Western Reserve Chorale starts new season with new director

The Western Reserve Chorale (WRC) has appointmented David W. Gilson artistic director for its 2012-13 season. Gilson is the associate dean for student affairs at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he has been employed since 1991, and director of music for the United Methodist Church of Chagrin Falls.

WRC, a nonprofit choir, is supported by the Ohio Arts Council, and typically presents three choral concerts each year. Gilson is already preparing the group for its first concert, scheduled for Dec. 9 at 7 p.m. at Grace Lutheran Church, 13001 Cedar Road. The featured work will be Benjamin Britten’s "Ceremony of Carols," with harp accompaniment.

As a new venture this year, the second and third concerts will each be presented twice, in different locations. The concerts on March 9 at 7:30 p.m. at Breen Performing Arts Center, and March 10 at 3 p.m. (location TBA), will be a collaboration with the Singers’ Club of Cleveland in a program titled "Cry of Freedom, Plea for Peace: The Civil War in Remembrance." The main work will be Ralph Vaughan Williams’s "Dona Nobis Pacem," performed with soloists Marian Vogel and Brian Johnson and accompanied by string orchestra.

The June concerts, titled "For Love of Shakespeare," will be presented on June 2 at 7 p.m. at Grace Lutheran Church and June 4 at 7:30 p.m. at Church of the Resurrection in Solon. This program will explore Shakespeare's sonnets, poems and plays that have been set to music by composers through the ages. Some composers were inspired to set the texts themselves, while others, such as Leonard Bernstein and Cole Porter, were inspired to express the thematic elements of the Bard’s plays in musicals, such as "West Side Story" and "Kiss Me Kate."

For further information, visit www.westernreservechorale.org.