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CBA SYMPHONY AND CHORUS PRESENT “SOMETHINGWONDERFUL” ON APRIL 26
How Do You Get to Orchestra Hall?
By Ruth J. Kaufman
Editorial Board Member
How do you get to Orchestra Hall?
Practice, practice, practice! On
April 26, the Chicago Bar Asso-
ciation Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
combined with the Elgin Master Chorale,
national winners of the American Prize in
Voice and narrator Harry Porterfield to
present Something Wonderful: The Music
of Rodgers & Hammerstein.
The nearly 300 performers earned a
standing ovation for their rousing rendi-
tions of 23 songs from Rodgers & Ham-
merstein musicals including Oklahoma!,
South Pacific, the Sound of Music, Cinderella,
Carousel, and more. One highlight was
the audience joining in by enthusiastically
participating in an encore of “Do Re Mi”
after the soloists taught them hand gestures.
For the CBASO and chorus’s second
orchestra hall appearance, Maestro David
Katz, who has led the CBASO since its
inception nearly 30 years ago, says, “We
needed a program that would be musi-
cally worthwhile, very different from
Carmina [Burana, the work performed
at Orchestra Hall in 2011], likely to
attract a large audience, and able to
generate enough advertising and sponsor-
ship dollars to make it financially viable.
Once I discovered that the entire Rodgers &
Hammerstein library was online, and then
received permission to create our own con-
cert hand-selected from their complete cat-
alog, “Something Wonderful” was born.”
Rebecca Patterson has directed the
CBA Chorus since its first performance
of Beethoven’s 9 th at Navy Pier in 2006. “I
loved prepping this material because the
process and the product bring so much
pleasure to both singers and audience. The
singers’ enthusiasm has made our prepara-
tion a real delight. There was a lot of energy
and focus during rehearsals, and we all
found a lot of enjoyment in preparing for
this concert.”
“Being able to advertise nationally for
soloists for CBA Symphony & Chorus
concerts through the American Prize, as we
have for the last several years, has brought
to our performances artists of stature who
we otherwise would have never known.The
process has raised the quality of our per-
formances and the visibility of our unique
organization to a national level,” says Katz.
Patterson adds, “The music is so well
written for the voice that it’s a pleasure
to sing. For a lot of the chorus members,
this music evokes memories of their first
experience as singers, often as kids in
school. A number of choristers recounted
fond memories of a special teacher, who
introduced them to music and fostered a
love of singing. For so many choristers, the
music goes beyond the stories in the song.
It carries their own personal stories about
this music.”
In season, the chorus rehearses weekly
at the CBA, while the orchestra rehearses
in chambers at the Daley Center.
Symphony members, led by Maestro David Katz,
and soloists delighted attendees at the April 26
Concert. Photos by Bill Richert.
16 APRIL/MAY 2015