CECILIA AND HER WORLD
February 26-27, 2022
Renowned and award-winning British composer Cecilia McDowall traveled to Cleveland in February 2022 for a series of master classes and rehearsals, which culminated in Cecilia and Her World: Music of Cecilia McDowall. Central to these concerts celebrating her choral works was the newly-commissioned On the Air (Dear Vaccine). These concerts also included music she considers influential to her own style.
McDowall won the British Composer Award for Choral Music in 2014 and, more recently, the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collection in 2021. Her works are performed worldwide. From Cecilia McDowall, “It is a real pleasure to write for a choir like Cleveland Chamber Choir with its passion for making choral music a vehicle for good, and I very much hope that the piece that we will create together will live up to those expectations. I am looking forward to starting work on it in the coming months and later to meeting the choir and hearing it sung.”
Additionally, the choirs from Case Western Reserve, Cleveland State University, Kent State University, Youngstown State University joined us. Prior to the concerts, McDowall and CCC Founding Artistic Director Scott MacPherson ran master classes with these choirs. Each choir sang one McDowall composition by themselves and joined CCC for a final, massed choir performance of one of McDowall’s other works.
A portion of donations received was shared with The Music Settlement.
Read the preview article and review, from ClevelandClassical.com.
This concert was supported by the Ohio Arts Council, Cuyahoga Arts & Culture, and The Tri-M Foundation. Presented in partnership with Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University.
