February 26, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chorus pro Musica and Artistic Director Jeffrey Rink announce that Maestro Rink will be leaving his position of leadership with the chorus at the conclusion of the current season in June 2008. Maestro Rink will continue in the positions he assumed in July, 2007, as Music Director of the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra and the Mattie Kelly Distinguished Endowed Teaching Chair in Music and Conducting at Okaloosa-Walton College in Niceville, Florida.
Since Jeffrey Rink became Chorus pro Musica’s fourth Music Director in the fall of 1990, he has led the chorus to critical acclaim in the full gamut of the choral repertoire. His first season began with Handel’s oratorio Esther and ended with the chorus’s first appearance at Symphony Hall under its own auspices in over 25 years, a concert of Zoltan Kodaly’s Psalmus Hungaricus and William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. Under his leadership, Chorus pro Musica premiered several important works, including Antonio Estévez’s La Cantata Criolla, Henryk Gorecki’s Miserere, and, most recently, Roger Ames’s Requiem for our Time, which has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
Maestro Rink has led the chorus in unique period instrument performances that remain extremely significant in Boston’s musical life, including Hector Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ and Romeo et Juliette, and the 2007 period-instrument performance of J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion.
Maestro Rink and Chorus pro Musica introduced exciting performances of opera in concert version to the Boston public, starting with a 1992 performance of Bizet’s Carmen at Worcester’s Mechanics Hall and at Symphony Hall. His achievements inspired the formation in 1995 of Concert Opera Boston, an organization dedicated to supporting concert opera performances which named him its Artistic Director. Under Maestro Rink’s direction and with Concert Opera Boston’s support, Chorus pro Musica has performed Gounod’s Faust, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, Turandot, Otello, Macbeth, Nabucco, La traviata, Mefistofele, Samson et Dalila, and Attila. The success of these performances has inspired many other local organizations to undertake concert and staged opera performances and encouraged new local opera companies to form.
His skill in conducting opera brought Maestro Rink high accolades. T. J. Medrek of the Boston Herald called him “an opera conductor to be reckoned with”, and Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe declared, “Once again [Jeffery Rink] proved himself a capable and committed operatic conductor; he knows the way to establish concert opera in Boston is to do it right”. In a June 2001 review of Verdi’s Macbeth, Lloyd Schwartz of the Boston Phoenix noted Rink's “clear sense of Verdi's dramatic and musical design [and] wide dynamic variety” and deemed him “Boston's pre-eminent Verdi conductor.” Rink is the 2005 recipient of the New England Opera Club's Jacopo Peri Award for outstanding contributions in the art of opera.
Finding a replacement for Maestro Rink will clearly be a high challenge. However, the chorus has formed a search committee with the intention of appointing a new Music Director by the start of 2009–10 season. With Mr. Rink’s assistance plans are being made for the chorus’s 60th season, beginning in September 2008. The season is expected to include a four-concert subscription series, the first three to be prepared and conducted by guests and the final concert to be conducted by Maestro Rink n in Jordan Hall.
Chorus pro Musica congratulates Maestro Rink on his success in Florida, and wishes him and his family well for the future. We thank him for his 17 years of dedicated service, which was instrumental in placing Chorus pro Musica in the forefront of musical organizations in the Boston area.
To conclude the present (2007–2008) season, Maestro Rink will return to Boston to conduct a concert opera performance of Georges Bizet’s Carmen June 1, 2008 at NEC's Jordan Hall. The performance features audience favorite Victoria Livengood in her signature role as Carmen, Adam Klein as Don José, Robert Honeysucker as Escamilllo, and Nouné Karapetian as Micaela.
Now in its 59th season, Chorus pro Musica is a distinguished, independent Boston-based chorus, recognized for versatility and excellence in performing traditional, adventurous and seldom-heard works. The Chorus was founded in 1949 by the late Alfred Nash Patterson and has built a superb reputation for professional-level musical standards and innovative programming. In 2006, Chorus pro Musica was one of 45 cultural, environmental, and human service organizations profiled as “examples of excellence” in the Catalogue for Philanthropy.
See the Chorus pro Musica online press kit at: www.choruspromusica.org/press.shtml
For more information, contact Peter Pulsifer at 617-267-7442.