DC. He has performed as an organist throughout the United States and in Europe.

Program:
Weir: My Guardian Angel
DeBlasio: Psalm 63
Stanford: Beati Quorum Via
Byrd: Praise Our Lord, All Ye Gentiles
 
Organ solo – Bach: Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan kam, BWV 684
 
Bach: Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, BWV 226
Stucky: Speak, Lord
Parry: There Is an Old Belief
Paulus: Pilgrims’ Hymn
 
INTERVAL
 
Elgar: Great Is the Lord
Whitbourn: Pure River of Water of Life
Cooman: Verbum supernum prodiens
Sigurbjörnsson: Heyr, himna smiður
 
Organ solo – Micheelsen: Toccata über Es sungen drei Engel
 
Lassus: Omnes de Saba
Rütti: A Patre Unigenitus
Jones: Suo-gan
Bean: Simple Gifts

 Harvard University Choir