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MOS Chamber Singers Take An American Journey in February
MOS Magic Means Mozart in March
Dear Friends,
The beginning of a new calendar year is always encouraging to me, for while it falls right in the middle of our performance season, it reminds me that new beginnings can come in a variety of ways and times.
As I am sure many of you do, I always start the year with my list of resolutions, many of which will be long forgotten before spring. However, one resolution that is made each year, and hopefully never broken, is the one to bring to the MOS family (singers and listeners) the widest variety of choral music that is always performed at a consistently high level.
This New Year begins with An American Journey as the Chamber Singers perform music from all across our great country. Hymns, folksongs, spirituals, popular songs, patriotic selections - you'll hear it all performed by the acclaimed sixteen
voice professional ensemble of MOS – the Michael O'Neal Chamber Singers. There will be two performances of this exciting and enjoyable program – 3:00 PM, Sunday, February 9 at Roswell UMC
and 8:00 PM, Friday, February 21 at the Conant Performing Arts Center of Oglethorpe University. The chamber ensemble and selected soloists from within the group will perform such titles as Come Away
to the Skies (Sacred Harp), Shenandoah, Deep River and Old Time Religion arranged by Moses Hogan, Norman Dello Joio's A Jubilant Song, and America, the Beautiful. Come and hear the
group that has recently been featured on both Georgia Public Radio and Atlanta's public radio station, WABE-90.1 FM.
In March, the full MOS, with an orchestra drawn primarily from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and soloists Arietha Lockhart, Karen Sikorski, Bradley Howard and John LaForge, will provide
an afternoon of music you will long remember.  The concert will take place on Sunday, March 23 at 3:00 PM in our superb performance
venue of Roswell UMC and will feature Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem. This exquisitely beautiful creation gained new
audiences after being featured in the cinema classic, Amadeus, and from numerous performances following the tragedy of September 11, 2001. You will be moved and inspired by this music. As an added
bonus, the MOS and orchestra will open the program with Nänie by Johannes Brahms. The rich, harmonic texture of Brahms is apparent throughout this miniature masterpiece, along with some of his
most memorable melodies. Set to a text by the German poet, Friedrich Schiller, Nänie reminds us that beauty is transitory and will eventually fade. It is, I believe, a perfect complement to Mozart's Requiem, which was written by a genius who died
at the all too early age of thirty-five.
 Great music is ennobling and enriches us in ways that cannot easily be described. In the turbulent, uncertain world in which we live, we need more than ever the fulfillment that
profound music can provide.
All the best,
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