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WAUKESHA -
“As a creative person there is always a desire to produce
original work,” said Kristina Boerger, associate professor of
music and director of choral activities at Carroll University.
For years, her
career has included arranging or reconfiguring existing music for
her choirs, and now she has published her own composition.
Boerger’s
first submission attempt was to British publishing house Boosey
& Hawkes. The world’s largest publisher of classical music
seeks “the very best in new music” and has contracted
Boerger’s trilogy for a cappella women’s chorus.
“Boosey
& Hawkes is an exclusive publisher,” Boerger said. “It
benefits one to have music in its catalog. I was ecstatic when I
got the word.”
That was three
years ago. Boerger’s first piece, “Ballade with Christine de
Pisan,” was released this spring and features an extended
soprano solo over a chorus with soprano I, soprano II and alto
voices.
The
forthcoming installments of the trilogy are “Song from Cymbeline”
for double women’s chorus and “The Silver Buckle on Mozart’s
Shoe: Oath on the First Anniversary,” which features an
obbligato for tenor instruments such as a trombone, cello or bass
clarinet.
In all three
parts, Boerger uses texts on grief from family friend and poet
Sarah White. Each is from White’s “widow poems” series,
written after the sudden death of a lover.
“Ballade”
was originally commissioned by AMASONG of Champaign-Urbana, Ill.,
for its 10th anniversary and premiered in 2000. In the poem that
inspired this piece, White borrows the lament on being alone from
an autobiographical poem by Christine de Pisan, a Medievalist
French writer whose young husband died suddenly. Boerger
continuously repeats the word “alone” (“seulete”) to
suggest “the sounds of bereavement when it first strikes.”
“The
structure of a poem, or sometimes an image, gave me starting point
for the music besides my love for Sarah’s poetry,” Boerger
explained.
A 2009
recording of “Ballade” by New York-based ensemble Cerddorion
and the text of White’s poem are found on
www.kristinaboerger.com.
Boerger joined
the Carroll faculty in 2009. Her formative musical training was
from pianist Annie Sherter and she earned a doctoral degree in
choral conducting and literature from the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign. Boerger is the founding director of AMASONG,
and has sang with, recorded for and conducted a variety of
ensembles in New York and the Midwest.
She continues
to concertize as a soprano with Renaissance choir Pomerium and is
on the board of directors for Milwaukee’s Early Music Now. In
the summer, she is a performer and guest conductor with the
Madison Early Music Festival.
“I have had
the privilege of working with some of the finest musicians in the
country,” Boerger said. “My experiences as a teacher are at
least as fulfilling.”
In fall 2013,
Boerger will serve the University of Illinois School of Music as
the interim director of choral activities, conducting the Chorale
and Oratorio Society, and teaching the Graduate Choral Conducting
Seminar.
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