Sunday, December 3, 2023 2:00 PM
Hill Auditorium
Handel’s Messiah
$12-20 student tickets available
Handel composed his oratorio Messiah over the course of a single month in 1741, six months before its triumphant premiere at a new concert hall in Dublin. Nearly 300 years later, Handel’s Messiah fills Hill Auditorium with its ravishing beauty brought to life by friends and colleagues from the community. Music director Scott Hanoian conducts the UMS Choral Union and the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra in this annual holiday tradition.
Saturday evening ticketholders can attend a free pre-concert discussion at 6 pm in the lower lobby hosted by Scott Hanoian, UMS Choral Union Music Director and Conductor.
Thank You to Our Sponsors
PATRON SPONSOR
- Carl and Isabelle Brauer Endowment Fund
MEDIA PARTNERS
Contact Info
scottph@umich.edu
About Scott
Scott Hanoian is the music director and conductor of the UMS Choral Union where he conducts and prepares the Grammy Award-winning chorus in performances with the world’s finest orchestras and conductors. Choruses prepared by Mr. Hanoian have sung under the batons of Leonard Slatkin, Iván Fischer, Osmo Vänskä, Peter Oundjian, Fabien Gabel, and Arie Lipsky.
Mr. Hanoian is active as an organist, accompanist, continuo artist, conductor, choral adjudicator, and guest clinician. He is the director of music and organist at Christ Church Grosse Pointe, where he directs the church’s four choirs and oversees the yearly concert series. Mr. Hanoian has served on the faculty of Wayne State University and Oakland University and was the artistic director and conductor of the Oakland Choral Society from 2013–15.
As an organist and conductor, Mr. Hanoian has performed concerts throughout the US and has led choirs on trips to Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, France, and Spain. In the summer of 2017, Mr. Hanoian led the Christ Church Schola during their weeklong residency at Westminster Abbey.
Before moving to Grosse Pointe, Mr. Hanoian was the assistant organist and assistant director of music at Washington National Cathedral where he played the organ for many services including the funerals for Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. Mr. Hanoian has recorded the complete organ works of Johannes Brahms for the JAV label.
Acclaimed for her “silvery soprano, with an effortlessness that thrills her audience,” Rachele Gilmore is consistently praised as “the vocal standout” on both opera stage and in the concert hall. A renowned bel canto singer, her repertoire spans a wide range, including Donizetti, Mozart, Verdi, Strauss, as well as the French and modern composers. She is a regular performer in America, Europe, and Asia and has performed in many of the world’s most prestigious opera houses, including The Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Bayerische Staatsoper, La Monnaie, Grand Théâtre de Geneve, and Festival d’Aix en Provence. She has also regularly appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, as well as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra led by Manfred Honeck. Her signature roles among many, include Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, Gilda in Rigoletto, Olympia in Les contes d’Hoffmann, Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Ophélie in Hamlet, as well is Alice in Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland.
Due to her notable work in opera, Gina has collaborated alongside authors such as Salmon Rushdie and Khaled Hosseini. Behind the screen, she has also been featured in the film Baawal (2023), directed by award winning director Nitesh Tiwari. The most recent opera/film-hybrid collaboration was with Afghan film director Roya Sadat and Roya Film House during the world premiere of the opera 1000 Splendid Suns with Seattle Opera. She has performed with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Seattle Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Minnesota Opera, Opera Philadelphia, The Dallas Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Ópera de Guatemala, The Atlanta Opera, OperaDelaware, and Central City Opera.
Admired for his interpretive depth, vocal strength, and range of expressivity, tenor Paul Appleby is one of the most sought-after voices of his generation. He graces the stages of the world’s most distinguished concert halls and opera houses and collaborates with leading orchestras, instrumentalists, and conductors. Opera News writes, “[Paul’s] tenor is limpid and focused, but with a range of color unusual in an instrument so essentially lyric… His singing is scrupulous and musical; the voice moves fluidly and accurately.”
Paul Appleby’s calendar of the 2023-24 season includes a debut at La Monnaie in the world premiere of Cassandra, written by Bernard Foccroulle and Matthew Jocelyn under the baton of Kazushi Ono, a debut at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in the principal role of Caesar in the European premiere of John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra, and a return engagement with Glyndebourne to sing Tamino in Die Zauberflöte. Igor Stravinsky features prominently in the American tenor’s concert diary with a San Francisco Symphony debut with Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen in performances of Les Noces, Pulcinella with Music Director Gustavo Gimeno and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the title role ofŒdipus Rex with Santtu-Matias Rouvali leading the Munich Philharmonic. As well, he assays the Evangelist in Schmidt’s seldom-heard oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln with Music Director Fabio Luisi leading the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
Hailed for his “polished vocal technique” and “heart-tugging emotional communication” (San Diego Story), Nicholas Newton is garnering due attention as an up-and-coming bass-baritone in the classical music world. The artist’s 2023-24 season features the Houston Grand Opera world premiere of Intelligence, a new American epic created by a powerhouse trio: composer Jake Heggie, librettist Gene Scheer, and director/choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder of Urban Bush Women. Other engagements include Rossini’s comic masterpiece, La cenerentola, as Alidoro at Lyric Opera of Chicago, John Adams’ El Niño at the Metropolitan Opera in a new production directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, resident director at Lincoln Center Theater, led by Marin Alsop, and the role of Leporello in a fresh interpretation by Stephen Barlow of Don Giovanni at the Santa Fe Opera under the baton of Music Director Harry Bicket.
Concert performances of the season include Handel’s Messiah with the Ann Arbor Symphony under the auspices of the University Musical Society and with the Rhode Island Philharmonic, as well as Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones in a new suite of music from the composer’s historic opera, performed with the celebrated trumpeter and his E-Collective, the Grammy Award-winning Turtle Island Quartet in Austin, Houston, and Richmond.
During the 2022-23 season Nicholas Newton made a European debut at the Salzburg Festival in Purcell’s The Indian Queen with Teodor Currentzis conducting Utopia choir and orchestra and a Lyric Opera of Chicago debut as Peter in Richard Jones’ acclaimed production of Hänsel und Gretel conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. Other highlights of the season included Il barbiere di Siviglia at Cincinnati Opera, Handel’s Xerxes at Detroit Opera, Salome and Tosca at Houston Grand Opera, and Rigoletto at The Dallas Opera.