Choir school's annual Founder's Day Concert will celebrate J. S. Bach and W.A. Mozart

Intermountain Catholic

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The choristers from the Madeleine Choir School prepare for the annual Founders Day Concert March 27.

SALT LAKE CITY — The Choir of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, accompanied by the Cathedral Chamber Orchestra, will present the annual Founder’s Day Concert in the Cathedral of the Madeleine March 27. This concert commemorates the very first rehearsal of the Madeleine Choir School that took place on March 19, 1990.

The choristers began in 1990 as an after-school program. The Madeleine Choir School was established in 1996 as a fourth grade through eighth-grade school and has grown to a pre-kindergarten to eighth-grade school over the years.

Prior to the Founder’s Day Concert, the Madeleine Choir School will host a pre-concert reception in the Bishop Glass room of the rectory at the Cathedral of the Madeleine and are inviting the public to attend.

"This year’s concert celebrates the music of two extraordinary composers, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart," said Jason McAdams, Cathedral of the Madeleine assistant director of liturgy and music, in a press release. "The program’s first half consists of Mozart and the evening’s second half will be devoted entirely to Bach."

The choir will be under the direction of Melanie Malinka, director of music for the Madeleine Choir School. "Both works, Bach and Mozart, are certainly more accessible to the average audience and to the children because of the time periods – baroque and classical," said Malinka. "It’s been interesting and fun for the kids to study the backgrounds of these works in their history classes."

The Bach cantata, "Christ lag in Todesbanden" (Christ lay in the hands of death), a work focused on the passion of Christ, features three students from the Madeleine Choir School as soloists. "This is a wonderful opportunity for them to show their talent and to show what they work so hard to do each day in class," Malinka said. "It is a great opportunity for us to feature the students in this concert. Victoria Stevens, a sixth-grader, and Olivia Pratt, a seventh-grader, will both sing soprano, and Deron Parcell, an eighth-grader will sing alto.

"The students have been practicing since January for the Founder’s Day Concert," Malinka added. They have a choir rehearsal for an hour every day, but they must also prepare for the weekday services and Sunday services and the extra services and conferences such as the Southwest Liturgical Conference for which they performed.

"The students just sang at the Rite of Election services and there are so many other things they also are preparing for during these rehearsals, that we don’t have time to prepare just for the Founder’s Day Concert," Malinka said. "The main routine for the children are the services throughout the week, and the concerts are a wonderful extra bonus we’ve been able to offer to the community."

The pre-concert reception will be held in the Bishop Glass room of the rectory at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, 331 East South Temple, Salt Lake City. RSVP to 801-994-4662. The Founder’s Day Concert will follow at 8 p.m. in the Cathedral of the Madeleine.