UWF Singers present the ‘Les Chansons des Roses’

Mar. 22, 2023

The University of West Florida Dr. Grier Williams School of Music and UWF Singers present the “Les Chansons des Roses.” The performance will be held on Thursday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m. in the Rolfs Music Hall at the Center for Fine and Performing Arts on the UWF Pensacola campus.

The UWF Choirs will perform “Les Chansons des Roses,” a greatest-hit song cycle from American composer Morten Lauridsen. Set to French poems of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the five-song cycle for a cappella mixed chorus is a unified study of elegance, as are its poems and the roses they describe.

A National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), Lauridsen was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale (1994–2001) and has been a professor of composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for more than 40 years. In 2006, Lauridsen was named an “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2007, he received the National Medal of Arts from the President in a White House ceremony “for his composition of radiant choral works combining musical beauty, power and spiritual depth that have thrilled audiences worldwide.”

Additionally, there will be works by Abbie Betinis, Anton Bruckner, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, J.S. Bach, Byron Smith, Craig Hella Johnson and Reena Esmail.

This event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. For tickets or more information, visit uwf.edu/cfpa or call the CFPA box office at 850.857.6285.