Choir school starts 2021 concert series

Courtesy photo/MCS

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Melanie Malinka leads the Cathedral Choir in a performance. For 25 years the Madeleine Choir School has offered the gift of music, both in the liturgy and at concerts, to the Cathedral of the Madeleine community.

SALT LAKE CITY — This Sunday, Nov. 21, the Madeleine Choir School will kick off its annual concert series with a St. Cecelia Day concert at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. This will continue the school’s 25-year tradition of reaching out the community through its music.

Since the school opened in 1996, its choirs have sung at most daily Masses during the academic year, along with Sunday Masses.

“I think our most essential gift and the thing that is at the heart of our work is the cathedral liturgy,” said Gregory Glenn, one of the school’s founders, who now serves as pastoral administrator. “That’s the core of everything we do. Flowing from that would be the concert series that we offer and things like the Christmas Carol – those are things that flow from that essential work of the liturgy.”

Among the performances that are open to the public are the school’s March Founders Day concert, the  Christmas Carol Service, A Ceremony of Carols and a Good Friday “Stabat Mater” meditation. In addition, they participate in the Madeleine Festival.

“Concert performances – the ability to preserve and promote the Church’s great treasury of sacred music – have always been part of our mission,” Glenn said.

Part of the school’s legacy is to share with the greater community the gift of music through its choirs and performances, he said.

MCS Choir Director Melanie Malinka has also fostered collaborative relationships with professional art groups such as the Utah Opera and the Utah Symphony. For example, in March the school will perform “Tosca” with the Utah Opera.

“That’s a wonderful opportunity for the kids but it also provides a gift to the community from the choir school,” Glenn said.

For the opening of this 25th anniversary season, the school’s choirs will reprise Gabriel Faure’s “Requiem in D minor,” a piece that was performed for the first St. Cecelia Day Concert. Also in the program will be Anton Bruckner’s “Te Deum.” All the soloists will be school alumni, along with parent Seth Keaton. Alumnus Ryan Condie will be one of the conductors.

The Madeleine Choir School has also commissioned alumni Nicolas Chuaqui and Jessica French to compose two new works for the Founder’s Day concert.  Those works will help in “building a future treasury of sacred music,” Glenn said.

In February, the Cathedral Choir will travel to Washington, D. C., to perform in services and concerts at St. Peter’s Church on Capitol Hill, St. Matthew’s Cathedral and The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, on the campus of The Catholic University of America.