Scott Speck, conductor
Kathryn Mueller, soprano • Emily Marvosh, contralto
James Reese, tenor • Jonathan Woody, bass
University of South Alabama Concert Choir • Mobile Opera Chorus
Laura Moore, director
Saturday, April 26, 2025 at 7:30 p.m. •. Sunday, April 27, 2025 at 2:30 p.m.
Saenger Theatre
PROGRAM
George Freidrich Handel Messiah
This performance, including intermission, runs approximately 1 hour, 30 minutes.
TakeNote! Learn More, Enjoy More
Enhance your concert experience with Take-Note! Join music experts and explore the world of classical music from an in-depth perspective. This informative pre-concert talk begins at 6:30 p.m. before Saturday classical performances and 1:30 p.m. before Sunday classical performances in Room 1927 adjacent to the Saenger entrance on Joachim Street.
Brings the kids for FREE on Sundays!
Bring the kids for FREE on Sunday!
Through MSO’s Big Red Ticket program, sponsored by Alabama Power Foundation and the Figures Foundation, students in grades K-12 can attend any classical Sunday matinee FREE when accompanied by a paying adult. It’s a great cultural opportunity and an amazing concert experience! Seats are limited, so please purchase tickets by phone at 251-432-2010. Please no children under 5 and no babies in arms. Want to bring a student on a Saturday? Student tickets are just $10.
From our Music Director
We celebrate the joy and renewal of spring with an uplifting performance of Handel’s most beloved oratorio. A cherished tradition in many countries, Messiah tells the story of Christ’s birth, passion, resurrection, and resurrection through sublime choruses, stirring arias, and majestic orchestration. From the exhilarating “Hallelujah” chorus to the tender beauty of “He shall feed his flock,” Handel’s music conveys the profound spirituality and universal themes of hope and redemption.
This is the first time in its history that the MSO has presented Messiah. The orchestra and USA Concert Choir and Mobile Opera Chorus illuminate every facet of Handel’s masterpiece, capturing its emotional depth with clarity and resonance. Our four soloists bring each character and emotion to life in a performance that inspires and uplifts. Join us for an unforgettable evening of music that transcends time and tradition.
– Scott Speck, Music Director
Our Soloists
Kathryn Mueller, soprano
American soprano has made a mark with her “appealing stage presence of personal warmth and musicianship,” singing a wide range of repertoire from period baroque performances to world premieres of new works. She has sung with the LA Chamber Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Charlotte Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, Winston-Salem Symphony and Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
Favorite concert works include Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Glière’s Concerto for Coloratura Soprano, Haydn’s Creation, Bach’s St. John Passion, and anything by Mozart or Handel. She collaborates as a guest artist with the award-winning early music group Wayward Sisters, and has also sung operatic roles for Arizona Opera, the North Carolina HIP Music Festival and Bach Collegium San Diego.
Kathryn’s honors include a GRAMMY nomination for her solo work on True Concord’s album Far in the Heavens, and prizes from the Oratorio Society of New York’s Solo Competition and Early Music America’s Baroque Performance Competition. She was also an Adams fellows at the Carmel Bach Festival. Kathryn has recorded two GRAMMY-nominated albums with Seraphic Fire and is featured as a soloist on Seraphic Fire’s best-selling Monteverdi Vespers of 1610.
Find out more here. (www.kathrynmueller.com)
Emily Marvosh, contralto
American contralto Emily Marvosh has established a reputation as a singing actress with excellent musicianship, a “plum-wine voice,” and “graceful allure,” on national and international stages. Recent solo appearances include the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Charlotte Symphony, Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, Tucson Symphony Orchestra and John Davenant’s Macbeth with the Henry Purcell Society of Boston, as well as solo recitals in Tucson and the Boston area. Awards include the prestigious Adams Fellowship at the Carmel Bach Festival, the American Prize in the Oratorio and Art Song divisions, and second place in the New England Regional NATSAA competition.
Her contributions to 21st century repertoire and performance include world premiere performances with The Thirteen, Juventas New Music, Shoreline Music Society, the Manchester Summer Chamber Music Festival and the Hugo Kauder Society. She is a member of the Lorelei Ensemble, which promotes innovative new music for women. With Lorelei, she has enjoyed collaborations with composers David Lang and Julia Wolfe, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, A Far Cry, Duke Performances, and major symphony orchestras in Boston, Chicago, Nashville, and San Francisco.
A frequent recitalist and proud native of Michigan, Emily Marvosh created a chamber recital celebrating the history and culture of her home state, which won a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. She belongs to Beyond Artists, a coalition of artists that donates a percentage of their concert fees to organizations they care about.
Find out more here. (www.emilymarvosh.com)
James Reese, tenor
“A shining tenor” (New York Classical Review), James Reese delivers dynamic, thoughtful performances that facilitate intimate connections between audiences and the art. An emerging specialist in early repertoire and a champion of new works, Reese’s rare ability to impart emotional immediacy on music from Bach to the present day has earned him overwhelming critical acclaim over the course of a burgeoning and multifaceted career.
As a soloist, Reese has appeared with leading orchestras and ensembles throughout North America, and this year, he looks forward to forging new musical relationships with the Mobile Symphony and the Victoria Symphony. He greatly anticipates a number of projects, among them an international tour to Germany and Slovakia with the Boston Early Music Festival (Carissimi’s Jephte), his Kennedy Center solo debut with Opera Lafayette, and a staged performance of Bach’s St. Markus Passion with Concert Theater Works, collaborating with the storied actor Joseph Marcell.
The 2023-24 season saw James perform in venues from Hawaii to international locales including Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Scandinavia and Germany, making debuts with Tafelmusik (CAN), the Portland Baroque Orchestra and Symphony Nova Scotia. An active recitalist, Reese works frequently with friend and collaborator, pianist Daniel Overly. In 2025, they will present Schubert’s Die Schöne Mullerin at the historic Hill-Physick House in Philadelphia.
Find out more here. (www.jamesreesetenor.com)
Jonathan Woody, bass-baritone
Jonathan Woody is a versatile and dynamic musician who maintains an active schedule as a performer and composer in New York and across North America. Cited by the Washington Post for singing “with resonance and clarity,” Woody is in demand as a bass-baritone soloist, appearing regularly with historically informed orchestras including Boston Early Music Festival, Apollo’s Fire, Pacific MusicWorks, Bach Collegium San Diego, Trinity Baroque Orchestra and New York Baroque Incorporated. In the 2021-2022 season, he served as Artistic Advisor for the Portland Baroque Orchestra, curating a program of 17th-century German music for voices and orchestra.
An accomplished chamber musician, Woody often performs as a member of the GRAMMY®-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street, where he has earned praise from the New York Times for his “charismatic” and “riveting” solos. He has also recently performed in collaboration with Kaleidoscope Ensemble, Les Délices, Seraphic Fire, Byron Schenkman and Friends and TENET Vocal Artists.
Woody’s compositional voice blends 17th and 18th-century inspiration with the minimalism and socially conscious subject matter of today. Since 2020, he has received commissions from Apollo’s Fire, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Chanticleer, the Handel and Haydn Society, the Cathedral Choral Society of Washington, D.C. and the Five Boroughs Music Festival, among others.
Find out more here. (https://www.athloneartists.com/artists/jonathan-woody/)
Messiah
George Freidrich Handel
BORN: Halle, Germany | February 23, 1685
DIED: London, England | April 14, 1759
George Freidrich Handel was born in Germany, studied music in Italy, and moved to England in 1712, settling there for the remainder of his life. Handel made a name for himself as a composer of Italian opera in London. When audiences began to see Italian opera as pretentious and took their ticket money elsewhere, Handel was forced to adapt. He turned to oratorio: a genre that was not new to him — as a young man in Italy, he had composed two oratorios when the Pope temporarily banned opera — but was new to his English audience.
The history of oratorio dates back to about 1600. Oratorios are large-scale sacred works that sound like opera. Like opera, they involve solo singers, a chorus, and an orchestra. And they are made up of acts and scenes, which are comprised of arias, recitatives, choruses, and instrumental numbers. But they diverge from opera in their subject matter and staging. Oratorios portray sacred subjects and were often written for performance during sacred times of year, especially for the Christian season of Lent. And, as they are not intended to be secular entertainment, they are not dramatically staged: they do not include sets, costumes, or acting.
The subject of Handel’s most famous oratorio is the Messiah: Jesus Christ himself. Unlike most oratorios — and unlike Handel’s previous six — the singers in Messiah do not assume dramatic roles: no one plays the role of Jesus, his mother Mary, or his disciples. This unusual text was written by Charles Jennens, a wealthy patron of Handel’s. He sent the libretto to Handel and then wrote to a friend: “I hope [Handel] will lay out his whole Genius & Skill upon it, that the Composition may excell all his former Compositions, as the subject excells every other subject. The subject is Messiah.” Jennens’ text — compiled from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer —does little to tell the story of Jesus. Jennens aim is not to tell the story of Jesus’ life, but rather to prove Jesus’ divinity. He does so by presenting the Old Testament prophets who foretold Jesus’ coming, followed by the annunciation of Jesus’ birth in Act One. In the second act, he describes the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. And, the final act communicates St. Paul’s teachings on the resurrection and the final victory over sin and death.
Handel received Jennens’ text on July 10, 1741. He began work on the oratorio on August 22. And he finished the work on September 14, having composed the entire work in just 24 days. Jennens was appalled at the speed of composition, interpreting it as carelessness on the part of the composer. After Handel’s death, many posited that the speed of composition could only be attributed to divine intervention. Neither point of view factors for the reality that Handel composed most of his large-scale works that quickly. He was accustomed to composing during the short time between the close of one opera season and the start of the next. And he kept up that pace when he turned to oratorio. In fact, upon completing Messiah, he began composing his next oratorio, Samson, within a week and completed it less than a month later.
Much to Jennens’ chagrin, Handel took Messiah to Dublin for its premiere. He presented it there as a concert to benefit those in debtors’ prison. It is reported that 700 people attended the premiere. Women were asked to not wear hoops in their skirts and men were instructed to leave their swords at home so that they could more easily pack the house. The revenue from the performances purportedly allowed for the release of 142 debtors from prison. And the Dublin News-Letter reported that the performance “far surpassed anything of that Nature which has been performed in this or any other Kingdom.” When it premiered in London about a year later, Messiah did not fare quite as well. Critics wrestled with the very nature of the genre. In the Universal Spectator, a critic asked if oratorio was “an Act of Religion…. if it is, I ask if the Playhouse is a fit Temple to perform it in…. If it is for Diversion and Amusement only … what a Prophanation of God’s Name and Word it is, to make so light use of them?”
After Handel’s death, Messiah really caught on. Evidence of huge productions of it go back to 1784, when a performance at Westminster Abbey publicized an orchestra of 250 musicians. And in 1787, a performance at the same venue boasted over 800 musicians involved. Messiah’s popularity has endured for centuries, whether in oversized productions, small scale performances on period instruments, or even in the form of singalongs. It seems that, despite its unusual text, its message of hope followed by despair that ultimately transforms into triumph — all wrapped in Handel’s approachable musical style — continues to resonate with audiences over 250 years after its composition.
This piece was originally scored for two oboes, two trumpets, timpani, strings, basso continuo, plus vocal soloists and chorus. Handel arranged it for numerous different configurations and various orchestral sizes during his lifetime.
– Program Notes by Sarah Ruddy, Ph.D.