by Marie-Christine Perry

The weekend of April 26 will see the return of what might well become a tradition, the joint concert of a Parisian choir with the regional Salisbury Sinfonietta Festival Choir. Two years ago, the collaboration of Jack Bowman, the Salisbury choir director, and Dominique Fanal, the conductor of the Sinfonietta de Paris, gave birth to a joint pursuit, the presentation of Haydn’s “The Creation,” which both choirs were working on at the time. Dominique Fanal and Jack Bowman, having collaborated for twenty years on various musical works, decided to put their choirs together, and the resulting concerts were widely judged a success. 

The French choir that came two years ago was Chœur de Limours, from the Limours suburb of Paris. Half the choruses of Haydn’s oratorio were sung in English, and half in German. The visiting choir members were hosted in Norfolk and the surrounding communities.

The program this year will be J.S. Bach’s “St John’s Passion,” written in 1725. This is one of the two passions J.S. Bach wrote, and it is based on the Gospel of John. The oratorio will be sung by 90 chorists, the Salisbury Sinfonietta Festival Choir members with members of the Chœur Marc-Antoine Charpentier, and professional soloists from the tristate area.
The Salisbury Sinfonietta Festival Choir has 36 members, including chorists from Salisbury, Lakeville, Norfolk, Falls Village, Canaan, Ashley Falls, Sheffield and other nearby towns.

The visiting choir this year is from Paris and its director is Jean Martin. The choir is 120 members strong, of whom half will make their way to our towns, paying their own way. We will need to host about 60 of them!
Debby Mark and Rowena Fenstermacher are coordinating the effort, and can be contacted through members of the Norfolk choir. Jack Bowman is hoping that hosts from across our region will come forward to help, and that many of us will plan to attend the concerts, which promise to be extraordinary. The concert on Sunday, April 26, will be at the Church of Christ Congregational in Norfolk at 3 p.m.; and the concert on Monday, April 27, will be at the Lakeville United Methodist Church at 7 p.m.