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Sweet sound of success: Carroll musician publishes original score

By MELISSA McGRAW - Special to TimeOut

April 18, 2013


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.