Orchestra concert to emphasize many voices

• Louisville Orchestra's 'Carmina burana' to feature more than 400 musicians, singers
• Louisville Orchestra concert features Louisville Chamber Choir in new work by Pulizer Prize winner Caroline Shaw
• Kent Hatteberg prepared choir for Louisville Orchestra's sold-out concert with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in April

Since Teddy Abrams was named to take the Louisville Orchestra's artistic helm nearly a year ago, he and other organization leaders have heralded an orchestra ready to forge stronger ties with the community.

The orchestra's upcoming concerts of seven works include two featuring soprano Celena Shafer and three choral works with voices from throughout the Louisville area. Make that hundreds of voices. Including the orchestra musicians and singers, there will be more than 400 performers on stage at the Kentucky Center for Carl Orff's 1937 "Carmina burana," the powerful showstopper based on medieval poems.

For Abrams, his role is not so different from when he conducts the orchestra on its own. But with so many musicians on stage, he had to adjust his communication technique.

"You have to conduct a bit bigger," he said. "Like with opera, the conductor has to be more demonstrative. At times you might mouth the words."

Most of the heavy lifting in preparing those voices for this and other choral pieces on the program falls to Kent Hatteberg, director of choral activities at the University of Louisville who also founded Louisville Chamber Choir last year.

Not long after the orchestra announced that Abrams would be the Louisville Orchestra's new artistic director, he contacted Hatteberg.

Hatteberg frequently works with choirs performing with the Louisville Orchestra, as he did last April when the orchestra performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 — the last movement of which features a chorus singing poet Friedrich Schiller's words in "Ode to Joy" — to a sold-out audience.

"When Teddy told me he wanted wanted 300 to 350 in the choir for this season's concert. I said, OK, I'm going to try to make that happen," Hatteberg recalled.

For the past several weeks, Hatteberg has been preparing for the concert by working with hundreds of singers from many choirs — Louisville Chamber Choir, the U of L Collegiate Chorale, Voces Novae and six high schools — to perform "Carmina burana."

"The challenge for me as director is to get singers from nine different choirs to come together and have one solid idea of how to perform it, pronounce it and how follow a conductor," said Hatteberg.

As Abrams pointed out, the harder vocal piece on the program is likely 16th century composer Thomas Tallis' motet "Spem in Alium," written for 40 voices with 40 different parts and without orchestra. For this piece, Hatteberg has been in rehearsal with the Louisville Chamber Choir and members of the U of L Collegiate Chorale.

"That is one of the most difficult and rarely performed works just in terms of everyone having their own parts," Abrams said.

Hatteberg also has been working with the Louisville Chamber Choir to prepare for the Louisville debut of composer Caroline Shaw's "Oculi Mei," or "My Eyes." Shaw earned a name for herself when she became the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for her work "Partita for 8 Voices." (Here you can listen to Indiana University's Contemporary Vocal Ensemble perform Shaw's prize-winning work.) Part of the upcoming Louisville Orchestra concert, "Oculi Mei" is a six-minute composition inspired by the work of Bach that premiered in July at California's Carmel Bach Festival with Bach's Magnificat in D Major.

Hatteberg admits he sees working with the Louisville Orchestra's new conductor and on new work as welcomed challenges. But what he said he really enjoys is working with some of the younger singers in the community, particularly those from area high schools.

"Sometimes that turns them on to making music into a career and certainly into being avid concertgoers and active musicians in their adult lives," he said.

Reporter Elizabeth Kramer can be reached at (502) 582-4682. Follow her on Twitter at @arts_bureau.

IF YOU GO

What: The Louisville Orchestra with music director Teddy Abrams, conductor, and Kent Hatteberg, chorus master.

Details: "The Unanswered Question" by Charles Ives; Medieval Dance/Song from "Carmina burana" by Carl Orff and arranged by Teddy Abrams, Celena Shafer, soprano; "Spem in Alium" by Thomas Tallis with 40 voices from Louisville Chamber Choir and the University of Louisville Collegiate Chorale; Mozart's Vesperae solennes de confessore, fifth movement "Laudate Dominum," Celena Shafer, soprano; "Oculi Mei" by Caroline Shaw with Louisville Chamber Choir and strings; "Big Fiddle" by Jeremy Kittel; and Orff's "Carmina burana" with soloists Celena Shafer (soprano), Javier Abreu (tenor) and Hugh Russell (baritone) and the Louisville Chamber Choir, the U of L Collegiate Chorale, Voces Novae and students from the choir programs of Ballard, Eastern, Floyd Central, Male, South Oldham and the Youth Performing Arts high schools.

When: 10:30 a.m. Oct. 16 and 8 p.m. Oct. 17

Where: Whitney Hall, Kentucky Center, 501 W. Main St.

Tickets: $15-$42 for Thursday; $15-$75 for Friday

Information: (502) 584-7777; www.kentuckycenter.org or www.louisvilleorchestra.org