In the News!

The Boston Globe | May 13, 2013
A captivating season ender from the Cantata Singers
By Matthew Guerrieri
What better way to celebrate a missionary’s career than with another mission? David Hoose, marking his 30th anniversary as director of the Cantata Singers and Ensemble, has always been a conductor at his best in proselytization, convincing listeners to believe in a work or a composer or an idea. Fitting, then, that Friday’s Cantata Singers concert — the finale of a season celebrating Hoose’s tenure — found him, again, engaged in evangelization.
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer | May 12, 2013
Zelenka Astonishes
By Virginia Newes
Celebrating conductor David Hoose’s 30th anniversary as Music Director, the Cantata Singers and Ensemble presented a concert of three stunning works at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall on Friday evening. The title “Rhetoric’s Revolution” provided a conceptual link among stylistically differentiated works by three generations of composers, all working within the aura of 18th-century Viennese classicism: Mozart’s Corpus Christi motet “Ave verum corpus,” Haydn’s adventurous Symphony No. 47 in G major, and Jan Dismas Zelenka’s monumental Missa votiva in E minor.
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer | May 5, 2013
Back to the Future: Cantata Singers and Zelenka
By James C.S. Liu
Despite its obscure status, Zelenka’s last and grandest composition, his Missa votiva in E Minor (1739), has grown on me. During rehearsals it’s become clear that it’s a masterpiece deserving of listeners’ attention. Cantata Singers will present the Mass at Jordan Hall next Friday.

David Hoose, who is celebrating his 30th season as Cantata Singers’ music director, talked with me about the Missa votiva and the other works planned for Friday’s concert.
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The Boston Globe | March 29, 2013
Cantata Singers announce 50th anniversary season
By David Weininger
On Nov. 15, 1964, a new choral ensemble gave its first performance. The Cantata Singers took their name from the cantatas of J.S. Bach, and it was the ensemble’s mission to “perform and preserve” those works, which at the time were played far less often than today. And so three cantatas were presented under the direction of Leo Collins at that first concert: BWV 131 “Aus der Tiefen,” BWV 82 “Ich habe genug,” and BWV 72 “Alles nur nach Gottes Willen.”
Now a pillar of the Boston music scene, the Cantata Singers will perform those same three cantatas on Sept. 20, the first concert in the group’s 50thanniversary season. The fourconcert season, announced on Friday , shows the ensemble both revisiting its history and exploring new horizons.
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Boston Musical Intelligencer | March 19, 2013
Concert Glowed with Lenten Luminosity
By Janine Wanée
...just before Holy Week, the Cantata Singers, under the direction of David Hoose, turned Jordan Hall into a Lenten refuge of reflective and deep pathos, with contemporary choral works by James MacMillan and Marjorie Merryman, followed by a beautifully orchestrated, soulful set of Schumann’s Four Songs for Double Chorus op. 141. A seasoned ensemble capable of tremendous power, the Cantata Singers nevertheless conveyed every musical nuance down to a whisper. The outstanding intonation of its women’s section, perfectly balanced with its lower registers, gave an incandescent quality to this repertory that was deeply moving. Hoose’s orchestral and choral facility combined with his keen comprehension of text brought forth a profoundly beautiful performance.
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BostonClassicalReview.com | March 18, 2013
On a festive day, the Cantata Singers offer a probing program of spiritual music
By Aaron Keebaugh
While Boston streets flooded with St. Patrick’s Day festivities Sunday afternoon, Jordan Hall was filled with heavenly sounds as the Cantata Singers performed a rich and moving program of choral music.
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The Phoenix | February 8, 2013
Requiems: The Cantata Singers
By Lloyd Schwartz
The Cantata Singers chorus has a wondrous glow these days that actually works in the odd, plumy acoustics of the First Church. The basses in particular have rarely sounded more sonorous. And the seven small solo parts were beautifully projected.
The evening began with more rarities: two motets by Anton Bruckner, Pange lingua (1843, revised 1868), from an Aquinas hymn, and the shorter but harmonically weirder Christus factus est (1884), composed soon after the death of Wagner. Here too, everything breathed.
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The Boston Globe | January 21, 2013
Cantata Singers divine the incandescent
By Jeffrey Gantz
Sacred music doesn’t have to be less complex, less turbulent, than its secular counterpart. In the works of Anton Bruckner, to cite just one example, it’s not easy to separate sacred from secular. The Cantata Singers underlined that point Friday evening at the First Church, Congregational, in “Divining the Incandescent,” a program that included two Bruckner motets, as well as Herbert Howells’s Requiem and Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir.
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Boston Classical Review | January 20, 2013
Mystical harmonies abound in Cantata Singers Program
By David Wright
If “functional harmony” is the kind Bach, Brahms, and the Beatles used to write—clear chords that relate to a home key, or tonic—then David Hoose and the Cantata Singers presented an evening of gloriously dysfunctional harmony Friday night at First Church in Cambridge.

A capella (unaccompanied) choral music to sacred texts by Anton Bruckner, Herbert Howells, and Frank Martin set the church sanctuary vibrating with consonant, even sensuous sounds that steadfastly refused to “come home” harmonically.
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer | January 20, 2013
Music Resonates Against Violence
By Geoffrey Wieting
Looking back over the year passed, we are at a loss to explain or forestall far too much senseless bloodshed. Those of us who love music often cleave to it, consciously or not, both as a spiritual means of  rising above such violence and finding consolation in its aftermath. Such was the theme of the Cantata Singers’ concert under David Hoose on January 18th at First Church Congregational in Cambridge, “Divining the Incandescent.”
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The Boston Globe | January 18, 2013
Cantata Singers to perform enigmatic Howells Requiem
By David Weininger, Globe Correspondent
David Hoose, music director of the Cantata Singers, noticed something unusual when he began to study the Requiem by Herbert Howells, a British composer known chiefly for liturgical music.
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The Boston Phoenix | December 21, 2012
Phrygian not frigid: Classical concerts to come
By Lloyd Schwartz
Here are some of the dozens of classical-music events this winter I'm especially looking forward to (or most curious about).
Cantata Singers: Leave it to music director David Hoose to organize a fascinating program of works in the Phrygian mode. The disparate composers are Anton Bruckner, Frank Martin, and the British composer Herbert Howells (his 1936 Requiem). :: January 18 :: First Congregational Church, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge :: $17-$52; student rush $10 :: 617.868.5885
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Boston Globe | November 11, 2012
Songs of austerity bloom into splendor at Jordan Hall
By Matthew Guerrieri
On Friday, the Cantata Singers and Ensemble — coming into a pair of anniversaries, this season being David Hoose's 30th directing the group, next season the group's 50th overall — offered an ample but superbly performed program built around two of the repertoire that gave them their name, J. S. Bach's sacred cantatas. The concert also hinted at why the cantatas might have found Boston such an amenable second home in the first place: Both the music and the playing squared the circle of Puritan rectitude and musical pleasure. It was an evening of extravagant austerity.
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer | November 10, 2012
Hoose Leads Works of Zelenka and Martin
By Mark Kroll
Jan Dismas Zelenka is one of my favorite composers. Now there is something you don’t hear every day. I feel the same way about Frank Martin (1890-1974), also hardly a household name. It was therefore a delight to discover music by both of these composers performed by David Hoose and the Cantata Singers last night at Jordan Hall: three works from Zelenka’s twenty-seven motet series Responsoria pro Hebdomada Sancta (ZWV 55), and Martin’s last composition, his Et la vie l’emporta. Two cantatas by J. S. Bach, Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost (BWV 114) and Ach Gott, wie manches herzeleid (BWV 3), served as bookends to the program. The concert was expertly performed by a crack orchestra, the 40+ singers of the chorus (no one-on-a-part Bach here, thank goodness) and a host of fine soloists (in order of appearance): Karyl Ryczek, Krista River, William Hite, James Dargan, Lynn Torgove, Mark Andrew Cleveland, Lisa Lynch, Andrea Wivchar, Jason Sabol and James Liu.
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer | January 25, 2012
Common Tones: Two Takes on Eternity
By Ben Houge
The program for the Cantata Singers’ “Astonished Breath” performance on January 21 at First Church in Cambridge welcomed listeners with a near apology for straying from the music of Bach in recent concerts. They needn’t have worried. The sanctuary was filled to capacity with an enthusiastic audience who had braved the first serious snowfall of the season to experience the Concerto for Choir of iconoclastic Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (who died in 1998) and the Berliner Messe by Estonian Arvo Pärt (still quite active).
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The Arts Fuse | January 25, 2010
Cantata Singers Warble an “Astonished Breath”
By Anthony J. Palmer
Two extraordinary choral works, one masterful conductor, and a chorus of dedicated and talented singers were the ingredients for a remarkable recipe of successful music making. At first glance, The Concerto for Choir by Alfred Schnittke, Russian composer, now deceased (1998), and the Berliner Messe by Arvo Pärt, Estonian, now dividing his time between Tallin and Berlin, was a highly questionable pairing. But art is not always logical or reasonable. The concert, titled The Astonished Breath, combined both works into a strange, but rewarding, contrast.
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MissMusicNerd.com | January 24, 2012
Lost Chords, Found: Cantata Singers Perform Schnittke and Pärt
By Miss Music Nerd
Cantata Singers always impresses with their technical musical excellence, but what clinches it for me is their obvious affection for and commitment to everything they sing, especially when they choose works slightly off the beaten path, as they did here.
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The Boston Globe | January 23, 2012
Cantata Singers astonish in breathtaking pairing
By Jeffrey Gantz
The Cantata Singers’ pairing of obscure works by Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt Saturday at First Church, Congregational, was the kind of masterstroke that looks obvious - after someone else has thought of it. . . . Led by Cantata Singers music director David Hoose, the program was called “The Astonished Breath,’’ and it was certainly astonishing.
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The Boston Phoenix | January, 2012
Some good musical news in troubled musical times
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The Boston Globe | January 20, 2012
David Hoose leads Cantata Singers in ‘The Astonished Breath’
By David Weininger
“I looked at this thing and I thought, Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous.’’ That was David Hoose’s immediate reaction, several years ago, to the Concerto for Mixed Chorus by Alfred Schnittke, a famously heterodox 20th-century Russian composer. The piece was urged on him by a longtime member of the Cantata Singers, the chorus that Hoose is in his 29th year of directing.
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The Boston Globe | November 11, 2011
Cantata ensemble compares eras with ‘Extended Arch’
By Matthew Guerrieri
Friday’s season-opening concert by the Cantata Singers and conductor David Hoose, “The Extended Arch,’’ matched works by J. S. Bach and contemporary composer Stephen Hartke, a discussion across eras. But the contrast brought to the fore a kind of historical diverging of content and technique, with the newer music tending to value craft as an end in itself.

Hartke’s “Precepts,’’ given its full premiere (the group introduced two of the three movements in 2007), sets biblical passages of political point, admonitions against greed, reminders of duty to the poor and outcast - Occupy Scripture, so to speak. The new first movement had oboe soloist Peggy Pearson, strings, organ, and women’s voices in scurrying susurration, using Matthew 16:26 (“What does it profit a man,’’ etc.) to generate an image for modern activists: a twittering storm.
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ArtsFuse | November 11, 2011
Fuse Classical Music Review: Boston’s Cantata Singers
By Melanie O'Neill
Boston’s Cantata Singers opened their 48th season on November 4th with an interesting mix of sacred and secular music, with two pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach and two by Stephen Hartke. True to the Cantata Singers’ reputation for versatility and musical exploration, the program featured Bach classics as well as the world premiere of Hartke’s vocal work,Precepts.

The program began with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F. The ensemble brought a bright sound to the festive Allegro, along with a strong rhythmic drive. Without too much exaggerated staccato, the tempo was crisp and lively. The three oboes contributed color and warmth to the movement, countering the alternately stoic and dynamic strings. The fleeting feeling of the Adagio movement provides a sharp contrast. The wavering lines, played alternately by the woodwinds and strings, make use of such devices as neighbor tones and trills, coupled with the broken chords played by the harpsichord. The music leaves the listener with the sensation of wading through water.
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The Berkshire Review | June 20, 2011
Looking Back at the Boston Winter and Spring Music Season, 2010-11
By Charles Warren
Soon after the BSO presented its Bartók and Stravinsky short operas, the Cantata Singers under Music Director David Hoose continued their “Ralph Vaughan Williams Season” with that composer’s one-act Riders to the Sea, from 1936, almost contemporary with Oedipus Rex, based on the J.M. Synge short play about Aran Islanders and the loss of fishermen at sea. Vaughan Williams restrains his own atmospheric-evocative powers here and fashions a work focused on Synge’s beautiful and suggestive words, letting the words come to the fore. The semi-staged performance was fine—soloists, chorus, and orchestra, with mezzo Lynn Torgrove especially effective as Maurya, the mother who loses a son.
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